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Free Enterprise

by Steven Martin Cohen

We're out of dishwashing detergent, so I went to the supermarket to pick some up. I rarely shop at Sloans because it takes forever to check out, even when there are only zero people in front of you. But it's just around the corner, and when you do the cost benefit analysis, it's still to my advantage to watch the store employees figure out how to sell me something in exchange for US currency as if they are decrypting the Japanese code during the Second World War.

So I'm in the store studying the various sizes of Cascade dishwashing powder. There is a 50 oz. box for $2.99; there is another 50 oz. box, this one "Lemon scented", for $3.29; and there is a 65 oz. box for $4.79. Naturally, I ignored the one with the added chemicals that don't cause cancer. I grabbed the bigger box and walked halfway down the aisle before I stopped and returned to study this more carefully. The smaller box is 5.98 cents per oz. while the larger box is 7.37 cents per oz. Interesting. They're charging you 23% more per oz. for the larger box. Let the buyer beware. I smiled, realizing this is predominantly a minority neighborhood, and I saw slots in heaven quickly disappearing before my decreasingly liberal eyes.

Anyway, I'm waiting and waiting to check out, and I see the book rack with all the popular paperbacks of our times. Of all the paperbacks there, I didn't see my book which had just come out. Not only did my book not get much distribution in hardcover from one company, but apparently it's getting the same treatment in paperback from another. So I figured: wouldn't it be great if I could get Sloans to sell my book, since the people in lines have so much time to browse the book rack while waiting for one and only one checkout person to find the cash register and then find all the little buttons on the cash register. I called around and found the book buyer for the Sloans chain of many stores, and when I told him my book got only great reviews, he told me to have the publisher call him up and he would sell my book right along with the other great authors of our day. Great, I thought, I just did a good thing.

I sent a letter to the publisher, and followed this up ten days later with a call to the head of marketing. I enthusiastically told her about this business connection I had made, and it really did seem to me that she was impressed. She was impressed alright. An hour later I got a call from the editor who told me that authors aren't supposed to contact the marketing people under any circumstances, and that this is the type of thing that just isn't done in publishing. I told to her that I thought my relationship with the publisher was some kind of business partnership, and that if I found a way to increase the distribution and sales of my book, would this not sell more books, and would this not make more money, and would this not be a good thing? She explained to me as softly as possible that there were forces here beyond my control, and that you can't simply sell items a buyer wants to buy in exchange for money. Apparently, and she didn't say it in these words, the seller has to want to sell what the buyer wants to buy in exchange for money, and these irreversible decisions to sell or not to sell are made months or years in advance. If some new and wonderful business opportunity arises in the interim, it is just too bad because large publishers won't make arrangements to sell something they already sell through some channels and could theoretically sell through others if only they could bother to get all these books from one warehouse to another and fill out the necessary paperwork and cash the checks and deposit the money in the corporate bank account. Anyway, if they did this terrible thing for me, would they not have to do it for everyone? And if they bothered to sell everyone's book, then where would they be? If I truly want to be a best selling author, these are some of the things I must learn.

I am fond of doing mental experiments, probably from my scientific training which has always been a liability to me in any matter involving people. The way I see it, if the publisher's logic is correct, and less distribution is good for my career and sales of my book, then wouldn't no distribution at all be the best possible thing that could happen to me? Or perhaps, we could run some kind of experiment, and gradually cut the distribution of my book and graph the rising sales as a function of decreasing distribution outlets, till we find that sweet spot where sales suddenly go through the roof -- perhaps when the book is only available in some truck stop in southern Utah. If I had an MBA in marketing, perhaps I would understand the logic of big business and stop attempting to improve myself.

See, free enterprise is full of interesting challenges to the human mind. The more name recognition one has, the more free the enterprise becomes. At my level though, I am free to embrace the publisher's egalitarian view of free enterprise -- that I should fail right along with the other authors at my level of pre-ordained distribution, regardless of what selfish initiative I deliberately take to rise above it. And they tell me there is nothing I can do about it? My taking extra initiative is wrong, I am told by people who are experts at NOology -- that's the science of saying no when confronted with opportunity that only appears to be opportunity to someone not in that business.

I accept none of this. I don't accept the fact that there is nothing I can do to influence the distribution of my books, and I am always trying to find newer and more diabolical ways to get around the seemingly deliberate obstructions placed before me by my "partners in business" -- obstructions which, I am told, are there for good reasons I seem to be incapable of appreciating. An obstruction for some is an opportunity for others, I tell myself as I stand on this line, boiling over while waiting for the cashier to count her pennies and foodstamps. At least I can do the math and keep from getting gypped in the very chain of stores I can't get my publisher to sell my books in.

Check out Steve's cartoons series: Screw the Planet