I was two days late getting to a book store after the Monday, November 26th date John Mercanti's new book, American Silver Eagles was scheduled to be in book stores.

Landing at the Barnes & Nobel book store in Waterbury, Connecticut, I marched up to the service counter. "Do you have the book 'American Silver Eagles' by the author Mercanti?", and I spelled the name as he typed it in the computer. "Is his first name John?" asked the attendant -- I knew they had it in stock if they had it in their computer.

"I want four copies" I said with wife standing behind me with Christmas shopping list in hand. "We only have one copy," he replied somewhat sorrowfully and tapped some more on the computer. "There are none in the warehouse, they sent one copy to each store."

I must have expressed my disappointment. "You can go to four different stores to buy their one copy" he offered as a solution. "Let's find that one copy we have." He led off in the direction of Collectibles section. "That would be in 'Coin Collecting" wouldn't it?" "Should be."

As he stopped at that section we both started scanning book spines. "It's on the top shelf", said eagle-eyed wife. He reached up and brought down the coveted tome. Pristine copy. Probably hasn't been touched since it was placed there days earlier.

Glad I got that one copy. But wondered why only one copy per store.

I had preordered a copy from Whitman by internet earlier for myself, and I can wait for that to be delivered. But I want to mail off those others as gifts.

Book retailers like Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million can be conservative when ordering new titles. These decisions are often made at the corporate level. They want to see a track record of solid sales before they commit their valuable shelf space to multiple copies of a book. When a store's single copy in stock is purchased by a customer, they'll order another to replenish it.

It's a different story for older, established, popular titles. In the "Antiques and Collectibles" section a store might carry multiple copies of a best-seller like the Red Book, because they have years of past sales to benchmark against --- they know there will be a rush of customers when the latest edition debuts, and they know that many of their ~700 stores will sell dozens (if not hundreds) of copies over the course of a sales year.

Folks who love the experience of shopping in their favorite bookstores (count me in that group!) can always call ahead to special-order multiple copies. Shopping online also gives the option of conveniently ordering multiple copies. Whitman is offering free shipping on orders over $10 placed at www.Whitman.com through December 24th. That would include American Silver Eagles, of course. I know we'll be having some special online offers in the coming days, including copies of the book autographed by John Mercanti. If anyone has trouble getting a copy of American Silver Eagles, they can contact me directly at dennis.tucker@whitman.com.

Dick Johnson adds:

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:NEW BOOK: AMERICAN SILVER EAGLES: A GUIDE TO THE U.S. BULLION COIN PROGRAM(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v15n40a03.html)