With the loss of bookstore chains such as the much-lamented Borders and with supermarkets cutting space for everything but the fastest moving titles, publishers have been forced to reduce paper sales of some of their series to their bookclub subscribers and online sales.
But...
While online sales and digital work for the dyed-in-the-wool, hard-core fans who know what they like, have authors they auto-buy and have access to a debit or credit card, the sad fact is that the point-of-sale reader, the woman who, passing the shelf during her weekly shop and makes a spontaneous decision to buy a book, no longer has the same wide choice.
She may have always bought from her favourite series in the past, grabbing one with the right colour cover and buzz word title in the few seconds she has to make her choice because she knows it will deliver the romance hit she loves. If that option is no longer open to her she may choose from what is there - or not buy at all. It's a bit like the supermarket reducing your choice of cookies to a few top-selling brands. Their only interest is, after all, the bottom line and they figure that you'll buy something even if it isn't your first choice. Or, of course, you may go somewhere else. If it's cookies, not a problem. If it's books it may mean the local thrift shop where there will be secondhand copies of the books she loves. At least for a while.
Meanwhile the paper copies are only available in limited numbers and you can't buy them secondhand. Even when there are fabulous deals - a lot of my books are on special offer at the moment - they are available only to those with an expensive eReader, computer or phone and access to a debit or credit card. For vast numbers of readers the books will simply have disappeared. They won't know why. They'll merely shrug and stop looking for them. Maybe they'll stop reading romance.
I have no answers, just a sore heart.
