Should you wonder why Unexpected Weather Events is no
longer listed on Amazon (or suggests an unknown wait-time), or should you
wonder why your bookstore doesn't sell it and may not offer ordering it for
you, here is the short version. The distributor suddenly closed its doors,
which upended hundreds of small presses, affecting all of their titles, and the
writers who publish with them.
Should you want a longer version, complete with a glossary tailored for this
tale, please continue.
Terms:
Publisher - The person/people/group/business that accepts a writer's
book and guides it from its manuscript form to its final book form that can be
borrowed or bought from libraries and bookstores.
Distributor - The entity that helps move copies of the book from
the publisher to bookstores. The go-between. Something like a travel agent.
Bookstores - Places where we can buy books. Places that prefer
to purchase books through distributors because they can return copies that they
don't sell. Also, it streamlines purchasing, as they can order titles from
multiple presses through a distributor, instead of having to write contracts
with each publisher, besides reordering, returning, payment, etc.
As the writer, I do not dip my toe into the relationships among publishers,
distributors, and bookstores. So know that the following account is my trying
to best to sort a likely more complex situation.
🌹
Once
upon a time in the Kingdom of Books, there were distributors who functioned
like couriers, moving the books from the publishers in the forest to the
bookstores in the cities. For many, many years the Kingdom of Books functioned
this way. A writer hunched over a table, scribbling or typing long or short
stories, and when the writer was done, they wrapped the manuscript in brown
paper and sent it by a herd of doves to a publisher. Should the first publisher
accept the manuscript, the doves would return to the writer and live happily
the rest of their days. Should the first publisher reject the manuscript, the
doves would be re-harnessed with the heavy block of pages and fly it to the
next publisher. This would go on until either the doves found a publisher, the
doves returned to the writer half-starved and missing many feathers, or the
writer cursed the Gods of Publishing and never sent the doves out again.
Meanwhile, the Publishers in the Forest daily received herd and herds of
doves from around the kingdom. Every day more doves came. Donkeys, too.
Giraffes, dogs, passels of ladybugs--all carrying manuscripts from hunched
writers around the kingdom.
Over the course of the year, the Publishers in the Forest, sent many animals
back to their writers with good news or bad news. Good news being that the
manuscript was accepted and the publisher would transform it into a beautiful
book that hundreds of scribes would copy into thousands of copies that would
finally be distributed around the kingdom for citizens to read.
For many years, the Kingdom of Books functioned happily like this. In the
Kingdom of Books there existed, in a nearly parallel reality, another forest,
the Small Forest of Publishers. The Small Forest of Publishers was a lovely
place, full of exotic birds and waterfalls that fell without gravity, sometimes
up instead of down. The flowers drank tea and the clouds wove rain, and many
writers stumbled out of Publishers of the Forest into this forest and
immediately knew this is where they should send their manuscripts. Once
established, The Small Forest of Publishers let it be known that they enjoyed
reading manuscripts by unknown writers or writers with manuscripts that might
puzzle, surprise, or speak in special ways that not all citizens in the kingdom
would like to read, think to read, or even find in order to read--much less
purchase.
After the scribes made all the copies of the books, they sent them to The
Couriers Operating on the Big River. Now, it should be known that The Couriers
Operating on the Big River had several important jobs. For one, to take the
books from Publishers of the Forest and send those books to the kingdom's bookstores.
Because The Kingdom of Books loved readers, and more deeply, readers who bought
books, if the bookstore did not sell all the copies of a book, it could send it
BACK to The Couriers on the Big River. Sometimes those books would then be
destroyed, left to rot in a warehouse, or perhaps returned to the Publishers of
the Forest, although the Publishers were not in the habit of saving books or
housing them—that was simply not part of their job, in the same way that a university
does not let alumni come back to live in the dorms in the event that they do
not find a job.
In the parallel reality of the Small Forest of Publishers, many of the publishers tried to be everything—like the housewife of yore who birthed, raised, clothed, disciplined, and educated her children all by herself. The Small Forest of Publishers figured out how to read manuscripts, and then of the few they could afford to accept, they then prepared, scribed, and couried all by themselves; they also housed the books and sold some from their back porch.
Often, because a person who ran a press/publishing house in the Small Forest of Publishers had to do all of the jobs, they could only produce one to three books every 365 days. In producing so few titles, the publishers in the Small Forest rarely saw profit and would raise a glass to toast on years they broke. Many arts groups and literary clubs would help support these publishers when they could, since every day could be the day the publisher closed down—from fatigue, sorrow, or bankruptcy of soul or bank account.
According to those who know, one day there came to the Small Forest of Publishers a stranger. That stranger had lived, likely, in the Forest of Publishers and knew how it worked. But the stranger, finding the Small Forest of Publishers and seeing how fatigued they were, knew there was a better way. The stranger sat in the tavern and told the publishers about couriers. The publishers rolled their eyes. Of course they knew about couriers. They also knew about the cost of working with couriers, for there existed only The Couriers on the Big River. Guess how much of a cut they want from sending the books to the bookstores? The stranger was shocked and said let me go talk to them. And so the stranger journeyed many days to the Couriers on the Big River. The stranger sat in a tavern by the Big River and told the couriers about the Small Forest of Publishers. The couriers laughed and said that they knew about the Small Forest and said it was hardly worth their time to transport only a few boxes of titles each year, and those boxes were often returned from bookstores full or so nearly that it might as well be full. Which is why, the couriers pointed out, they had to charge by the amount of inventory they moved.
The stranger saw the problem.
The stranger then went to the city and sat in the tavern where the booksellers came. The stranger told the booksellers about the Small Forest of Publishers. About the exotic birds and upside-down waterfalls there. The booksellers nodded and smiled half-heartedly. We would sell those books, but our customers are not used to those kind. We could not order as many in order to avoid sending back so many. We only have so many bookshelves, you see. And we only have so many customers, you see.
The stranger saw.
The stranger met other strangers and explained the dilemma of the Small Forest of Publishers and the strangers decided to rent a few sheds in the city and set up an office. This became called Small Press Distribution. They bought an old boat and rented a dock on the Big River. The Small Forest of Publishers signed on the dotted line and began sending their books to Small Press Distribution (SPD). In turn, SPD sent the books to bookstores in small batches, and became the go-between of many, many presses that produced a few books each year.
And it was good for many years. Not fantastic. But it worked. The publishers in the small forest no longer had to do the job of courier, which allowed them to spend their time more in the production side of the manuscripts, which they enjoyed more since they were more like avid readers than businesspeople. The bookstores were happy because their bookshelves became more diverse and they didn’t have to send a thousand doves back and forth to the Small Forest of Publishers about contracts or books that didn’t sell or needing more books, and so on.
Then, one day, the Small Forest of Publishers stopped receiving messages from Small Press Distribution. Or when they did receive a message, the reply came months later. In the kingdom, bookstores would order books from Small Press Distribution and receive half the number they’d requested. Or none. The writers in the kingdom started hearing from readers that they could not find their books anywhere—or had ordered a copy but the order had never been filled.
The tavern in the Small Forest of Publishers became a small place of confused publishers. They exchanged stories and found that they were all experiencing the same frustrations with Small Press Distribution.
Unbeknownst to anyone, a cold ghost had settled in the sheds and dock and boat of Small Press Distribution. A ghost that ate books and strangers. The strangers working there tried to fight the ghost, telling no one about the ghost or the fighting. And then one day, when the strangers came to work, the ghost had eaten everything. There was not even a front door. And so they posted a message, hung by used fishing line from a tall tree, announcing that they were closed. That a ghost had eaten the books and that maybe the ghost had regurgitated them into different sheds around the kingdom. They could not be sure. But it was over. The publishers would have to search the kingdom far and wide for the books. The bookstores would have to search for the publishers of the titles.
And so, that is why Amazon no longer carries the books from the Small Forest of Publishers.
That is why well-known bookstores never carried, or now do not carry, books from the Small Forest of Publishers.
The Small Forest of Publishers are
trying to find their books while simultaneously picking up their jobs as
couriers again. They continue selling books from their back porches, but it is
as much up to the readers in the kingdom to journey to those back porches.
Without directions, a guide, donkey, or dove.
