I just picked up the three new SF mmpbs at the top of my to-read pile: three authors, three publishers, three subgenres.
Two of them had ads in the back.
None of the ads was an order form.
Go check the books from before the late '90s. Almost all the mmpbs have order forms in the back for getting those books directly from the publisher. If ordering books directly from an independent bookstore was easy for many/most people in the pre-Amazon days, I don't think you'd have seen as much of that because now that it is easy, the publishers have dispensed with it. There are ads, but not order forms. To my way of thinking, if the order forms were making them money, they'd have kept up with them, and the order forms would not have been making them money if it had been as easy as you're thinking to just go through a local bookstore.
I may be missing some factor for why people stopped ordering directly from the publisher, but I think it was their last resort. Certainly the person I know who did the most direct-ordering seems to have stopped when he moved to a location where he could actually get what he wanted in stores.
no subject
Two of them had ads in the back.
None of the ads was an order form.
Go check the books from before the late '90s. Almost all the mmpbs have order forms in the back for getting those books directly from the publisher. If ordering books directly from an independent bookstore was easy for many/most people in the pre-Amazon days, I don't think you'd have seen as much of that because now that it is easy, the publishers have dispensed with it. There are ads, but not order forms. To my way of thinking, if the order forms were making them money, they'd have kept up with them, and the order forms would not have been making them money if it had been as easy as you're thinking to just go through a local bookstore.
I may be missing some factor for why people stopped ordering directly from the publisher, but I think it was their last resort. Certainly the person I know who did the most direct-ordering seems to have stopped when he moved to a location where he could actually get what he wanted in stores.