Cindy Pon's Silver Phoenix: Update

[sanguinity]

I've edited the original post, but I feel this is important enough to bring up top, because I know a lot of people are talking about buying the hardback to send a message. As noted here by Jonquil and here in comments to the linkspam, the hardback version of Silver Phoenix is remaindered. This means that the link between the hardback edition and the publisher is now severed: they've already sold off their stock, and cannot tell if you're buying a copy.

Which means that if you are considering buying Silver Phoenix right now, this is the choice you get to make:

• Buy the hardback because it has the cover image you want. The publisher will never know that you did.
  
• Buy the paperback and boost the official, visible sales statistics. This will ultimately help keep the series in print.

There may in fact be other options, options that may or may not involve purchasing a copy -- y'all can brainstorm if you feel like it. Just do know that buying the hardback at this point is not the tidy option that I and many others would have liked it to be.

Comments

[enemyfrigate.livejournal.com]

For profit companies can be difficult to influence, but letters and e-mails about the cover might be one way to go. It won't change anything for this book, but might make someone think.

The other option I can think of, which won't influence the cover controversy, is to buy both the HC and PB, keeping one for yourself, perhaps, and passing on the other to a friend, hopefully bringing new fans in. I'd rather see new books come out, both encouraging publication of the author and her type of work, and bringing an opportunity for a dialogue around the industry's failures.

[sanguinity]

The more I think about this, the more it seems that the buyers at the big chains are the ones who really need to hear about this? They seem to have an awful lot of say about what books make it and what books don't.

Re sending letters, I liked this suggestion from yeloson. (Although! Mutilating! My books! Agh!)

[blackteensread2.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

Oh! I'm not sure I understand, why would hardcover sales not be noticed? Could bookstores order more if it suddenly became extremely popular (hypothetically speaking :)?

This is good information to have then because I'm getting ready to write another post. Argh
~Ari

[sanguinity]

At this point, no, the bookstores can't order more. Or not readily, anyway.

Publishers usually do a print run of so-many-thousand copies -- whatever they think they'll be able to sell -- and then do additional runs of umpty-thousand if it looks like they'll be able to sell those, too. What happened here is that the publishers took a guess at how many hardcovers they'd be able to sell, printed that number, and then discovered that they had printed far, far more than they could sell. At that point, they "remaindered" the rest: basically, got rid of them at a loss. So all those hardback copies floating around at really good prices right now? They're copies that the publisher has already gotten rid of, already taken a loss on. The book stores that have them right now probably didn't even buy "xx copies of Silver Phoenix" but "a crate of miscellaneous remaindered books; we'll see if we can sell them."

Anyway, for a bookstore to be able to order more, there would first have to be enough demand for the hardcover that the publisher would be willing to say, "You know, let's go ahead and do another print run of so-many-thousand; it looks like it'll go better this time." For that to happen, we would have to buy all of the copies that weren't sold the first time around, and place enough backorders that the publishers would be willing to risk another umpty-thousand print run.

As I understand it, to get a second print run now would take more demand than it would have taken to have kept the first run from getting remaindered in the first place. :-/


...or leastways, that's what I understand from this thread and others.

[blackteensread2.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

Oh I see. Argh. Thanks for clearing that up! I guess we will just aim for ordering enough books that they chains need to order more (ha, wishful wishful thinking). I'll have to think harder about this.

~Ari