28 days later

Or as Maxwell Smart would say "would you believe 7?"

I'm taking a quick +1 week Bookscan peek at the Macmillan titles that would have been hurt the week before from the Battle of the Buy Button on Amazon, and what we're seeing is a lot of healthy ticks upward. Warbreaker up 15%, the Mistborn boxed set, the Wheel of Time boxed set, the Terry Goodkind boxed sets, all up by 25% or more. The Gathering Storm up 16%. Michael Schiefelbein's Vampire Maker up a good chunk, The Cole Protocol up 7% mass market and 15% trade.

So we know that sales were lost on these books a week ago, it's hard to know how many were just delayed into this week, how many went to other channels, how many lost for good.

I do know that I worry a little about things that are just a transient blip, and a lot more about the decline in sales after the September 2008 economic plunge in the US where you didn't see a bounce back up. It's clear that publishers and retailers can play their games at relatively minor damage to one another so long as they're doing quick skirmishes, and equally clear that somebody would end up losing if a dispute like that went on for a full month or more.

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