Distributors

[Cybrarian]

Have you pursued contacts with some of the big book distributors such as Baker & Taylor (http://www.btol.com) or Ingram (http://www.ingrambook.com)? I browsed the distributor list on the Hero Retailers page and didn't see anything like that.

B&T only lists an Out of Print, 1990 (4th ed?) version of Hero System. I don't have access to Ingram's database, so I can't check there.

If your books were listed with one or both of these they would be much more widely available in general. That would have to be good for you and for us fans. Some other moderate sized game companies (SJG, GoO, for example) make their books available this way. Any chance of you doing so as well?

[rjcurrie]

I suspect there may be an issue of these distributors allowing returns from stores which they can subsequently return to the game company. This can get a company into a lot of trouble if too many copies are returned. Some game companies may be willing to take this gamble while others, such as Hero are not.

I believe a huge number of returned books from book distributors was one of the contributors to the downfall of TSR.

Rod

[Steve Long]

We don't distribute to the large, mainstream bookstores because they get right of returnability, and we're not willing to expose ourselves to that potential financial hit.

[Cybrarian]

Originally posted by Steve Long
We don't distribute to the large, mainstream bookstores because they get right of returnability, and we're not willing to expose ourselves to that potential financial hit.

That's too bad. Still, it makes sense. All the more reason to support my FLGS, which doesn't have right of returnability.