Aug 032008
Toys That Don’t Sell
A visitor to the Halls of Rock, Should-be Townsman Chad, sent along the following question through a Townsperson for our independent label honchos and members of bands who’ve self-released records over the years: Where do you store your unsold CDs?
As a follow up, is there a way to gracefully rid one’s storage space of these leftovers?
They’re in the basement. They will stay there until I die. and probably after.
My leftover CASSETTES are in the garage, in all their shrinkwrapped glory.
My garage holds many unsold records and CDs. I keep thinking that one day I’ll begin tossing a few copies of an ep from 1987 in the trash each week. Within a few years they’ll be gone, and most likely no one will miss them.
Huh. This post is funny. I don’t have that many records and CDs that I want to sell that I haven’t sold. Is this question for people who are digitalizing their collection, or are we really talking about people who have collected so much stuff that storing all the things that they don’t even want to keep is the problem?
Now, if we’re talking about the CDs and records that we have and want to keep, that’s a big problem no doubt and I certainly haven’t solved it. I started by getting rid of unnecessary furniture, then dumped my girlfriend because she simply took up too much storage space. I’ve even stopped my friends from visiting; where the hell are they supposed to sit? So now it’s just me here among the shelves, boxes, and piles, finally happy. But if I start to buy much more music, and it looks like I will, then I guess the next thing to go is myself.
Mwall, this question is directed at a limited audience: Townspeople who’ve released records. We’re talking about unsold copies of product, not stuff anyone wants to sell off to used record store or E. Pluribus Gergely.
Have you ever self-released a collection of your writings? If so, assuming, you did not sell out your print run, where do you store all those unsold books?
Ah, okay.
I’ve never self-released a book, but I usually work out deals with my publishers (who are sometimes small operators, sometimes not) that send a certain amount of the books to me. The boxes take up the floor of my closet, and a couple sit on either side of my dresser.
I’d love to get some of that unused product from some of you guys. A good portion of it I probably have, but I doubt all.
Maybe Rocktown Hall needs a “Share The Unused Product” Emporium.
We thought small. We only printed very few. So we sold out!
We either thought small or cheap. I think the latter was more than likely.
My bandmate danny had visons of boxes and boxes of unsold discs in our closets.
At the record store where I worked, a lady brought in about 15 boxes of her unsold CDs. I took home a box to use the cases for replacements. Still have about half a box.
TB