Sorry, it is hard to feel sorry for my local gaming store when I asked them to order some Call of Cthulhu books for me and they refused. I had even offered to prepay. Only interested in D&D and Pathfinder, plus those books had to be from major publishers. I understanding not wanting to get stuck with inventory that you cannot sell, I was offering cash in advance for produce.
It's quite possible that it's a matter of not wanting to open an account with yet another distributor. While the US largely is Wizards, Asmodee, Alliance, and Diamond, there are some secondary distributors.
Note that Wizards discourages secondary distribution. From what I can gather, so do Paizo and Asmodee. For many smaller stores, direct from wizards is both a much better margin, and most likely to sell... a double whammy... Likewise, Paizo does carry some other people's things, but again, Paizo as distributor is pretty narrow. But they'll cut a nice discount on their CCG/CSG, their boardgames, and their RPGs by ordering direct, and those products are second most likely to sell.
Adding a new distributor isn't free - it's several hours to set up, minimum, and learning the distributor's interface, and establishing the needed payment routes.
At the end of the day, if the shop doesn't expect to be selling multiple things over the next year from that distributor, it's not worth the staff time for a single special order.
Now one service a couple cmic stores and game stores have done in the past is a "receiving service" - the store lets you order product to be delivered to them, prepaid by you, and they receive and hold it for a nominal fee. The guys I knew making use of this were an underwater welding inspector (deployed for up to 3 weeks at a shot - saturation dives in the Bering), some infantrymen (172 Inf and 501 Inf) because of frequent TDYs for training, and a bunch of commercial fishermen and factory vessel workers.
Your game stores don't carry Kobold Press or Monte Cook games at all? bummer.
Wait, you live in Portland and are saying you've never seen a crowdfunded game (or is that not the Guardian in Portland)? Because I have in Portland for sure.
Guardian Games is in Portland Oregon. And I've seen several KS items on their shelves from the KS puchase, and restocks as well.
I live about 2 hours drive away, and have only sporadically hit GG... It is important to realize, tho', that there are over a dozen other game stores in Portland, plus Powell's Books & Barnes and Noble, in the greater Portland area which all carry games. One can be excused for not realizing one of the 5 largest game stores in the country is across town. I know about it because of a buddy in Portland who happens to spend more than he likes there...
Also, Guardian remained open during the lockdown...
B&N carries Wizards', Paizo's, and Asmodee's RPGs, and boardgames from those three.
Now, I will say this: WalMart's been stepping up the gamers' games in the brick side... Albany OR Walmart (Goldfish Farm Road) has TTR, Catan, and more. Target has a deal with SJG. (My nearest target is in Albany, my nearest super-walmart is in Albany, my nearest B&N is in Albany, my nearest game store is decidedly unfriendly, and the second nearest is my FLGS... at over 20 miles.
And all of them, including Wal*Mart, and Target, except maybe B&N and Powells, carry CCGs.
So if I finish a product, can I bring it to all the game stores and they will pop it on their shelves?
Or do I need to sell 100,000 copies first ?
Every games store I've talked to about it will do a consignment with a "returned postage if not sold" agreement. That's only like 5. Across 3 states. (3 in Anchorage AK, 1 in Corvallis OR, 1 in New Port Richey FL.)
What they won't do is keep them in stock across the inventory tax window, nor pay up front. This has lead to several interesting oddball small press games seeing the shelves...
