Vol. 73/No. 24      June 22, 2009

A public library buyer, who volunteers met at a book event earlier this year, decided to add 50 Pathfinder titles to the library’s collection. A Spanish-language wholesaler in Chicago has made an initial order and will now distribute Pathfinder titles. A large public library system in Miami is considering several titles in Spanish and French.

Volunteers who visit bookstores, libraries, and schools to sell Pathfinder Press titles are six weeks into a spring campaign to increase the number of visits and orders they obtain. The effort began April 15 and will run to June 17. Pathfinder’s newest titles, Capitalism and the Transformation of Africa, Is Socialist Revolution in the U.S. Possible? and New International no. 14 with the article “Revolution, Internationalism, and Socialism: The Last Year of Malcolm X” are the centerpieces of sales presentations to bookstore buyers and others.

To date more than 105 visits have been made toward a goal of 120, and 25 orders obtained toward a goal of 35. Volunteers are stepping up their efforts to make more visits and get orders by following up with contacts visited in the fall and winter campaigns; reaching out to new stores, schools, and libraries; and making regional sales trips.

Teams fanned out during a target week May 9--17, using timely promotional materials, including a flyer promoting Pathfinder titles that explain what’s behind the capitalist crisis of production. Another features books about the fight by Palestinians for national self-determination. The publisher’s 2009 brochures in English, Spanish, and French were also distributed.

The Chinese edition of Our History Is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese-Cuban Generals in the Cuban Revolution is beginning to appear in online library catalogs as a result of work by sales volunteers, presentations at public meetings to discuss the book, and other promotional activity. Similarly, Capitalism and the Transformation of Africa is showing up in larger numbers of libraries, according to www.worldcat.org, a worldwide online library catalog that includes listings of Pathfinder Press titles.

Regional sales teams have been meeting buyers who have not been visited in a number a years. This includes at stores and libraries in San Francisco; Portland, Oregon; Atlanta; Asheville, North Carolina; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Iowa City, Iowa.

Sales volunteers in Los Angeles were the first to surpass their visits goal of 18. Nick Castle reports, “Just getting out into the region helps broaden our reach. While driving to one visit we noticed small independent colleges off the freeway, jotted them down, checked their Web sites and library holdings and wound up visiting and making a new contact.”  
 
 
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