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Uh-oh, here we go.
CD, I’m curious around the protocol/limitations you place on resellers? In the past few days PS Publishing have magically found a couple of stray Sleeping Beauty S/L’s and are selling them for £495 (a significant mark up). Winters has proudly shown a photograph of 11 S/L’s (still confirming price on those). Given resellers probably obtain them from you at a discount already (wholesale?), then what are the conditions (if any) you sell to resellers? There are dozens of fans who missed out on this title and are expressing a fairly clear disappointment on social media. I get that individual owners can sell their copies for what they want, but stores / publishers who have an arrangement with you?
I'd say that line of questioning is not something a person would expect a publisher to publicly answer. CD and other small press publishers, as well as booksellers have to work together for the better of the community. Without sharing books (at wholesale), the entire community could suffer.
If someone out there is so distraught over not receiving a S/L Sleeping Beauties, I'll sell them one for $525 ($50 over issue) plus US media mail shipping. That person would not have had their $500 tied up for the last 18+ months.
I'm not gonna comment on policy. Brian can if he wants to, but we always sell copies to the resellers. We could sell every copy of a signed SK book on our own, but it's a give and take relationship. We want them to carry our titles that may not sell out as quickly as Sleeping Beauties, and they want copies of the King titles. It's a give and take relationship that is healthy for publisher and bookstores. This isn't new either, they've gotten copies of this stuff for as long as we've been publishing it.
Yes, I know it’s common for publishers to share releases, and it’s relationship building, etc. But I’ve generally seen resell publishers list the book at the same retail price (and they profit from obtaining it at wholesale from you, etc). So it may not be new that other publishers get them, but I think it may be new that they hold onto them and resale at another mark up price?
Anyway, it’s all none of my business, and you have no obligation to resoond, I just was surprised to see Winters with 11 and PS selling at a higher retail...
Sales to a retailer are "the same" as sales to any customer in the sense that the person who bought the book from the publisher can do with the book as they please in terms of keeping it, selling it, etc. Resell at retail, resell for less, resell for more, auction it off, bundle with other items for sale, store it away for future sale, etc. (That's why you see retailers offering their own slipcases, custom dust jackets, artist remarques, etc, for books they didn't publish.)
Many of our retailers have standing orders with us, meaning they take copies of everything we publish: even the no name authors that collectors have no interest in at the moment. So, when a Stephen King book comes along, of course those same retailers are offered their standing order. We publish 30 to 40 books a year that don't get nearly as much fanfare as a Stephen King book, but our retailers are there for us to help sell all of them.
I do know that one retailer was allowed to purchase extras due to extenuating circumstances he was dealing with. He did NOT ask us for more copies, we just thought having a few more copies to sell might be helpful for his situation. But ultimately what that retailer does with those copies is up to him and we have no control. We don't discuss specific retailers and our terms with them in public, though, so I won't be answering any questions about how many someone got, what their discount is, etc. That’s all I can say on that, sorry.
I hope this is helpful!
Brian
Founder and publisher of Lividian Publications. My other website is BrianJamesFreeman.com. Please always feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions about either!
Like Brian said we don't comment on how many copies we sold to who. I will say that not all of the retailer in question's copies came from us. We definitely didn't sell him all of those. Maybe he has them on consignment or he bought them on the aftermarket. Honestly it's not really any of my business where he got them from.
Very fair point Dan! As a retailer/reseller, I still have 6 copies here with at least one more coming from a member here and I've already shipped 7...so that makes me handling 14 copies and I certainly did not get them all from CD.
Dragline : Nothin'. A handful of nothin'. You stupid mullet head. He beat you with nothin'. Just like today when he kept comin' back at me - with nothin'.
Luke : Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Reproach
Brian, do you have any news about the S/L of Cardinal Black? The updates page on your website says the slipcase maker expected to be done by the end of June.
Thanks!
Founder and publisher of Lividian Publications. My other website is BrianJamesFreeman.com. Please always feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions about either!
Very nice! Thanks for sharing!
Received Sleeping Beauties GE the other day and that thing is huge! It's possibly the best GE CD has produced to date!
Also received a notice that the Elevation slipcases are about a month out.
You don't know my kind.....You don't my mind.....Dark necessities are part of my design.....
I'm not really gonna give any firm shipping dates, just cause I'm not sure where things are gonna fall at this point, since this is a short week and both Brian and I are on vacation next week. The tentative shipping schedule for the next couple of weeks is as follows:
Knight of the Word --> Elevation Slipcases --> Cardinal Black Limited Edition
I think there's maybe a handful of smaller things that'll be slotted in between each of these. We probably won't actually be starting in on Elevation until after I'm back from vacation.
Are the CDCC 9 members going to receive a t-shirt or do we need to order one? Is the recent email to order an extra one?
"One day you're going to figure out that everything they taught you was a lie."
Speaking of shirts, anyone interested in previous cdcc T-shirt’s? I have 3 in size medium and I think one was was worn one time. Just asking shipping.
The shirts aren't an "automatic" bonus. To lower the price of the club membership a few years back, we switched to this:
Sorry, it's been a while since we offered something, so we should have reminded everyone about that! We'll send another note with that reminder.* New OPTIONAL But Exclusive CDCC-Only Items!
There WILL still be other "Exclusive CDCC-Only Items" for those who dig them, but these items will be offered throughout the course of the year and they will be entirely OPTIONAL, which allows us to lower the membership cost. For example, if you want a new Cemetery Dance baseball cap, as a CDCC member you'll have the exclusive opportunity to order one and we'll only be charging our members our costs for these items. So if we pay $6 per unit for an item, that's what you'll pay, too! This means, instead of paying upfront in the membership fee for bonus items you might not even want, you can just select the items you DO want over the course of the next year.
Your special discounted link should reduce the price to the appropriate amount, but please email me or Dan if you have any problems!
Brian
Founder and publisher of Lividian Publications. My other website is BrianJamesFreeman.com. Please always feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions about either!
Founder and publisher of Lividian Publications. My other website is BrianJamesFreeman.com. Please always feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions about either!