Chapter 55: What the Shops Ordered
Eighteen hundred copies were not a crown; they were eighteen hundred chances to be returned.
On Monday evening, the seventy-two-hour payment window closed at 19:17 GMT.
PageTurn froze both purchase routes before North Quay opened its sell-in review.
Social accounts had already declared winners from first-night gross-order screenshots.
Those images included orders later cancelled, refunded or rejected as invalid payment.
The audit began with settled gateway records rather than the most attractive captured hour. The original screenshots stayed publicity evidence only.
Saltmere's net paid conversion closed at 3.9 per cent.
Its cancellation rate was 4.1 per cent of placed orders.
Larkspur's equal-granularity row showed 3.1 per cent conversion and 5.7 per cent cancellations.
Both projects cleared the published minimum for continued physical development. Neither result alone authorised paper, press time or inventory.
The difference did not expel Oliver or Pippa from the route.
It changed the level of verifiable shop interest each project could carry forward.
PageTurn retained customer-level payments, refunds, timestamps and invalid-payment reasons.
North Quay received a de-identified summary at the same granularity for both projects. Its file listed method, window and audit signature.
No buyer received private reader information or an opponent's content score.
The neutral shared-rights administrator saw only that legacy resources remained unused.
That office did not inspect manuscripts, set conversion weights or allocate copies.
North Quay then matched the summary against shop payment and commitment evidence.
Twenty-four Saltmere shops had supplied qualifying bases for provisional orders. Each basis linked to a verified shop commitment or payment record.
Fifteen Larkspur shops had done the same under the matching rule.
The new-project line registered Saltmere at 1,800 copies across twenty-four shops.
It registered Larkspur at 1,000 copies across fifteen shops. The opposing allocation remained commercially real without becoming my private file.
Each figure was labelled PROVISIONAL SHOP-ORDER ALLOCATION.
Neither figure authorised a printer to start machinery.
No physical stock, finished inventory or warehouse receipt existed.
The numbers were not final print runs, advances or guaranteed consumer sales.
They reserved verifiable sell-in demand for the later print-run decision.
That authorisation belonged to the later print-run committee under the production schedule.
Until then, returns, costs, file readiness and later shop changes could alter the model. Provisional demand could shrink without moving a single physical book.
My coordinator drafted GRACE SECURES 1,800-COPY FIRST PRINTING.
I deleted FIRST PRINTING and replaced the line with PROVISIONAL SHOP INTEREST RECORDED.
The weaker headline was the only accurate one.
North Quay issued separate allocation notices to each project. Their hashes prevented one notice from being substituted for the other.
I saw Larkspur's public count and shop total, not its individual payment papers.
Pippa and Oliver received the same level of information about Saltmere.
At 20:06, my provisional allocation became eligible for a production-slot hold.
The hold still required print-ready files through the six-production-day schedule.
It preserved scheduling priority while documents were completed; it did not start printing.
North Quay linked the condition to my file checklist and provisional shop evidence.
If I missed the deadline, the production slot would be released.
The 1,800-copy allocation would also lose reserved status and return to uncommitted demand.
Booksellers could then withdraw rather than wait for my paperwork.
I accepted the condition under Grace Ellison.
The archive stored PageTurn's net-payment audit separately from North Quay's shop basis. The link between them exposed only approved aggregate fields.
That separation stopped a provisional allocation from masquerading as paid consumer stock.
I had won a larger responsibility, not a warehouse.
Every one of the 1,800 possible copies still carried manufacturing cost and return risk.
The six-day clock opened beside the print-ready checklist.
PRINT-READY FILES — SIGN-OFF REQUIRED; PRESS STATUS — NOT AUTHORISED.
If the files were not approved in six days, both the slot and 1,800-copy reservation would disappear.