Having worked in bookstores for about 30 years I can address some of your issues. Stores are businesses and must sell to stay in business. They must meet the demands of the customers. They are going to try and stock what is selling. In my town (Lansing, MI) all the stores have a selection of books on various ethnic groups, but not cases and cases on any one group. Native American material is about on a par with any other group, perhaps Black Studies have the most titles, but not cases and cases. I have noticed though, that most of the stores carry less titles dealing with NA then they did a year ago. I assume the decision was made to cut back and make room for what is selling. Stores have only so much cash flow in invest in books for a period of time to "test" the market. There are hundreds and hundreds of new books published on NA as well as being reprinted. No store can afford to carry them all or even a large percentage. I have seen a couple of businesses that specialize in NA books only, one had a catalog of about 20 pages, but I know they did not even have all the titles available. I think they had an open shop but most of their sales were mail order. Most bookstores will order in-print books for you and even out-of-print books are available through a number of outlets on-line. Most of the stuff I want I have to order, as it is just too esoteric (or in some cases pricey) for the store to stock. It may be an inconvience, but compared to some countries it's a mighty wonderful thing. I work in a college town in a used book store where there are a lot of foreign students and they marvel at the variety and quantity of books available to the American people both new and used. I feel you are giving bookstores a bad name by not viewing the complete picture. Just my blowing off steam. Thanks, Jim. ----- Original Message ----- From: <Pmcleod0@aol.com> To: <NISHNAWBE-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 11:12 AM Subject: [NISHNAWBE] Native American Literature and Publications > Hello All, > > I just needed to share this information and blow off some steam. I went > into > Border's bookstore last night to find some Native American books I had > seen > on-line. I went to the history section and there were cases and cases of > Afro-American, Arab, Korean, Irish, Scottish, Japanese, Chinese, Celts. I > could go > on and on, but you get the idea. Then, I went to the language section. > They > were English, Italian, Iraqi, Arab, Spanish, French, Russian, German, > Japanese. Again, the list goes on and on. Do you want to know what I > found on > Native Americans? There were 5 shelves not completely filled in the > history > section and nothing in the language area. I felt really hurt that > Border's seems > uninterested in promoting our Native American history or language. > > I would suggest we all start to advocate our heritage to all around us. > We > should have a movie similar to the Afro-American story "Roots". At least > the > Afro-Americans can trace their history back to Africa. Heck, they could > even > go back there and live as they were. Their culture still exists and has > not > changed. Not so, for our native history. We are going to have to do some > big > time pushing to get others to see we want our story heard and our culture > back. > > If you have gotten this far in reading, thank you for listening. :-) I'd > love to hear your comments on the subject. Thanks again. > > Paula (Williams) McLeod > > > ============================== > View and search Historical Newspapers. Read about your ancestors, find > marriage announcements and more. Learn more: > http://www.ancestry.com/s13969/rd.ashx >