Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi

In the meantime, those unsold books eat up valuable real estate and capital.

Every day you're reminded of that decision.

Oh, yes.

But at the same time, Fisher was also worried about under-ordering.

They'd also recently had an experience with this, with Andrew Ross Sorkin's book 1929, a history of the stock market crash that sparked the Great Depression.

Fisher had ordered only a few copies of that book, which sold out almost immediately.

And that's an outcome Fisher wants to avoid, because compared to over-ordering the book, selling out on the first day...

You really don't want to be leaving any money on the table by under-ordering.

And the balance Fisher decided to strike when it came to the Planet Money book was to order four copies for each of the two Carmichael's locations.

Enough to feature them on the display table, but not so many that it'd be a big problem if they turned out to be slow sellers.

And four copies at each store it would have stayed if it hadn't been for a conversation with Fisher's sales rep from Norton, a woman named Meg Sherman.

Because there is a final step to the ritual of this seasonal book order —

Every season, booksellers like Fisher will go through a given publisher's catalog, but they don't actually lock in their book orders until they have a sit-down conversation with a representative from that publisher.

You see, sales reps might know things the book buyer doesn't know, the big-picture context that might not have come through in the catalog.

and relevant updates, like if the book got optioned by a major Hollywood studio, or if the author did manage to catch the white whale and get on fresh air.

The sales agent can offer a little corrective if they think that one of their booksellers is underestimating the demand for a given title, including the Planet Money book.

So by the end of November, Fisher decided they wanted to up the order for Planet Money books.

But they would decide exactly how many a couple months before the book launch in April.

Now Fisher could turn to the second big part of their role as Carmichael's book buyer.

They had to answer the question of where in the store the book would actually live.