November 3, 2006
Books Sold in the Strangest of Places
Publishers are not willing to wait for consumers to go to the bookstore to buy the titles they release. Increasingly, publishers are going where the consumers are, including
upscale clothing boutiques, baby stores, butcher shops, cafes, DIY/hardware stores, cookware stores and carwashes.
Customers at the Anthropologie store in New York’s SoHo district come for the clothes and accessories, but now they can also buy copies of Annie Leibovitz’s A Photographer’s
Life: 1990-2005 and other titles matched to the store’s core customer base.
Abby Hoffman, the vice president of sales and marketing for Chronicle Books, told The New York Times, “It’s a way for the book business to stay alive. Anyplace that sells
merchandise is a place to sell books.”
Book sales have been off, down 2.6 percent in August, and publishers are looking to put themselves in front of consumers in spots where consumers are already motivated to buy,
such as Anthropologie, Starbucks and Mike’s Deli (Mike’s Deli?) in the Bronx, New York.
Mike’s has sold more than 4,500 copies of Ann Volkwein’s Arthur Avenue Cookbook at $25 each. The book sold only 8,000 copies aside from those sold at Mike’s.
The Arthur Avenue Cookbook sold so well that Mike’s added more titles, including The Italian American Cookbook by John Mariani and Con Amore: A Daughter-in-Law’s Story
of Growing Up Italian-American in Bushwick by Bea Tusiani.
David Greco, owner of Mike’s Deli, said selling books in an unconventional environment such as his store requires some flexibility on the part of the merchant. “When you deal
with salami and mozzarella, it’s a little greasy. So we keep the books in plastic bags.”
With years focused on growing the bookstore business, publishers have only recently put a more serious effort into growing alternative channels of distribution.
Simon & Schuster, according to the Times article, is looking to have its sales representatives seek out shops and markets that may offer a natural fit with some of
its titles. Time Warner Book Group has changed the color and design of book jackets to coordinate with a store’s merchandise.
“The publisher now has a responsibility to put books in front of more eyeballs,” said Jack Romanos, president and chief executive, Simon & Schuster. “The market was always
there, but I don’t know that most publishers were as aggressive about trying to develop it 10 years ago as they are today.”
Some titles actually do better in alternative locations than they do in the major booksellers. Wall and Piece, written by the graffiti artist Banksy, has achieved its
biggest sales at Urban Outfitters along with some independent bookstores.
Discussion Questions: The push to sell books in places other than bookstores shows the shift to selling to consumer lifestyles and not simply to product
categories. How will this lifestyle marketing and sales approach impact the retail book business in the future? How will lifestyle marketing and sales impact other product categories
and merchandising in retail stores?
BrainTrust
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
Poll
I agree with Ian, but sadly only up to a point. Sure, Kinko’s, Office Max, etc. sell business books, but together they’re hardly moving the needle. Yes, if I wrote cookbooks instead of business books maybe I’d see this as an opportunity, but for the majority of authors this isn’t a scalable option. I also agree with Ian that marketing funds often make the difference between success and failure which is why Amazon has been helpful to a number of titles.
The key is that there aren’t viable lifestyle venues for enough titles to move books at scale. This doesn’t mean selling books through alternative channels is always a bad idea. My second book was on deviance. Maybe if Random House had had a little more imagination in terms of considering lifestyle markets, I could have moved a lot more books. Of course, I’m not sure readings would have worked in those alternative venues.
Having some experience in the book business, with a Wall Street Journal and Business Week bestseller under my belt, let me hasten to assure you that these kinds of marketing changes won’t benefit the publishing industry in the long run. For one thing, they work best for niched books (Italian cookbooks in a deli) or books by “big” (i.e. bestselling) authors.
One of the problems in publishing now is that it’s harder and harder for new authors to break in and get the right kind of support (if you think slotting allowances are tough — try the book business). So, you’ll have more and more promotional dollars going toward sales of fewer and fewer authors.
The result is likely to be that any number of good books will never get published, unless they are self-published or web-published. If you look at what’s holding up the book industry today it’s a handful of categories — religious fiction; religion; and self-help. These aren’t the kinds of titles you’re likely to see pop up at Starbuck’s. So, there’s a paradox — the titles that move best in bookstores and represent the only organic growth in the industry are the least likely to move through lifestyle markets.
As the author of six books this broadening of sales options is very welcome. For most of us, Amazon is extremely helpful but bookstore chains can be a real challenge unless the publisher is prepared to spend a fortune for shelf space.
We write books because we believe in our heart of hearts the message needs to be heard by as many people as possible. Actually writing the book is the easy part – the real work is in marketing and distribution. The key in using ‘unusual’ outlets as the article says, is relevance to the lifestyle of the people shopping there. Not only do we have to think outside the box, we have to sell outside of them too.
For at least 2 generations, publishers have marketed their titles to “nontraditional outlets.” Every publishing company of any size has employed salespeople and wholesalers for these outlets. It’s not unusual that Mike’s Deli sells a couple of thousand books with local appeal. For many years, Ratner’s restaurant sold thousands of copies of its cookbook. Chronicle Books, in particular, has always sold an unusually large proportion of its print runs to nontraditional outlets. Their titles lend themselves to impulse shopping, being highly pictorial and fashionable. When a publisher thinks about buying a manuscript, they always estimate the title’s nontraditional outlet sales. This may be news to people outside publishing, but it’s been standard practice within the industry for many years.
As the others have said, this is not a new thing in publishing. Ask anyone in the industry, either an author or a publisher. Selling books is hard and always has been. It isn’t getting any easier but still, the number of titles published each year continues to grow. I did write (and publish) cookbooks, Ryan, over 60 of them and sold over a million copies in total (quite a lot of them were very small and very cheap impulse and gift buys) but deciding where and how to sell them was similar in every way to the discussions we continually have here about multichannel marketing. Whichever way you look at retailing, whatever the product, you have to identify your target audience and find the best ways of making them look at you. Not news to anyone on this site.
As an author (and publisher) I can assure you that the bookstore business is not a pretty one. While I get my share of orders from bookstores, I see $5,000 a month or more come in on my website (www.SuccessMadeEasy.com) for “Retail Selling Made Easy” alone. This is a 10 year old title, and with 50-60,000 new titles hitting the book stores every year, keeping shelf visibility is tough.
Add to this the fact that most bookstores have 90 days to return unsold books and the picture gets even uglier. They buy (order) deep on new titles and then return them making room for the new titles coming out.
Bottom Line: Yes, sell them in other places. I have been buying CDs spontaneously at Starbucks.
More Discussions
Is Five Below Poised For Even Greater Growth?
Five Below is hitting serious growth numbers. Can this trend continue?Should IKEA Be Flattening Management?
Should IKEA be trimming down its management headcount?Is Legislation the Answer on Visa, Mastercard Swipe Fees as ~$200 Billion Record Is Set?
Is lawmaking the way forward on swipe fees?
I agree with Ian, but sadly only up to a point. Sure, Kinko’s, Office Max, etc. sell business books, but together they’re hardly moving the needle. Yes, if I wrote cookbooks instead of business books maybe I’d see this as an opportunity, but for the majority of authors this isn’t a scalable option. I also agree with Ian that marketing funds often make the difference between success and failure which is why Amazon has been helpful to a number of titles.
The key is that there aren’t viable lifestyle venues for enough titles to move books at scale. This doesn’t mean selling books through alternative channels is always a bad idea. My second book was on deviance. Maybe if Random House had had a little more imagination in terms of considering lifestyle markets, I could have moved a lot more books. Of course, I’m not sure readings would have worked in those alternative venues.
Having some experience in the book business, with a Wall Street Journal and Business Week bestseller under my belt, let me hasten to assure you that these kinds of marketing changes won’t benefit the publishing industry in the long run. For one thing, they work best for niched books (Italian cookbooks in a deli) or books by “big” (i.e. bestselling) authors.
One of the problems in publishing now is that it’s harder and harder for new authors to break in and get the right kind of support (if you think slotting allowances are tough — try the book business). So, you’ll have more and more promotional dollars going toward sales of fewer and fewer authors.
The result is likely to be that any number of good books will never get published, unless they are self-published or web-published. If you look at what’s holding up the book industry today it’s a handful of categories — religious fiction; religion; and self-help. These aren’t the kinds of titles you’re likely to see pop up at Starbuck’s. So, there’s a paradox — the titles that move best in bookstores and represent the only organic growth in the industry are the least likely to move through lifestyle markets.
As the author of six books this broadening of sales options is very welcome. For most of us, Amazon is extremely helpful but bookstore chains can be a real challenge unless the publisher is prepared to spend a fortune for shelf space.
We write books because we believe in our heart of hearts the message needs to be heard by as many people as possible. Actually writing the book is the easy part – the real work is in marketing and distribution. The key in using ‘unusual’ outlets as the article says, is relevance to the lifestyle of the people shopping there. Not only do we have to think outside the box, we have to sell outside of them too.
For at least 2 generations, publishers have marketed their titles to “nontraditional outlets.” Every publishing company of any size has employed salespeople and wholesalers for these outlets. It’s not unusual that Mike’s Deli sells a couple of thousand books with local appeal. For many years, Ratner’s restaurant sold thousands of copies of its cookbook. Chronicle Books, in particular, has always sold an unusually large proportion of its print runs to nontraditional outlets. Their titles lend themselves to impulse shopping, being highly pictorial and fashionable. When a publisher thinks about buying a manuscript, they always estimate the title’s nontraditional outlet sales. This may be news to people outside publishing, but it’s been standard practice within the industry for many years.
As the others have said, this is not a new thing in publishing. Ask anyone in the industry, either an author or a publisher. Selling books is hard and always has been. It isn’t getting any easier but still, the number of titles published each year continues to grow. I did write (and publish) cookbooks, Ryan, over 60 of them and sold over a million copies in total (quite a lot of them were very small and very cheap impulse and gift buys) but deciding where and how to sell them was similar in every way to the discussions we continually have here about multichannel marketing. Whichever way you look at retailing, whatever the product, you have to identify your target audience and find the best ways of making them look at you. Not news to anyone on this site.
As an author (and publisher) I can assure you that the bookstore business is not a pretty one. While I get my share of orders from bookstores, I see $5,000 a month or more come in on my website (www.SuccessMadeEasy.com) for “Retail Selling Made Easy” alone. This is a 10 year old title, and with 50-60,000 new titles hitting the book stores every year, keeping shelf visibility is tough.
Add to this the fact that most bookstores have 90 days to return unsold books and the picture gets even uglier. They buy (order) deep on new titles and then return them making room for the new titles coming out.
Bottom Line: Yes, sell them in other places. I have been buying CDs spontaneously at Starbucks.