Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi

So after all that, after subjecting the book to their 30-second trial by fire, after getting a gentle nudge from Norton's sales rep, Fisher says there was one last-minute factor that went into the final number of copies they decided to order.

Apparently, the fact that I was visiting Carmichael's bookstore for this episode meant that Fisher was now anticipating more local demand for the Planet Money book.

The act of observation had warped the experiment.

Not my intention, but so it goes.

And in the end, Fisher decided to order 20 copies of the Planet Money book per store, so no fewer than 40 copies total.

As for the holiest grail in the game, the bestseller shelf, to even get a shot at that, the sales team at Norton would have to be thinking much bigger than one little chain of independent bookstores in Louisville, Kentucky.

They'd have to initiate their plan to launch the Planet Money book into the stratosphere.

That's coming up after the break.

Fisher Nash is just one bookseller out of thousands all around the country.

And independent bookstores are just one sales channel where this will all be playing out.

So to get a sense of the Planet Money book's chances out in the broader marketplace, I had to go one final link higher in the great chain of publishing.

To the person tasked with figuring out the strategy for wringing every possible dollar and cent out of the Planet Money book.

W.W.

Norton's director of trade sales, Stephen Pace.

Stephen fell in love with the book business while working at a bookstore as a teenager.

Since then, he ran his own bookstore for a while, became a sales rep for major publishers, all before rising to become the head of trade sales at Norton.

Do you ever anthropomorphize your books?

Like, think of them like they're little characters in Toy Story or something with their own hopes and dreams.

Stephen's role in the publishing process begins basically as soon as an editor brings in a book idea for serious consideration.

See, while the editor's primary job is to obsess over the writing and design of a book, Stephen's mandate is to obsess over what the book might mean as a financial investment.