As authority disseminates across webs of increasingly smaller presses and publications, it becomes harder and harder for new authors to see their books on bookstore shelves, especially those of larger stores like Barnes & Noble’s.
Unless, of course, they put the books there themselves:
They haven’t yet asked me to stop desecrating their shelves with my book, or notice, for that matter. But I wonder how the stores reconcile the $12 purchase of a book that’s not in their inventory. A tiny part of me hopes, like in the Russell Simmons story, that they’ll somehow start selling my book — but a larger part of me thinks they’ll probably more likely just send me a cease-and-desist letter. Which would also be kind of awesome, in its own way.
