Getting stores to sell your game

From this post from the owner of Starlit Citadel, an online retailer, comes a lot of seemingly good advice about getting them to sell a game. It sounds like they often get such requests.  A lot of this seems like common sense, but I'd guess the world of game design and publishing (and especially micro-publishing of homemade stuff) is full of idealists with little practical acumen or business sense.

It does sound like they're willing to at least consider selling something without going through a distributor, which is interesting.  However, most likely, they'll only order 1-2 copies at first, and that the shipping might be prohibitive.  Compared to a distributor, the retailer is expecting about 10-15% less discount, and on just a couple copies, that 10-15% is about what the individual shipping costs would be.  At those levels, it doesn't seem like it would necessarily be worth launching a major campaign to get your game sold direct to stores - the return on your time would be really small.  However, if you do, then it should be a professional presentation.  Reading between the lines of the Starlit Citadel post, they get a lot of very crudely composed unrealistic offers.

So, it sounds like getting listed with a distributor is really the way to go, unless your publishing cost to retail price ratio is very small.  It's easier for the game stores to buy your products, and the shipping is simplified on all sides.

I still don't know how easy it will be to get stocked by a distributor, but we'll see.