This site is not completely our own. We have adopted it because of the features that we cannot hope to afford to duplicate on our own--a 2+ million database, a safe and secure ordering process, and technical and design support that would cost more than the value of our business. But there are drawbacks, which we hope will diminish as booksense.com, the website provider, continues to issue updates of its software. In the meantime, we have to work around some problems:

1. We do not have control over the bibliographical information provided with each title. Often a book's "Inventory Status" is given as "Special Order" or "Out of Print" when in fact we have the book on our shelves. The database belongs to a national book distributor, Baker & Taylor (B&T), from whom we buy virtually nothing because they do not carry many of our standard inventory items, so what's a "special order" for them is a "standard order" for us. You may certainly order the book from us and we will let you know the status promptly.

2. Very often the name of a book wholesaler is listed as the publisher, because B&T would order that book from, for example, Pub Group West, not directly from Cleis Press. Similarly Firebrand and Alyson never appear as publishers, but we carry all of their books and their books are included in the database. If you're in doubt as to whether the book is the one you want because the "publisher" listed is not the one you expected, please do ask.

3. At the head of each page you will notice a "Quick Browse" feature. These searches are based not on our inventory but on B&T's classifications of their inventory. Being specialists, we classify our books much more intensively than B&T does. You will come across the option to browse in a subject listing such as "lesbian studies" and may be surprised that there are only 500 books listed alphabetically by title, though you know Giovanni's Room has more than 300 lesbian mysteries alone. (continued)

4. If a book is not in B&T's database, we may show it only in a text box such as this one, and you will need to order it by email or phone, that is, you cannot put it in you shopping cart. To give you an idea of the problem, we have more than 40 gay men's wall 2001 calendars in the store, but only eight are in B&T's database, so they cannot be listed here. So please ask about any book that you do not find in our listings or in B&T's database.

There are more annoying things, such as misspellings in titles and authors,that we can correct only with B&T's cooperation, and that cooperation has been almost non-existent, at least in this area. But, in general, we cannot hope to produce on our own anything like the website you see here. We hope you find much to enjoy and find it very useful!

The Staff of Giovanni's Room