Wow, I wish my bookstores looked like that.
Well, the point is that Galaxy is a
specialist science fiction bookshop.
When I first went into Galaxy deliberately, as opposed to wandering in as a curious browser, it was January 1980. I'd just seen ST:TMP, and Galaxy had
a whole little shelf dedicated to Star Trek. That's where I found such gems as the first Pocket Books Calendar, and the funky spiral-bound TMP diary (with a new pic for every week!), and my first local ST fanzine, featuring fan reviews of the movie (from Sydney's own gala premiere night) and fanfic sequels to the new movie already.
Since then, I've seen Galaxy relocate three times, each time to a bigger and bigger store, and the shelf space dedicated to Star Trek material has usually increased with each move.
The original manager of Galaxy (the main company, Abbey's, used to have several totally different specialist shops, plus a more eclectic general store) was a huge ST fan and a member of Australia's "first fandom". It was a hard slog to prove that ST would be a worthy franchise to promote in-store. In the old days, she'd order perhaps twenty of each new ST title, knowing at least ten of her regular customers bought everything with ST on the cover, but the main Abbey's manager would trim her order back to something "more sensible", leaving very few copies on the shelf for new customers, or for backstock.
Eventually, when Galaxy's profits surpassed the other Abbey's specialist stores, the manager was given better control over her ordering. As I've mentioned before, they usually air freight a batch, so we have the titles at the same time as the US, and then top up supply with the slower, locally-distributed, sea-freighted supply a few months later.
Keep in mind that walking into more general book chain stores in Sydney can provide examples of shops that don't promote (or sell) much ST material, but the city stores know that Galaxy already has ST well-covered, plus so many ST fans order from Amazon, etc.
Simon & Schuster Aust. really did their bit for the new movie, and have been air-freighting recent titles so that our suburban stores (esp. Dymocks) can have multiple copies of each new title in the same month as the US shops, not
three months later (as is the usual sea-freight situation). I think Galaxy have been using the chance to get the local air-freighted supply, because seeing over 30 of each new title, all in one lump,
at the same time as US release has gladdened my heart.
Even better, when you go in a few weeks later, and it looks like a plague of locusts have hit the ST shelves!
Galaxy does prune out a few older titles during their annual book sales, but the well-stocked ST shelves mean that people
can wander in and find some very old ST titles - with their original price stickers on them - at a time when the same book is selling on the Amazon second hand market for $50+.
