Best Seller, eh? I'll fix you!

Advance apologies to anyone who isn't able to get their hands on a copy of the latest installment in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, The Gathering Storm by Brandon Sanderson, from us in the next week and a half. This includes Black Friday shoppers. Yesterday I had to scrounge through customer holds looking for outdated orders that people never came to pick up, and pull all of our copies from the window, as I could only find one other copy in the entire store.

Has the book been selling well? Well yes, as it is one of our best sellers. Did we sell through all our copies? Well, probably not.

Shortly after the book was released, we had Brandon Sanderson in our store for a signing. We had a healthy stock on hand for the event, and even a week or so later we still had multiple signed copies in addition to the hundred which weren't signed. There are currently over one hundred twenty copies of the book showing in our inventory which I know full well we have sent back. The book itself never seemed in danger of losing popularity. Why then did we send back at least a dozen full boxes of the book to our warehouse?

Because we're geniuses. Best selling book? In high demand? Still selling well? We recently had a signing so there may be more interest than ordinary? Our stock is generous? Send back all of it!
My mind is unable to imagine the reasoning for doing such a thing, so I have the faith that such a move must have come from a far superior intellect than my own, and that my mind is too feeble to comprehend the advanced thought process which went in to this decision. I'm sure we have our reasons.

We DID get in our shipment for the week yesterday and it wasn't entirely unpacked while I was still there, so there may be a few copies in replenishment, but as of when I left, it looked as though we'd have a whole nine copies to carry us all the way through black Friday to our next shipment the following Tuesday.

I have good news though, our chain IS expanding locally. So maybe the other stores we're opening have received our boxes!