ON YOUR OWN I have found Gardners and Bertrams,for example,to be shall we say not the most accommodating to a would-be revolutionary. In fact: "Come back and see us when you are selling lots of books." is the summary of their message.. Unfortunately,that is precisely what I am also told by the High Street chains who are my best hope for volume sales. And if you think that sounds like pure Catch 22, you would surely not be wrong. So where to next? Lower down the league, I find other wholesale/distributors at work. Quite a few of them,in fact.In my genre of travel,one of the best-known names is Portfolio Books.Ah,but the percentage they want for taking me on is even higher than the Big Boys.Simply not worth it there then. Next I do the rounds of organizations who might put my book up in lights with a collection of others from the Small Press houses. Publishers’ representatives like Mallard Marketing and Amalgamated Book Services go in with a basket of goodies to show buyers from the High Street stores. "But,oh, you only have one title. It really wouldn’t be worth our while," I am told.. What about marketability ? Travel is a high-selling category, that much is true "But you’re not a celebrity; not a politician or a sports star or a TV/film personality;not an enigmatic cook or a hey-hoe in the garden. You haven’t been to prison or even guarded the body of a Royal," I am chastised by a girl at an agency who sounds like she is culling down a checklist, marking off points for fame or notoriety. And it doesn’t stop there. "You don’t have one of the BIG publishers behind you," scorns the man from Visibility Fix &Co. "No cheque book to guarantee best shelf space in the stores; no creative department to come up with all those eye-catching posters and gismos for Point of Sale; no advertising budget...." Ever wondered how it would feel to head-bang the Great Wall of China?