Scottish Guitar

[musicintime]

After reading advice here and elsewhere, I've decided to put my new book online for free. I wrote and recorded it two years ago, and it has been sitting on a publisher's In-Tray since then. And I just can't be bothered trying to sell it myself (the world's worst businessman, I know

Comments

[matanya]

Shops, in Scotland and in all other countries, only stock what customers are asking for, and what they can reasonably move in a short time. So even if a Scottish music shop will be on the distribution network of Mel Bay and/or his UK distributors, they are not likely to stock anything that is not requested by customers. And when a customer does request it, then they have to make a special order of it, which takes forever, if at all. And that is the reason why, in spite of the fact that I have very good distribution arrangements in the UK, I still get direct orders from Scottish customers who cannot wait to order from a shop.

The way to judge if your MB books are selling well or not, is not by their availability in the shops, but by the quarterly (or annual or whatever) sales statement from MB. Bill Bay and I have different tastes in publishing, but I do know, from direct experience with him when he licenced the Richard Pick method from me, that he is a most honorable and honest businessman. Whatever he tells you about sales, has to be the truth.

As for the success of this free offering: I would suspect you will get quite a lot of downloads, and will continue to experience a good traffic of that. But at the end of the day, what matters is not how many people have the book, but how many people make use of it publicly. And the reason this is important, is that you can never know how successful this is with private individuals, no matter what a couple of them will tell you. The proof of the pudding is when this music is performed and recorded publicly.