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Booksellers Caught in Dustup Over Kerry Record
by Jim Milliot and Kevin Howell, PW Daily for Booksellers -- 8/24/2004
As the battle between John Kerry and the self-proclaimed "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," escalates, booksellers are getting caught in the crossfire. The past few days have brought curious--and apparently unrelated--incidents concerning the Kerry-bashing bestseller, Unfit for Command., co-written by one of the "Swift Boat" group's leaders, John O'Neill.
Several store managers at Barnes & Noble and Borders spent the weekend fending off complaints from customers that the two chains were refusing to sell the book, which attempts to debunk Kerry's claim's about his war record. Meanwhile, independent and chain booksellers say they've been burned by bulk orders for Unfit and another liberal-blasting title, Michael Moore is a Big Fat Idiot (Regan Books), made under a bogus name....
As for those bogus orders, Sheila Burns, owner of Bloomsbury Books, Ashland, Ore. Said she has been getting daily phone calls for two weeks from people ordering multiple copies of Unfit and Michael Moore is a Big Fat Idiot. Unfortunately, the people ordering these books have been leaving fake names and disconnected phone numbers. After being stuck with several orders of a dozen copies of the Regan title, the store has begun calling back phone numbers and asking for a credit card for multiple-copy orders of both books.
"We're a little liberal town surrounded by a big conservative state," said Burns. "We have 12,000 residents and I think 58 of them voted for Bush in the last election. I don't feel like these are my customers calling me."
She calls the phone called "creepy and irritating," adding, "It's both men and women calling. And they sound very orchestrated, like people are being told what to say. They want to know how many books I have on order and whether I will have stacks in the store. When I said that Unfit was on backorder, they wanted to know our distributor. That's pretty sophisticated for a layperson to ask about. I deeply resent being told what to carry. I'm not supported by tax money, this is my store."...
Matthew Stearns, special orders coordinator at Elliot Bay Book Co. in Seattle, Wash., said, "We haven't gotten any bunk orders for Unfit for Command, but we were targeted by someone who ordered 25 copies of Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Idiot. The customer said his name was Don Sheldon and he placed his order on August 14, but we later discovered that the phone number he left was for another local bookstore." After the 25 copies arrived in the store, Elliott Bay Book Co. started receiving phone calls from other local bookstores looking for Don Sheldon to tell him his 25 or 30 copies had arrived--the bogus buyer was apparently giving out the store's number.
"He scammed a lot of us," Stearns said. "I sat for an hour with a list of bookstores in the area and warned them about the scam. I even called our local distributor, Partners West, to warn them to monitor the levels of the orders of this book."
"Don Sheldon" also placed a call to a Seattle Barnes & Noble, confirmed Lloyd Adalist, community relations manager for the store. Adalist said he's the store has also fielded numerous calls about the availability of Unfit. "A lot of people have been reluctant to leave their name, which is unlike any other book we've ever tried to take names for. I've been in the book business for 25 year and I find it very curious that people are unwilling to leave their name for this book." (...)
Publisher's Weekly
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