Years ago, when the Direct Market first started up and for many years thereafter, new books came in on Friday. But at a certain point in the early 1990s, a decision was made to switch the new book day to Wednesday, so as to better even out the flow of traffic in most stores. The notion was that, if new books came out on Friday, you got a huge overload of people through the weekend, and the stores were pretty much empty during the week. But by having new books come in on Wednesday, that brought people in on Wednesday and Thursday and spread that traffic over a greater period.