Meanwhile, In Europe...

Well, this is becoming weird. My book is now available through Amazon (in its various incarnations), but also through bookshops in the United States, Korea, Italy, the Netherlands and England. While this increases the visibility of the book – though not, I note, its sales – I must wonder how it arrived at these far-flung literary corners.

 

Since it is a self-published book, it is ‘print on demand’. This category has improved greatly since I first saw an example of it, and the fact that I work in graphic arts allowed me to set the book up just the way I wanted it. I am quite pleased with the physical results. The ‘print of demand’ feature means, I assume, that if one of these bookshops receives an order for the book, it then orders it from Amazon, and sells it, at a higher cost than Amazon did, to the customer requesting it.

 

But why are the bookshops offering it at all? I can guess only that someone on their staff saw it somewhere, thought it looked good – none of the entries include the description of the book’s contents that I wrote for Amazon’s display – and included it in their inventory. It seems rather a long shot that someone will see it and order it. It doesn’t appear worth the effort on the part of the bookshops.

 

Furthermore, there are two prices, one for ‘new’ copies and one for ‘used’. Used? How on Earth (literally) are these bookshops going to guarantee used copies when they are ordering ‘print on demand’? Is someone in the shop going to read the stories before mailing the book off to the customer?

 

Still, these are not complaints but observations and questions. If GreatBookPrices, and what appears to be its British affiliate, GreatBookPricesUK, want to market my book, I am pleased. Puzzled, but pleased.