Hey Rudolph,

I don't personally focus on retail stores at all any more. I'm pretty much 100% online, or at shows. But if I were to approach a retail store I would simply approach the manager with a good "what's in it for them" pitch ready.

If you are concerned about ordering more CDs than you need, you might consider making an event out of the launch. It you could pre-sell the CDs but really hammer the scarcity by explaining that while the world has gone digital you know that you still have a lot of fans that like good old fashioned physical albums. And so you are going to do a limited run of autographed CDs but the catch is that they need to order now, with a delivery date of a few weeks off. 

That way you are using the scarcity factor to force people to get off of the fence, but you won't end up manufacturing more than you need. Just find a place that does small runs before you run the offer.

You might also make something unique about the run. Unique artwork, autographed copies, etc. And if you word it right you can explain that this will be the only run of it's kind, but still preserve the ability to print more, slightly different, albums somewhere down the line.

Make sense?