Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing EP 087 - You, Your Book, And Bookstores

In this solo episode, Mark offers a perspective on bookstores, booksellers, and bookselling, and shares ideas on how authors can best get their books into bookstores.

Prior to the topic, Mark shares a personal update about the move back upstairs to his renovated office, discusses a comment on a previous episode, reminds listeners about the contest to win a print copy of Patrick O'Donnell's book COPS AND WRITERS, and also thanks Patrons and talks about the patron perks.

Mark then shares a word from this episodes sponsor...

You can learn more about how you can get your work distributed to retailers and library systems around the world at starkreflections.ca/Findaway.

When discussing bookstores, Mark covers these topics:

• The importance of relationships and community
• Understanding the business side of print bookselling, including the margins
• How returns work and how that effects a bookseller's willingness to stock books
• How Mark got chain bookstores to order his self-published book (and how that partially backfired)
• How bookstores order books VS how consignment works
• The rules, and why bookstores might sometimes make exceptions to those rules in particular situations
• Why Mark tied an onion to his belt
• And more....

Links of Interest:

• Mark's First Self-Published Book: One Hand Screaming
• Episode 29 - Interview with Terry Fallis
  • YouTube video of Terry Fallis interview
• Episode 39 - Professionalism
• Episode 84 - From The Academy to the Street with Patrick O'Donnell
• Findaway Voices
• Patreon for Stark Reflections

The music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0