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Message: <blockquote data-quote="spacecrime.com" data-source="post: 1176617" data-attributes="member: 753">Look out! Incoming rant!Be careful what you wish for, Jim, because I think you've already got it.I think retailers started saying "no" to new publishers a year ago.  We may try a likely-looking product here or there, but most of them are considered guilty until proven innocent. I just took a quick eyeball of my shelves, and I only see two items from two publishers who weren't on my shelves in 2002. You're not feeling the squeeze of market pressure is not because of the new guys. You're feeling the squeeze because there are more products coming into the market from established publishers than any but perhaps the top 5 retailers in the country can profitably stock. A few retailers are, perhaps, still trying to stock everything. They're not your "problem". Your problem is that retailers are making choices about what to stock -- and if you're not seeing the sales you want to see, then you're not getting chosen by enough retailers.Jim, I've got room for 120 SKUs of fantasy D20 stuff here, INCLUDING WotC's D&D books. (I'm counting Star Wars and Mutants and Masterminds as separate for this; FWIW they add about 15-20 SKUs to that total.) In any given month, I'm going to change out about 10% of those SKUs in favor of new or at least different product.  As long as there are more than 12 fantasy D20 titles being released, somebody's going to get left out in the cold. I'm going to stock the 10-12 "best" books I see in a given month -- "best" being the most interesting, attractive, and sellable books, chosen from new and old releases as carefully as possible with my admittedly imperfect judgment -- and if you're not in that cream of the crop it doesn't matter if you are the 13th best or the 60th best book I see this month. You're not getting on my shelf.I'm sure some retailers have room for more new stuff, and that others have less, but no matter what the precise threshold is, the basic principle is the same. Joe's Amateurish Fantasy Setting isn't your competition. Your competition is WotC and all the other publishers who are putting out great books, because we don't have room for all of you. Average isn't good enough anymore. Good isn't good enough. If you can't hold your own with the best the market has to offer, you're going to fail.this rant brought to you by,</blockquote>

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