As the book industry prepares for the biggest publishing event of the year, some booksellers are worried that they won't have enough copies of former President Bill Clinton's memoir in stock when it goes on sale Tuesday.
"We think we really do need more, so it could be an issue. We could sell out of it," said Sarah Goddin, buyer and inventory manager at Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh, N.C. Goddin said the store ordered 150 copies of My Life, but found out last week that it will get just 100 by the on-sale date, with the rest to come within the week.
Becky Anderson, owner of Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville, Ill., said she's also facing the possibility of selling out. The store requested 300 copies, but will get only 250 to start. "They haven't given us any indication when that second printing will come in, so I have no idea when we'll get more," she added. Anderson, among the throngs of booksellers who heard Clinton's keynote address at BEA, increased her original 200-copy order by 100 copies after hearing the former president speak.
At Ingram, chief commercial officer Jim Chandler said he anticipates that the wholesaler may not be able to immediately fulfill all requests for the book. "We, like everybody else, got less than we hoped," he said. Chandler would not say how many copies Ingram asked for or how many it expected to receive initially, but said the two numbers differ by "a material amount."
Random House spokesperson Stuart Applebaum said Random has "worked very hard at being evenhanded across all channels of distribution in our allocation of copies from the Clinton first printing, with no special treatment to any customer large or small." He added that Random is "confident" that it will be able to handle the distribution. "We're optimistic that we'll meet the test of both the initial laydown and the replenishment of copies without overshipping or undersupplying." he said. Paul Bogaards, executive director of publicity for Knopf, said the house "is standing firm" on the 1.5-million printing.
Meanwhile, one insider said Random House of Canada has around 30,000 copies to distribute in its market, but already has orders for 80,000. Applebaum responded, "For our author and us, Canada is a priority market which will receive tens of thousands of copies from the initial run."
Borders spokesperson Jenie Dahlman said only: "Just as we did with Scholastic for Harry Potter five, Borders will be working with Random House on a daily basis to manage our in-stock position on Clinton's My Life and to meet our customers' demand for the title." At Barnes & Noble, spokesperson Carolyn Brown said the company had put in an order in the 300,000- to 400,000— copy range, and added, "We haven't had any indication that that order won't be filled."
Late last Wednesday, Knopf firmed up Clinton's tour schedule. The author will make 19 stops over one month, beginning Tuesday in New York City. After the opening-day events at B&N on Fifth Avenue and Hue-Man Bookstore in Harlem, he'll visit a Borders in the city before flying to the West Coast. A Wal-Mart in that company's home state of Arkansas and a Costco in that chain's home state of Washington will be stops, along with Barbara's in Chicago, Elliott Bay in Seattle, Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C., and a host of other indies, plus several Borders stores and a Books-A-Million in Arkansas (the only other stop for him in the state). He'll wind up at Mitch Kaplan's Books & Books, in Coral Gables, Fla., on July 22.
