Minor Rant About Being Good

[jpskewedthrone]

OK, so here's the situation: I have a new book out (WELL OF SORROWS by Benjamin Tate; order it now!). Somehow, DAW worked a deal so that the book would appear on the shelf at Wegmans. Great! I'm ecstatic! I see it on the shelf and think, wow, cool, I'm giddy, and perhaps I'll sell some extra copies. I begin telling everyone that it's there in the store on the shelf, go buy it. (If you have a local Wegmans, see if it's there!)

The next week, another book by a local author shows up on the shelf and there's a sign saying, hey, look! It's a local author! I didn't realize signs were allowed at Wegmans, so I work up a sign saying, hey, look, it's a local author! and take that sign to the store. Being a good person (at least I like to think so *evil grin*), before putting the sign up, I go to the customer service counter and ask if it's OK. They say that in order to put signs up, you have to get permission from the offices in Rochester, which are only open Monday-Friday. It's Saturday. And they won't be open on Monday because it's July 5th.

Ah. OK, fine. I'll call on Tuesday then, even though Tuesday is usually the day the books get changed out, so who knows if my book will still be there. But, oh well.

It's Tuesday (in case you didn't notice), so I call the offices in Rochester and ask permission to put up a sign saying, hey, local author, buy me! And I'm told:

We can't put up such signs because it would be considered solicitation.

But, I say, there's a sign up already saying, hey, look, local author! for another book on the shelf.

She says, Oh, really? Well . . .

Then she takes down all of my information and the book title and author name (since it's a pseudonym) and the ISBN number and whatnot. She says she'll look into it and get back to me.

So now I'm thinking that either a) she lied her ass off to me and gave me a line in order to get me to go away so she wouldn't have to deal with it, OR (more likely) b) the author of the other local author book just put the sign up without asking permission.

This second option ticks me off, because what's going to happen here is the person who wasn't responsible enough or courteous enough to ask permission has had his sign up in Wegmans promoting his book for at least a week, probably more, while the author who actually asked permission is never going to get to put his sign up at all.

Life. Sometimes it sucks.

Comments

[ebenstone.livejournal.com]

You should contact the district manager...they can make or even the store manager. I used to work for Wegmans and they love stuff like this! I bet you could set up a signing at Wegmans.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

My guess would be that the local author had a personal connection to local store management or to the distributor that maintains the book section. If the sign was up for a day I might think it was unauthorized but over a week means that it's been seen by store staff.

[darkspires.livejournal.com]

In retrospect, it would have been far easier to just have put the sign up and then apologize profusely after the event since thems seem to be the rules of operation. What a crock.

[samhenderson.livejournal.com]

Honestly, and I know this seems super cynical and might just reflect my mood of the moment (or the year), but I see people who do the good things get screwed consistently and people who do bad things do just fine. My goal this year is to becomne a bad person.

[darkchallenger.livejournal.com]

Heaven forbid they do anything in store to help move product! Selling books only benefits them and you. We are glad to push local authors at the store I work at.

[threeoutside.livejournal.com]

I hope you do contact the store manager and you do get a signing! Go for it!

In the meantime - I learned long ago to let go of situations where I felt I was getting the short end of the stick because I followed the rules and someone else is winning out because they didn't. It wasn making me miserable. Life is too short to be miserable, so I finally learned to let it go. If I was religious I would say "I don't have to take that person's sins with me to the Pearly Gates; just my own. I better live right, then, and hooey to them." I'm not religious so I just figure, I only have to take them to my deathbed with me. My own, I mean; no one else's. THEY have to live with their own sins. Serves 'em right, too.

[threeoutside.livejournal.com]

Correction: WAS making me miserable. *facepalm*

Chancers usually get their comeuppance...

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

You don't normally get to see it, however there are often consequences that outweigh the chancer mentality.

For example, suppose this author did just wander in and put a sign up? What are their chances of ever being invited to do a reading after trying to pull this one?

You can only lose your reputation once.

[estellye.livejournal.com]

I think you just talked to a lazy person. It is never wrong to go through the right channels as long as you go as far up the chain of command as possible. The other author may have bypassed that step, but by getting permission you may just get extra benefit from it - possibly even a longer shelf life. Wegmans likes to do stuff that ties them to the community, as ebenstone said.

And for the record, I miss Wegmans since I moved south.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

A while back, someone posted on a mailing list I'm on about their upcoming CD release. I emailed the list maintainers saying something like, gosh, I didn't realize that we could use this list for promoting work, can I promote my book? I was told that the list wasn't meant for that, and as far as I know, the other guy got kicked off the list.

Let us know what happens...

[bearmountain.livejournal.com]

It's a solicitation??? Well, lady, it's a STORE. You sell things. You solicit business...I'm confused.

Although my local B&N refused to let me leave bookmarks for a friend's book. No reason given. Didn't want them, didn't want signed book plates, not at the checkout, not inserted in the book (as in resting between pages--not stuck on in case someone didn't want it stuck on.) It wasn't my book, but I must tell you it was over a year before I stepped foot in that store again.

[steve-buchheit.livejournal.com]

As my wife often tells me, "You never want to make a break for it."

It's because I save my merry mischief times for those rare occasions when it would matter.

[isleburroughs.livejournal.com]

I'll check our Wegmans for your book and see if I can get it displayed well for you.

I'm almost out of garlic stuffed olives and they have the best.

[shanrina.livejournal.com]

That's so odd. Our local grocery store (not Wegmans, we don't have that around here) has a community board where people can put stuff up. Admittedly it's kind of in nowheresville and I'm sure most customers don't even see it, but I kind of thought it wasn't uncommon.

I totally get what you're saying about how being good, though. That's happened to me more times than I can count, and it drives me nuts. And yet I still bother, because it's just who I am. *sigh*