And, apparently, Pathfinder.
Nothing you see in a retail store is there by accident. Shelf space is expensive. It costs money for your product to appear on shelves AT ALL. It costs more money to get prominent, face out placement and more money still to have a shelf with your brand featured prominently (Paizo is clearly spending that money).
If your product is buried on the bottom shelf that's because you're not paying the stores that carry it enough money to make them care.
Speaking as a former big-box book store merchandiser, I'm calling BS on some of this.
If BAM operates anything like B&N or other big-box book stores, the merchandising team doesn't pay much attention to the obscure little corner of the dungeon where they've stuck the "game books" (I noticed videogame strategy guides crammed in there too...yeah, those shelves are not seeing a lot of turnover). It's all about the front of the store, the endcaps, the big displays, the things that corporate sends special
signs for. Bestsellers, celebrity authors, seasonal stuff, accessories...that's what the merch team is going to pay attention to, and what they are (at a high enough level) paid to pay attention to. The newest FR novel might get the merch team's attention (it's likely going on a bestseller list somewhere and genre stuff is a book store's bread and butter these days). The actual game rulebooks likely do not.
Paizo is likely paying for those little banners that run along the shelves. Probably not much, since if the BAM management thinks it's worth it, BAM in general is probably selling a good chunk of Pathfinder products, and thinks these banners will sell more.
But Paizo isn't paying BAM to turn out their card came sets any more than WotC is paying them to turn out that 3e MM. Turning out down in the stacks has much more to do with inventory and product shape than anything else. That 3e MM reprint was turned out because
they probably had quite a few of the buggers, and the adventure card games are turned out because they are big, weirdly shaped boxes that aren't comfortable on the shelves (check out how the other products on the top shelf overreach the shelf's depth, and now imagine an energetic four-year-old charging past there). The card sets are on the top shelf for the same reason: big, weird boxes that eat up a lot of horizontal space, making the selves less empty or less monolithic with one product.
If your product is buried on the bottom shelf (in a section that's likely better known for selling manga and being a frickin' mess because of all the weird-shaped books) it's just because that's where there was space when they were stocking the shelves. If your product is turned out, it's just because it's weird-shaped, or the store has a lot of it. It's not because you're not paying the store owner. The only thing any publisher is paying for, merch-wise, in that display, are those shelf banners. You know, those two little strips of cardboard mostly covered in shadow because they're below weirdly shaped books.
