Eoin Purcell's Blog

Eoin Purcell

And some nice thoughts
For me the money quote is this one:

In many cases It would actually be better economically for publishers if they held the inventory and made it quickly accessible to us when we are selling a title than to ship it all in at once and have us hold excessive quantities on the idea that maybe it will sell and then when it doesn’t, we ship it back. Some publishers have started using staged deliveries which are common practice for most retailers in non-book product categories, but it is still not an industry-wide practice for books and is one of the easiest things we could do to increase efficiency quickly.

But there is much more and others will find value in other comments. Go read!
Eoin