Tag Archives: Marketing

Harry Potter & selling other books at Waterstones

Posted by —

3

Eoin Purcell

The art of selling
Selling Harry Potter takes no work for a bookseller. Yeah they can open at 12-midnight and have a show with owls, yes they can sell it for the incredible price of €8.99 but at the end of the day most people who buy Harry Potter were going to buy it anyway, they just took a greater or lesser share of that Harry market. [Due Disclosure: I bought my Harry for Euro 10.70 in Tesco with no feelings of guilt or badness).

So I was not terribly impressed with the Harry show. But something did strike me as very effective in Waterstones store in Jervis St Centre Dublin. On the first floor entrance there is a three bay bank of staff reviewed books of nearly every possible genre. Some nice shots below:
Bayonebaytwo

These are old tricks for Waterstones and good ones too. They are enjpyable to read and very much make me likely to buy. in fact had I not already had my bag filled with six books I was escorting back to Cork I would have bought this book:
Close up

It’s a simple tool but the bulk of these books are old or backlist, the hype long since past. There were of course piles of Harry Potter nearby but although there were posters and the rest there was little need to highight it, it sold itself. These books needed effort and as you can see they got it. That’s bookselling and I have to say I admire it.

Wishing I had had a bigger bag,
Eoin

Staggered release

Posted by —

0

Eoin Purcell

Staggered release windows are so last century. We want it all now, baby, we want it today. Why, as books are competing with so many other forms of media, would the publishing industry want to create a vacuum where one needs not exist?

Booksquare have it right
The quote above is only part of a much longer article that very nicely discusses the idea of staggered release and why they really, really are not a good idea anymore for publishers (well except maybe in rare circumstances*).

What they mean is the pretty standard measure publishers take to capture as much of the market as they can. First a hardback is released to the market at a pretty stiff price, followed by a trade paperback as much as a year later. Personally I have found this a terribly frustrating experience. Aside from the cost, reading hardbacks is such a chore, especially when you are dealing with books of this length!

I can understand the logic. *For instance it would have been difficult to ignore the two bites of the cherry for this book. I suspect the sales would have been as good had they published a hardback and a paperback at the one time, but it is a tough call to be the first publisher to actually risk that on a hunch and a general feeling.

I guess what I am saying is that I can see the benefits of having a hardback and a paperback at the same time but as a publisher, I can see the risk too. What is more I can understand the fear that you will cannibalise your hardback sales for the sake of being trendy. Still it is probably worth the risk once.

Thinking it might be worth it!
Eoin

Everybody’s talking about VIDEO

Posted by —

3

Eoin Purcell

And why not
Isn’t it the hip, happening and trendy thing to do online theses days? They even have an award.

Aren’t we still a little amazed that YouTube was bought by Google for such an incredible chest of money? And isn’t the book world a flurry with news like Simon & Schuster’s new bookvideos.tv.

S&S have been smart. They have set up an accompanying YouTube site to make sure they are with the times.

Personally I don’t quite get the obsession with Book trailers. But who am I to argue with the marketers. if it works then go for it. I just wonder if it actually does. Movie trailers though do. And I say one for Wall E the upcoming pixar movie and cannot wait.

So maybe there is room for good, innovative Book Trailers.

Thinking about it
Eoin

BookTour.com: makes sense to me

Posted by —

2

Eoin Purcell

So now we know
Chris Anderson and co gave more details on their new venture at the BEA 31st May. Seems like an utterly sensible idea. From their site:

Enter BookTour. We do three things. First, we aggregate all the available information on the web about existing book tours, mostly from publisher and bookseller sites. Second, we give authors and publicists a place to enter their own book tour details and availability in a way that anyone can find. And finally, we give potential audiences a way to contact authors and publicists and request an event, either in a town the author is already visiting, or to suggest a new town to add to the tour.

Now with an unbiased hat I can say that I am under-whelmed by the concept, though I see the value. It strikes me as more of an add on service to existing products than an entirely new excersise. For instance imagine the power of a service like this combined with the tools that LibraryThing has already going.

I wonder how the aggregation will work too. Are we going to see the evolution of a specific book tour microformat that allows them to scoop up all the relevant info or will it always be dependent on the input of agents, booksellers and authors?

But perhaps I am being too down on the idea. I say go them, it is a start and if they can roll out additional features to enhance the service then maybe it will continue to exist as a product in its own right rather than, as I suspect, as part of a larger community.

Still interested
Eoin

Starbucks and star sales!

Posted by —

6

Eoin Purcell

Are we all missing the point?
Galleycat points to an exceptionally interesting post from Editor Jason Pinter[Page has gone awol]. Starbucks have been successfully selling vast quantities of their book choice: Ishmael Beah’s A LONG WAY GONE.

Jason makes what I think is the key point towards the end:

Of course Barnes & Noble sells thousands of books in their stores, while right now Starbucks is only selling one. At the same time, though, it’s very curious to see that Beah seems to be outpacing an author with a bestselling Oprah pedigree, primarily due to the efforts of one store. And that store being considerably more famous for their double venti half calf mocha lattechinos than their success pushing literature.

Obviously there’s a major difference between offering one book for sale and offering thousands. Not everyone who walks into a B&N has to buy THE DOUBLE BIND. You have a huge amount of options. At Starbucks, if you’re going to buy a book, you’re going to buy A LONG WAY GONE. So the answer is, of course, that Starbucks is not as influential on a larger scale than B&N. But it does make you think..

It does make you think. Here are a few things I wondered:

    1) What the hell are publishers getting wrong that they need to sell books from coffee-shops?
    2) What are booksellers doing wrong if they can lose that kind of trade to coffee-shops (especially if they already have coffee-shops internally)?
    3) Who are all these book buyers in Starbucks?
    4) Is the Starbucks Book of the month slot for sale?
    5) Why are we wondering and worrying about digital when don’t seem to know anything about who buys books right now?

Overall it just makes you wonder if anyone in the industry knows anything? Except for maybe Starbucks!

Waking to the smell of coffee?
Eoin