Yesterday Rodney Dangerfield...

and today Neil Armstrong. If you read my blog, you know I rambled about how people don't take fiction writers seriously a lot of the time.
Well, in my calls to bookstores this morning I called one a Barnes & Noble store in Farmington, CT. I gave the mgr. my little pitch about Pampas, then the ISBN. I could hear her typing it into the computer. Then she said, "Oh, this is a print-on-demand book." I said, "Yes. Does that make a difference?" With no hesitation at all, she said, "Yes. It takes about 2 days longer to get it in. I just ordered 2 copies."
Then I called a B&N store in Topeka, KS. The mgr. said "It sounds like a really fun book." Again, I could hear her typing into the computer. She said, "OK, thank you so much for calling and telling us about it." I thanked her for considering putting a couple of copies in their store. She said, "Oh, I'm not considering it. I just ordered 4 copies while we were talking, and the first one in here is MINE!" Yup, I felt like it was one small step for print-on-demand books and a giant step for the publishing industry (and thousands of authors) in general.
Yippee! The other 2 stores I called were small independent ones that people had asked me to contact. Both of them said they have had people asking them if they have it. One said they are ordering it the next time they put an order in and the other one said they already have it on order.