Replying to Don Satz's puzzlement, Margaret Mikulska suggested:

>I find it quite reasonable: when they see that a title sells, they order
>more of it.  To the extent that classical music has mass appeal, Bach organ
>works have it.  This might be sensible if there were a sizable CM audience.
>But we all know that CM doesn't.

I think Don had it right the first time: there's something wrong with
current practices.  Yet, annoying or daft as it is, it's not likely to
change.  An out-and-out misunderstanding or a very weak grasp of what's
being sold is at play with CM.  The logic is not, and could never be,
like what works for selling fruit or pop music CDs: what sells oranges
or Eminem doesn't hold for CM, since the numbers are all different.

Take Leonardo Balada: I like Naxos's 2 releases, very much, so went to
my store for more.  All I find are more of those same 2 CDs.  Of course
they're right to order them over, but only to a point.  After the other
five or six local CM lovers with such tastes take a chance on Balada, the
store would be best off to ask just what made for those sales -- composer/
conductor/ ensemble/ etc.? -- and adjust their ordering accordingly.

So, I say: get the Maazel with Balada's Steel Symphony, fucryinoutloud, or
the NWR item with the Oboe Concerto.

But they don't, and won't.  On-the-ball CM store managers aren't granted
the autonomy to be inventive, since the economies of scale for a CD
business call for Wal-Mart types of organization, and for the unspecific
merchandising that goes with that.  As Kevin Sutton said...

>...stock levels are set at the corporate buying office (as a rule) and
>then are maintained by computer generated orders My store is not part of a
>chain, but the logic is much the same: CM managers can't be imaginative.

To cite a perhaps curious analogue: most information forms have now
shifted to the "print on-demand" mode.  Maybe keeping CM stock in stores is
similarly outmoded.  Maybe we'll soon find that the only viable commercial
venue is to get our CM from the Internet, either through virtual stores or
by downloading it ...on a strictly-as-needed basis.

Bert Bailey