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lagilmanEtA: I really didn't think this post would raise so much apparent confusion. The hardcopy, physical books are in stores now (I've signed a number of them already) and shipped from the major online retailers. There was no hard laydown date that can be enforced on these titles, but the difference between "May 1st" as the publication date and "April 15th' (when the first copy was sighted in stores) is a bit extreme, and causes the problems I cited. It also plays up the difference in time between availability of print and digital, when the digital adheres to the month-of-pub release, which is why I posted in the first place.
That is all. You may return to your mid-morning coffee, now.
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For those of you wondering why the digitial version of HARD MAGIC is "on-sale May 1" but the paper edition is available now?
It's not that publishers/booksellers hate ebook readers, or any other conspiracy theory. The official, legal publication date for HARD MAGIC is... (wait for it...) May 1st. The digital download won't (shouldn't) be released until then, exactly as it's supposed to be.
The stores that are selling hardcopy now? Totally jumped the gun and put the books out too early. They'd jump the gun on ebooks too, I'm sure, except they can't claim "the clerks didn't understand they were supposed to wait/we didn't have backroom storage for the books")
While that's great news for those of us who hate waiting, it sucks for authors for two reasons.
1. Genre bestseller lists are compiled on a calander-month basis, so with sales split between April and May? Guess what? *sigh*
2. People who had books out in April? Lost shelf space to the incoming May books, halfway through what should have been their run. And they did it to the people in March... and so latecoming readers have trouble finding books that don't backlist (stay in the stores past their initial publication month).
This? Is one of those unspoken sales problems we're all too busy winging our hands over The Death of The Industry to pay attention to. So I just wanted to take a moment and point it out, and remind you to ASK for a book you don't see on the shelves. It might have gotten bumped, ten minutes before you came looking for it.
That is all. You may return to your mid-morning coffee, now.
---------------------------------
For those of you wondering why the digitial version of HARD MAGIC is "on-sale May 1" but the paper edition is available now?
It's not that publishers/booksellers hate ebook readers, or any other conspiracy theory. The official, legal publication date for HARD MAGIC is... (wait for it...) May 1st. The digital download won't (shouldn't) be released until then, exactly as it's supposed to be.
The stores that are selling hardcopy now? Totally jumped the gun and put the books out too early. They'd jump the gun on ebooks too, I'm sure, except they can't claim "the clerks didn't understand they were supposed to wait/we didn't have backroom storage for the books")
While that's great news for those of us who hate waiting, it sucks for authors for two reasons.
1. Genre bestseller lists are compiled on a calander-month basis, so with sales split between April and May? Guess what? *sigh*
2. People who had books out in April? Lost shelf space to the incoming May books, halfway through what should have been their run. And they did it to the people in March... and so latecoming readers have trouble finding books that don't backlist (stay in the stores past their initial publication month).
This? Is one of those unspoken sales problems we're all too busy winging our hands over The Death of The Industry to pay attention to. So I just wanted to take a moment and point it out, and remind you to ASK for a book you don't see on the shelves. It might have gotten bumped, ten minutes before you came looking for it.
