This is my gripe, apropos of nothing I've been blogging about for the last week or so. I paid a visit to Borders tonight, and on three separate occasions, I found a book that looked interesting to me, only to discover that it was either a sequel or the second book in a series, and in none of the cases had Borders stocked the first book.
It is no coincidence that I bought none of these books.
Ahh, you say, but you could have just bought the book, and come home, and ordered the first one of the series through Amazon. Well, yes. But why wouldn't I just go ahead and order both of them, since I likely wouldn't want to read #2 until after #1. If I have to wait for the mail, I might as well just wait for both.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. This may happen more often to me than others, I suppose, since usually I don't pay attention to an author (and I'm talking sci-fi here) until they've got a couple of books out. But still. If I have my wallet with me, and I'm in a bookstore, I'm a sale waiting to happen. By stocking only sequels, they're not only losing the sale on that book, but they're losing a chance to sell the first one as well. If you're going to place a product whose consumption requires another product, why in the world wouldn't you stock them both?
That is all.
