Thanks for link! I had to issue a mea culpa.

Is it actually illegal to buy a book ahead of the release date?

not for the purchaser. The place where they bought it may have civil legal issues for breaching a contract not to sell until a certain time.

eta: ooh, x-posty!

It's not illegal to buy it ahead of the release date either, but there are probably some theories of civil liability there. They are dubious but not out of the question. But getting sued for buying it early is pretty unlikely.

I would think that, even if the bookstore was unpacking books in front of customers, and a customer happened to see a copy of the next Nora Roberts unpacked and demanded to buy it, even if the bookstore employee told her that the book had to go into the back room until X date, then it's still the bookstore's responsibility to hold to the contract and refuse to sell it. The customer is not always right.

I had no idea about the contact thing-- very interesting. I feel like, except for Harry Potter, it is possible that I could buy a book early by accident. I was imagining the police coming to arrest me!

It's the same for dvds. When I worked at Suncoast (holy crap! over a decade ago!) we were always warned about the big release dates for Disney movies and things like that. I was told that we could be sued, but also other action could be taken, like the store not being shipped dvds until the actual release date. Although I never heard of that happening.

I was just at the campus bookstore, and they were unpacking all kinds of Harry Potter stuff (chocolate frogs, every flavor beans, stuff like that) and joking about selling the book. There were a few teenagers trying to bribe them into selling it to them now. They were offering $50. The salespeople laughed at them.

It also protects mom and pop shops from being totally screwed by the buying power of the chains. Everyone gets to put it on the shelves the same day. It's all egalitarian.

B&N had a deal with my publisher to promote Vampire People early, but they all got shipped at the same time. There's obviously no embargo on my rinky dink book, and sellers can shelve them whenever it's convenient for them.

We should have received our boxes of books today, I think. We've got about 3000 reservations, and will probably have an additional few hundred copies for those who didn't bother doing holds. Of course, there are people who put the book on hold at multiple locations, unsure of where they would end up getting it, so we're only hanging onto the reserved copies until Monday night, then they're available as well. Apparently, for HBP, we ended up with 150 boxes of books that we shipped back to the publisher (that's 1500 copies).

I remember stocking a new Waldenbooks, a long time ago. Minimal backroom. Any extra paperback copies beyond a certain number were shredded. It felt like sacrilege. And a waste. Why did HQ send so much?