publication

In the year 2000, I worked as an assistant manager at Bookstar in Memphis. Once a month, we scanned every book in the entire store to make sure it was shelved properly and to pull returns which were shipped back to publishers for credit. Returns are books that the home office inventory control department deem as being overstocked or slow sellers. That’s right. The life of a book on your local B&N shelf is regulated like stale pastries being rotated in a bakery. Hardcover books that are about to be released in paperback might also come up as having to be returned, which is how I came upon one book in particular one slow evening. It was a lone hardcover copy of Matthew Stadler’s Allan Stein.