JONAH GOLDBERG IS STILL #1 on Amazon. And I hear he’ll debut on the New York Times bestseller list next week. Nonetheless, I keep getting emails like this one:

I work at Barnes & Noble (in California) and we have not seen the book in our store. I checked and BN.com has it at #8 right now. I checked 4 – 5 zip codes on the BN.com web site for store availability and only one had it in the store.

This is really interesting because it is B & N’s stated policy to be politics neutral about the content of books. They sent a memo around to employees explaining the policy when the OJ Simpson book came out for example. And they do have any number of controversial books on all sorts of topics all the time.

So I am somewhat mystified.

Beats me. Perhaps they underestimated its popularity. But I’m sure it’s costing them sales to the Internet.

UPDATE: Reader Stephen Barron emails:

Piling on about B&N…

I live in CA but am in Wichita KS over weekend for business. I went looking for Jonah’s book in one of the local B&Ns and couldn’t find it. Heck, I saw Newt’s book, Colbert’s book, David Frum’s book, etc. There was a wide variety of political persuasions represented, although I think this particular store actually leaned a little to the right, but Jonah’s book was not to be seen.

And reader Todd Frehafer writes: “I wrote to Jonah about the same phenomenon in the Rt.9 Chestnut Hill, MA store. When I asked about the book, I was told it ‘wasn’t in stock and wasn’t on order.'”

They can’t stock everything, and for whatever reason didn’t stock this book. So people will order it off Amazon. And next time they shop, they may go straight to the Internet and not even venture down to the store to look.

MORE: Roger Kimball does some research.