I went to Barnes and Noble to buy the book Overcaptain in Gilbert, AZ. They had 4 of your books on the shelf, one hardback, four paperback, all of which I have. Why don’t they have more of your books?

The short answer is greed and algorithms. The long answer is more complex, and involves a number of factors. Back in the 1990s, B&N bookstore managers could actually stock books that better fit their clientele. Now, from what I understand, that’s difficult, if not impossible. Beginning in the 1980s, the IRS applied the Thor Power Tools decision to book publishing, which made it unprofitable for publishers to keep large backlists in stock in their warehouses. Then, with the rise of Amazon, B&N further reduced the amount of books stocked in stores, and buyers in bookstores can’t buy what’s not there. More important, they often don’t know what’s missing. In the 1990s, B&N stores often carried the entire Recluce series. That enticed readers. But today, B&N relies on algorithms to predict sales of books, even before they’re published, based in large part on sales of the previous book by that author. But for authors like me, that’s deadly and misrepresentative, because readers are still purchasing books I wrote thirty years ago. So B&N orders books based on the last book, rather than on my total sales in the past year, and they don’t re-order when they run out, which makes increasing sales difficult, and why your local B&N doesn’t carry more of my books — and why Amazon and other booksellers get a larger share of my sales every year.