Welcome to My Game World, Part Two

    By 1999, my mom was sick and tired about me being unemployed, so she forced me to open up my own business, even though I had experience in retail.  I ultimately decided to open a book store, Booknotes. (We were originally supposed to be a music store as well, but that part never came to fruition.) I wanted to open a book store, in part, so I would have an easier time getting my RPGs more readily.  Unfortunately, the book distributor my mom chose to be the primary one, Koen, turned out not to carry my WOD games, only their novels. They carried other RPGs, just not the ones I wanted.  Fortunately, our secondary distributor, Ingram, the largest one in the country, did carry my games.  We opened the store on October 7, 2000.  A month later, I would order my first book from them, Mediums:  Speakers with the Dead for the Wraith: the Oblivion (W:tO) game line.  I had scoured the microfiche for any old products I was missing, and this was the only one they had left from the recently ended game. (Yes, they still sent out microfiche at that time.  The process was discontinued a few years after we opened.) I would go on to order many older products, as well as newer ones that I had changed my mind on and didn't originally order from Page 3. Yes, I also wound up getting books from Ingram that I already pre-ordered from Page 3. I got greedy sometimes on the prospect of getting my books a little earlier, especially if Page 3 missed my order.  I felt guilty when I had to decline an order that I had already gotten, but it couldn't be helped.  I once got six new books in one shipment, all because they were released early to stores. When I lost most of my books in the 2003 flood, I was able to get many of the core books back due to Ingram. Not all of them, but the bare basics.  When White Wolf ended the WOD and started what would become the COD in 2004, I got my first books through my store.  I almost went to Page 3 to show them off, but thought better about it.  In 2005, Koen was experiencing some financial trouble, forcing us to get a new primary distributor, Baker and Taylor (B+T), and they were carrying both COD and Exalted, making my life the more easier. I would get most of my RPGs through my store with this, getting most through B+T with the occasional orders through Ingram whenever I needed to, especially after Page 3 missed almost an entire year with my orders. (Koen would come back later in 2005 as Koen-Levy, only to permanently folding in 2007.)  Though late 2009, I starting noticing a delay in my books from B+T. This would be the first hints of how White Wolf would switch to online products in late 2010.  I wound up ordering most of the last of my physical books in early 2011.  I missed out on one last book.  It was only available at a different warehouse when I placed the order.  In an effort to save money, I decided to wait until it was back at one of our designated locations, but it never came back. It still irks me that I missed out on that last book.  Nothing much happened on this point until 2018, when Paradox, the current owner of the WOD IP, as well as COD and Exalted, decided to come out with a Fifth Edition of the games.  While I would get Vampire:  the Masquerade (V5) from Page 3, I would get other supplements through Ingram. (In the intervening years, B+T would be bought out/merged with another distributor, Follet.  In 2019, the company decided to leave the North American retail market, to focus on libraries and parts of the international market. Many employees and customers weren't aware that this was happening until the public announcement went out.  The two companies have since split again, with Follet focusing on public libraries again, and with B+T focusing on institutional libraries, such as universities. I think they still have some presence in international retail, but I don't believe they have made any commitments to the North American market.) I was planning on a return on getting my books through Ingram again, supplemented perhaps with Page 3, when a blow came in January 2022.  That's when Ingram stopped carrying products from Renegade Game Studios, the publisher Paradox chose to design the new books, the third one to do so after problems with the previous two.  This left me with no reliable outlet for new books again. Sure, I still order other books for myself.  And Booknotes is now the only general book store in a twenty-five to thirty mile radius, or so.  Still, having the main reason why I opened the place gone again is still heart-breaking in many ways. I hoping that I will get another outlet again one day, but it is very doubtful.

    Come back next week to see where I've been getting the majority of my game books for the last few years.  One of the words in the previous sentence needed to be in quotes. 

[Edit: A few days after I originally posted this, I found out the Ingram does still offer a few of my WOD RPGs.  Not the biggest selection, and most of them are newer books, but they are offering some.]