“But where’s MY milk?” you ask. “You know, the GOOD milk? That’s drinkable? It’s not really obscure; it’s pretty popular. The store down the street sells it and they make decent money.”

“Oh.” says the manager. “No. We don’t have that. We can get it, though. You have to go through this milk catalogue and order a carton a month in advance, and then if they don’t delay your milk, and if your milk’s shipment amounts are great enough to warrant distribution over here, and if the stars are in the fourth house and the moon turns red on a cold night in August and you perform a chicken sacrifice before my altar and sell your soul to satan… Yeah. That’s how you can get your milk. Maybe.”

…and then he is baffled that he does not sell a lot of milk.

“But where’s MY milk?” you ask. “You know, the GOOD milk? That’s drinkable? It’s not really obscure; it’s pretty popular. The store down the street sells it and they make decent money.”

“Oh.” says the manager. “No. We don’t have that. We can get it, though. You have to go through this milk catalogue and order a carton a month in advance, and then if they don’t delay your milk, and if your milk’s shipment amounts are great enough to warrant distribution over here, and if the stars are in the fourth house and the moon turns red on a cold night in August and you perform a chicken sacrifice before my altar and sell your soul to satan… Yeah. That’s how you can get your milk. Maybe.”

…and then he is baffled that he does not sell a lot of milk.

The sad part is, this is the good shop in the area. The other guy balked the last time I asked for a book out of the mainstream — literally told me he couldn’t get it. I go to this new place in the next town (the shop mentioned above), and he orders it. I don’t get it consistently for a while, but I get it. I’d say half the books I get, I’m the only subscriber in the shop. They never promote anything different, unless they have a personal relationship with the creator.

I can sort of understand it from a retail side; stocking an offbeat book that’s just going to sit on the shelves is a money sink; the mainstream books pay the rent. However, that doesn’t preclude building a following around a title. Push it, then order it once you have some interest. I keep some trades of my favorites sitting around as “evangelical copies” to loan out and build interest in the stuff I like. There’s no reason a shop owner can’t do the same sort of thing. Take some trades, make a “library”, and use it to sell more books to more readers.