Why you should buy a book

I’m going to interrupt my grumblings on the things I don’t like in certain YA books to give you an important message: buy a book. In fact, buy several.

Book publishing has always been an odd business due to the fact that stores are allowed, at the publisher’s expense, to return unsold books. For the sake of example, let’s say a bookstore has 1000 books that it’s paid 10 dollars for, and when they don’t sell, the bookstore returns them to the publisher. Not only does the publisher have to pay the bookstore 10,000 dollars, it also has to pay the shipping—let’s say 200 dollars.

And that’s what has happened a lot in the last couple of months as the bookstores have felt the effects of the recession. One editor’s blog I read said that several publishers saw all their profits from 2008 vanish in October due to returned books.

Now we’re hearing about lay-offs at the publishers and freezes on acquiring new manuscripts. Scary.

So if you’re looking for a gift for someone this holiday season, try a book, a gift card for a bookstore—or even better, one of my books (which as you know from my website, make readers instantly skinny and rich.)

And really, reading is way more fun than that pair of slippers, new tie, or DS game that is all about blowing things up.

Happy reading!