FridayFix Episode # : Your ALL-PRO & THE MVP preorders have been cancelled!

The short version: All existing preorders for THE ALL-PRO and THE MVP will be cancelled any minute now because we’re switching distributors. A new preorder for each book will be up in the next couple of weeks. I’m sorry about the extra work, and do hope you’ll come back and preorder again! The silver lining here that the books will come out a month sooner, on September 3, 2013.

The long version: Back in 2011 we partnered with Diversion Books, a publisher, and Perseus, a distributor, to put THE ROOKIE and THE STARTER into stores all over the US and Canada. We did a bunch of number crunching and soul searching, then decided we could manage printing 3,000 copies of each title. Then Perseus’ sales team got reallllllllllly excited about the books, and by the time we went to print, we’d agreed to print 10,000 copies of each. We’d print a ton, Perseus would do co-ops to get the books on the front-of-store tables, cover-out at airport bookstores, and we’d be The Next Big Thing. We reasoned that, out of all of us, we knew the least about distribution, therefore we’d take the advice of the pros and soon cash in all them monies.

And then … nothing like that happened. We printed the 10,000 books, and everything else fell flat. No co-op (for reasons we still don’t understand), no airports, no marketing. And no Next Big Thing, of course. We sold okay, but not for an initial print run of 10,000 books. (Sadly, had we stuck with our initial projections, we’d have done GREAT and be getting ready for our second print run.)

It’s been rough. Scott and I hate to lose, and hate to give everything we’ve got and have that not make a damn bit of difference. And that’s exactly what happened here. But, we are also people who don’t much cry over spilt milk. It is what it is, and it’s time to move onward and upward.

To that end, we’re changing distributors. Perseus will ship the remaining inventory for THE ROOKIE and THE STARTER to our new distributor, and we’ll start fresh with THE ALL-PRO and THE MVP. Because the ISBN for a book is tethered to the distributor, we’ll lose all the preorders when that ISBN effectively goes away.

As ever, we’re moving forward and working harder to bring you guys the best stuff we can.