She continued, 'The tides of fortune will reverse themselves. It will happen, I'm thinking, because this is America. We love independence and freedom of thought. Barbara Kingsolver has company - thousands of thinking, dedicated book people, working well below publishers' radar, who make the American book community an ineffably wonderful place to live and work. By contrast, I have never heard an independent bookseller say that chain stores per se are no good.
Nothing beats good old-fashioned customer service.
Just in case something does go wrong with the order, having your business partner close by to resolve the problem sure beats dealing with a nameless computer. Not to mention that this is a nice way to support your independent bookstores. Any bookstore offering a full book search capability should be able to provide you with an associate account. I know the 200 stores on BookSite can. Folks like Yahoo, and the New York Times and all of those new price-comparison sites drive most of the associates' volume.