Sunday, May 27, 2007

On time is not early enough

Just like films novels have release dates. Just like with films publishers may or may not become quite irate should a distributor release a novel too early. This seems to be exactly what has happened here.

Food chains Ica and Coop have dumped the last (being dead it is unlikely that there will be any more books by the author) novel by Stieg Larsson. As we are talking crime here, with close to 300 K copies of the novel printed, this is a major release in Sweden but it would have been a big one on any market. His previous books in the same series are up to a total of around 800 K copies sold.

So, this is enough to make book store owners pissed off, mildly put. Less known to the Swedish players is that this episode echoes disturbingly like the English speaking markets where food chains and supermarkets stacking up with huge amounts of copies of a minimum amount of titles. Good for sales, bad for writers and, in the long run, a disaster for book stores. Squeezed in between cheese and sausage the next best seller is unlikely to come with attached personnel who can help a customers with tips. To be frank, the personnel is unlikely to be familiar with the concept of reading at all, but with so small a number of titles it may not be needed.

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