Over the past several days, I’ve received a few inquiries as to why some big box stores weren’t stocking Last of the First. I asked my editor whether she could shed any light on the matter. Her response dealt strictly with Barnes & Noble.

Elliot Investment Management bought first the British bookstore chain Waterstones and then later bought Barnes & Noble in 2019 at a time when B&N was suffering severe financial mismanagement. Both chains are now effectively run by James Daunt, who imposed new management practices on B&N in an effort to reduce the cash drain. While those efforts have apparently been successful, certain aspects have adversely affected authors who are not mega-best-sellers.

As it was explained to me, if an author’s previous book shows no sales at a store, then the next book is not ordered for that store, based on previous low demand. But, of course, if the previous book wasn’t ordered, how could there be sales?

One way around this is for readers to order or pre-order that book from that store. Merely asking the store to order it won’t suffice; there have to be physical sales.

Unfortunately, in this world where Amazon tends to dominate book sales, many readers who don’t see a book they want at their local B&N are more likely to order it from Amazon and get it at a lower price. But the only way to change a B&N store’s order pattern for a given author is to physically order his or her books from that store.

While some local managers can order books beyond those selected by the B&N algorithm, from what little I’ve seen local ordering initiative is often not done nearly so much as it was when I was actively touring. But then, the entire publishing industry has been transformed, especially over the last fifteen years.