More musing out loud, or Part 3

Now that the book has been ordered, and the initial numbers have come in, it, along with all of the various titles for the various publisher imprints, will be printed and shipped to bookstores and rack jobbers (and Ingram and Baker and Taylor, who will also send it to bookstores. The advantage to Ingram and Baker and Taylor is that there is no per publisher minimum to be met; there's a strict dollar minimum. This means you can order 5 books from Penguin, rather than the 30 that would otherwise be required to make a minimum order, combining the 5 from Penguin with 5 books from Bantam and 5 books from Random House and 5 books from Overlook, etc., you can meet the general minimum).

The book is now on the shelves! Yay!

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Just wanted to add...

That I am rambling. I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before. I'm glossing over things instead of examing the minutiae. If there's anything I've said that's not clear -- or if there's anything that's counter to your own experience, please don't hesitate to point it out!

And if there's anything that needs clarifying, don't hesitate to ask. I haven't figured out yet how to wedge agents, and the question of agents, into the ramble itself -- but I think it's in part because I'm presenting much of the process from the bookstore angle rather than the writer angle. Every writer is eventually going to deal with the agent question, and every writer is going to deal with editors and by extension, publishers. But people have varied ideas about bookstores, and I'm mulling about those at the moment.