I’ve been schleping Five Rivers’ books now for a year and have discovered some rather startling facts about the retail book industry, the sort of thing that isn’t written in agreements or contracts, the insider sort of thing a person only learns through experience.

One of these discoveries centres around the relationship between publisher and bookseller. I thought it would be a straightforward thing. But no, like everything else in publishing, there are rituals and forms and secret handshakes and signals, passwords and traditions. It doesn’t matter if all of these customs are antiquated, illogical, ponderous and obstructive. This is the way things have always been done. And who are you to question this venerable tradition?

Well I question this venerable tradition because it doesn’t work. Not anymore. Not in this Communication Age.

Quite aside from the whole nonsense about needing a retail book distributor (as compared to a wholesale book distributor) in order for a publisher to access many bookstores, is the whole issue of independent booksellers and independent publishers. You would think this a match of legendry proportions. Apparently not.

While independent book stores are swept from the streets like yesterday’s debris, the major chains flourish, offering legacy house books by 10-week wonder writers – shelf after shelf of variants of vanilla, with generally high returns and maximum exposure. Independent publishers, offering the quirky, the unusual, the niche market books that likely won’t hit best-seller lists but will gain cult followings, struggle to gain an audience with these major chains.

Often indie publishers are marginalized by these bookseller goliaths. You can’t sell to us. You need a retail distributor and I don’t care if you’re not going to make money because of distribution fees. No, wait, we’ll give you a break so you best be grateful, and these are the terms and discount at which you can sell to us.

And in the meantime those indie booksellers keep disappearing from the landscape because they’re trying to mimic the goliaths and can’t compete because of profit margins and deep discounts and customer reward programs.

But there are those few indie booksellers who are succeeding and have done so for some time, companies like Bakka Books who offer only science fiction and fantasy books; The Cook Book Store who, you guessed it, sell only cookbooks and DeMille Technical and Business Books to name only three.

Why are these indie booksellers succeeding? Because they’re offering what the major chains don’t – speciality books.

And that’s where the perfect marriage should happen, but doesn’t. On one hand you have indie publishers offering up speciality and niche market books the legacy houses won’t touch and the major chains disdain, slogging it out in an attempt to bring their books to market. On the other hand you have independent booksellers dropping like ants in a tsunami of Raid, unable to compete with the marketing juggernaut of the major chains.

Oh, I don’t know. Seems like a radical thought to me: Indie bookseller, meet indie publisher.

Tired of vampire stories that are a rehash of Stephanie Meyers abominable series? Let me introduce you to C. June Wolf’s Finding Creatures & other stories published by Wattle and Daub Books. Or Hayden Trenholm’s Steel Whispers published by Bundoran Press, or Brian Rathbone’s The Dawning of Power published by White Wolf Press. Or dare I say it, my own From Mountains of Ice published by Five Rivers.

And while many of these books can be found on major online retailers’ websites, being able to thumb through a copy in your favourite indie bookseller’s is often an impossibility. The indie bookseller, parroting the arrogance of the major chains, won’t give the indie publisher the courtesy of their attention. Emails go unacknowledged, phone messages unanswered, and a visit to the store often finds the buyer unavailable, permanently.

I hope you’re listening, indie booksellers. There’s an opportunity here.