Joey (Diesel Books)

Bookseller at Diesel (LA). Discord handle tabington. Last name unknown. Early outside read on the guild-manifesto.

Why this matters

First indie-bookstore reader of the Guild Manifesto outside Dungeon Books orbit
Works the floor at a small-but-high-volume shop — staff-level perspective, not owner-level
LA shop, different operating model than East Coast pilots

Small store, unusually high volume: ~32 boxes on a light UPS day, shipments daily
Ordering daily, heavy publisher-rep attention despite small size
Staff model: “we’re all doing this stuff, and each of us have our own regulars” — not one owner with a rolodex
Outlier for small indies; acknowledges other shops run Ingram-only with no publisher contact

Joey has a sharp, systemic read on bookstore supply chain. See bookstore-supply-chain for the facts. Key points he brought to us:

Validates the demand-intelligence thesis: “using the sales intelligence, I think we can leverage seeing a trending bestseller before it pops off”
Surfaces the supply-side ceiling we didn’t have in the manifesto: even with perfect demand data, publishers physically can’t print enough. Printer consolidation + Amazon pre-allocation = indies get POD-feeling runs while their 40-copy order sells out by weekend
Recommended reading: Chokepoint Capitalism by Cory Doctorow
Knows Batch for Books (UK payments standard) is the obvious fix for the indie AP workflow and wishes US publishers would adopt it faster

Andy (bookshop.org CEO): Joey met with him personally at Winter Institute, has his email. Read: bookshop.org is “immensely slow-moving,” still fulfills through Ingram, can afford to raise indie discount from 46% toward Amazon’s 52% but hasn’t
Active in ABA events; familiar with the antitrust disclaimer ritual (“technically you’re all competitors”)