Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Independent Publishers and Independent Booksellers
There is a question posted at Osprey Design's Foreword Blog asking how Smaller, Independent Publishers can help Independent Bookstores sell books. I'm sure they'd love any booksellers to give their input: Foreword Blog.
Questions like this bring out the longwinded dreamer in me...
1. Build relationships with Independents for Author Events. Booksellers want to have more events. Think long-term about your events relationship with a bookstore. Develop strategies for promoting events that can be used again for future events. Don't forget smaller stores that may have a great reputation for promoting local authors. Even the biggest bookstores have low attendance at some events. It's better to have an event at a smaller store that is behind your book and will promote the event than at a larger store where your event is filler around bigger name authors. Look for stores that have an events display table to promote books before and after an event. You may only sell a few copies at the actual event, but if the booksellers at the store are behind the book they may be able to sell the copies during the following weeks.
St Helens Book Shop in St Helens, OR, RJ Julia in Madison, CT, and Newtonville Books in Newton, MA are all small stores that have built FABULOUS events programs tailored to their communities.
2. Ask booksellers for their Local Media contact lists. Most stores can give you the local NPR outlet, the best newspaper to advertise in, and other local venues. Booksellers don't have a lot of time to set up author interviews for events. Help out by setting up interviews before the event. Try to get newspaper reviews to run the week prior to the event.
Even if you're not doing an event in a bookstore's town, getting your authors on the local NPR station or interviewed in the local newspaper will drive customers into the store. We can't carry every small press title, but if the local paper runs a review and even two customers come in and ask for it, then it hits my radar and we'll carry the book for six months, longer if it sells well.
3. Connect your authors to their local independent bookstore. Most independents can take online orders through their web site. If one of your authors has a good independent near them, the author can stop by the store periodically and sign books for the store. The store can then advertise signed copies of a book on their web site. The author's web site can announce the signed books and place a link to the bookstore site. Your publisher web site can do the same. Now you have the means for anyone in the world to get a signed copy of your book. Win-win for everyone. We've set up two examples of this through St Helens Book Shop and Chuck Palahniuk and Lindon Bookstore and Peg Kehret.
4. Attend regional book shows. The booth prices are much lower than BEA and if you haven't been to one, you'll be surprised at how much contact you get with booksellers. It's also a great chance to participate on panels, talk to people at dinners, and other gatherings. I first met Lost Horse Press (www.losthorsepress.org) at the spring PNBA show last year. They do great regional poetry books and I flipped through all of their books on the show floor. We throw out dozens of catalogs and postcards every week, but I'll always take a moment when these folks send me something.
5. Participate in Book Sense's Advance Access program for connecting reading copies to booksellers. How it works: Publishers send Book Sense the name of the reading copy with a short description, the number of copies available, and an email address at the publisher for booksellers to contact. Booksellers then email directly if they would like a reading copy. This way publisher's save money and time by targeting their galleys better and booksellers have a filter, too. Contact Mark Nichols (mark@booksense.com) at Book Sense to find out more about publisher programs within Book Sense.
6. Make sure your books are at Ingram and Baker and Taylor. EVERY independent bookstore uses these two wholesalers to obtain the bulk of their special orders for customers. If you're relying on customers asking for your book at their local bookseller, then your book needs to be at one or both of these places. (Plus Koen and Bookazine on the East Coast and Partners and BookPeople on the West coast.) This probably sounds basic to most people in publishing, but you'd be surprised. I was. If you know how bookstore ordering works or you already have your books at the major wholesalers, skip down to #7. If you're curious, here's how most bookstores do special orders for customers:
A. Customer gives me their name and phone number to order a book we don't have in stock.
B. I gather all of the special orders, usually once a day or every other day.
C. I put all of these special orders on a purchase order and electronically send the list to the first wholesaler in our bookstore's "fulfillment cascade." The first spot always goes to the nearest warehouse to the bookstore. Ingram has four warehouses, one each in Tennessee, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Oregon. Baker and Taylor's main warehouses are in Illinois, New Jersey, and Reno, NV. I'll check Ingram's IN and TN warehouses first. If it's not there, I put the order in a second batch to check at Baker and Taylor.
D. If a book isn't available at Ingram or Baker and Taylor, the order goes in a pile to call individual publishers and place an order for a single copy. This is the least cost-effective way for me to order books. Most bookstores will let these orders sit until we have multiple special orders for a publisher, then we call and place the order. If I do call for one book, I don't get a very good resale discount because I'm only ordering one copy. And I'll have to pay shipping on top of the book.
This means for the average single copy order of a $15.00 book, I'm probably paying $12.00 plus two to three dollars for shipping. That's right, giving the store a grand profit of less than a buck or zero. This doesn't give me a lot of incentive to order books from this publisher. But if that book had been at Ingram, it would have come within two days and I'd have paid $9.00 for it. The shipping would be more like ten or twenty cents because it'd be bundled with twenty or thirty other books. I'm making more than five dollars on that book. Yahoo! I might even order another copy for the shelf.
7. If you are part of a community of other independent publishers, work together to promote your books to us. Two big, HUGE examples:
1) McSweeney's. Here you have a group of writers all agreeing to promote each other, review each other, and publish each other. And they're selling books.
2) Carl Lennertz. Before he helped get Book Sense off the ground, he worked at Random House and built his reputation with a fax sheet he regularly sent to independent booksellers (hey, this was before email). He talked about Random House books, sure, but he'd also plug other publisher's books if one was doing well or was exceptionally good. I think it's human nature to believe someone who is excited about someone else's books as much as they're excited about their own.
8. Let the store's staff know about your books. At independents, it's the people working on the floor who handsell the books. A good staff pick or an enthusiastic handseller can move a lot of copies in a year. When visiting stores, check out the staff comment cards and see if you can find a person who would be interested in your book. It sounds silly to spend time trying to contact one person, but it does work. Save time by reading through the Book Sense 76 - see if a bookseller is recommending a book similar to one of your own. Send a review copy addressed to them with a personal note. If you have great independent bookstores nearby or you travel to bookstores a lot, offer to meet once or twice a year with the whole staff to pitch your list. Or gather three or four independent publishers together to meet on the same night. Employees frequently take on more responsibility on a small staff; you'll never know when this year's clerk is next year's fiction buyer.
Two independent press titles on my staff picks shelf right now:
So Many Books by Gabriel Zaid, ISBN: 158988003X, Paul Dry Books
The first half is meditation on what it means to read books, the second half is insight into the publishing world and ideas on making books more important in our culture.
Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link ISBN: 1931520003, Small Beer Press
Nebula award winner and Clarion writing school grad, Link is rapidly becoming a talent on level with Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Carroll.
9. Make Booksellers part of your publishing house. There are at least three small presses that solicit bookseller comments through an advisory board.
Scala House Press (www.scalahousepress.com) in Seattle, WA uses an advisory board to suss out marketing ideas, bookseller response to a particular title, and collect distribution ideas to sell more books.
Sarabande Books (www.sarabandebooks.org) in Louisville, KY has bookseller Richard Howorth on their board of advisors.
Perhaps the most extensive use of this is Dalkey Archive's advisory board of dozens of booksellers (www.centerforbookculture.org).
Having a network of booksellers allows you to get instant feedback about a big idea you're thinking of trying, or just for getting word out about your books. I think it's just fun to exchange information, too.
10. Shop at Independent Booksellers. The most basic, but effective. By shopping at independents you get to see the character of the store, their strengths and weaknesses, and you get to build your relationship with them. Trust me, stores are more likely to carry your books, host events, and promote your titles if you're a valued customer. We're fighting a big fight here. Every customer counts.
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Questions like this bring out the longwinded dreamer in me...
1. Build relationships with Independents for Author Events. Booksellers want to have more events. Think long-term about your events relationship with a bookstore. Develop strategies for promoting events that can be used again for future events. Don't forget smaller stores that may have a great reputation for promoting local authors. Even the biggest bookstores have low attendance at some events. It's better to have an event at a smaller store that is behind your book and will promote the event than at a larger store where your event is filler around bigger name authors. Look for stores that have an events display table to promote books before and after an event. You may only sell a few copies at the actual event, but if the booksellers at the store are behind the book they may be able to sell the copies during the following weeks.
St Helens Book Shop in St Helens, OR, RJ Julia in Madison, CT, and Newtonville Books in Newton, MA are all small stores that have built FABULOUS events programs tailored to their communities.
2. Ask booksellers for their Local Media contact lists. Most stores can give you the local NPR outlet, the best newspaper to advertise in, and other local venues. Booksellers don't have a lot of time to set up author interviews for events. Help out by setting up interviews before the event. Try to get newspaper reviews to run the week prior to the event.
Even if you're not doing an event in a bookstore's town, getting your authors on the local NPR station or interviewed in the local newspaper will drive customers into the store. We can't carry every small press title, but if the local paper runs a review and even two customers come in and ask for it, then it hits my radar and we'll carry the book for six months, longer if it sells well.
3. Connect your authors to their local independent bookstore. Most independents can take online orders through their web site. If one of your authors has a good independent near them, the author can stop by the store periodically and sign books for the store. The store can then advertise signed copies of a book on their web site. The author's web site can announce the signed books and place a link to the bookstore site. Your publisher web site can do the same. Now you have the means for anyone in the world to get a signed copy of your book. Win-win for everyone. We've set up two examples of this through St Helens Book Shop and Chuck Palahniuk and Lindon Bookstore and Peg Kehret.
4. Attend regional book shows. The booth prices are much lower than BEA and if you haven't been to one, you'll be surprised at how much contact you get with booksellers. It's also a great chance to participate on panels, talk to people at dinners, and other gatherings. I first met Lost Horse Press (www.losthorsepress.org) at the spring PNBA show last year. They do great regional poetry books and I flipped through all of their books on the show floor. We throw out dozens of catalogs and postcards every week, but I'll always take a moment when these folks send me something.
5. Participate in Book Sense's Advance Access program for connecting reading copies to booksellers. How it works: Publishers send Book Sense the name of the reading copy with a short description, the number of copies available, and an email address at the publisher for booksellers to contact. Booksellers then email directly if they would like a reading copy. This way publisher's save money and time by targeting their galleys better and booksellers have a filter, too. Contact Mark Nichols (mark@booksense.com) at Book Sense to find out more about publisher programs within Book Sense.
6. Make sure your books are at Ingram and Baker and Taylor. EVERY independent bookstore uses these two wholesalers to obtain the bulk of their special orders for customers. If you're relying on customers asking for your book at their local bookseller, then your book needs to be at one or both of these places. (Plus Koen and Bookazine on the East Coast and Partners and BookPeople on the West coast.) This probably sounds basic to most people in publishing, but you'd be surprised. I was. If you know how bookstore ordering works or you already have your books at the major wholesalers, skip down to #7. If you're curious, here's how most bookstores do special orders for customers:
A. Customer gives me their name and phone number to order a book we don't have in stock.
B. I gather all of the special orders, usually once a day or every other day.
C. I put all of these special orders on a purchase order and electronically send the list to the first wholesaler in our bookstore's "fulfillment cascade." The first spot always goes to the nearest warehouse to the bookstore. Ingram has four warehouses, one each in Tennessee, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Oregon. Baker and Taylor's main warehouses are in Illinois, New Jersey, and Reno, NV. I'll check Ingram's IN and TN warehouses first. If it's not there, I put the order in a second batch to check at Baker and Taylor.
D. If a book isn't available at Ingram or Baker and Taylor, the order goes in a pile to call individual publishers and place an order for a single copy. This is the least cost-effective way for me to order books. Most bookstores will let these orders sit until we have multiple special orders for a publisher, then we call and place the order. If I do call for one book, I don't get a very good resale discount because I'm only ordering one copy. And I'll have to pay shipping on top of the book.
This means for the average single copy order of a $15.00 book, I'm probably paying $12.00 plus two to three dollars for shipping. That's right, giving the store a grand profit of less than a buck or zero. This doesn't give me a lot of incentive to order books from this publisher. But if that book had been at Ingram, it would have come within two days and I'd have paid $9.00 for it. The shipping would be more like ten or twenty cents because it'd be bundled with twenty or thirty other books. I'm making more than five dollars on that book. Yahoo! I might even order another copy for the shelf.
7. If you are part of a community of other independent publishers, work together to promote your books to us. Two big, HUGE examples:
1) McSweeney's. Here you have a group of writers all agreeing to promote each other, review each other, and publish each other. And they're selling books.
2) Carl Lennertz. Before he helped get Book Sense off the ground, he worked at Random House and built his reputation with a fax sheet he regularly sent to independent booksellers (hey, this was before email). He talked about Random House books, sure, but he'd also plug other publisher's books if one was doing well or was exceptionally good. I think it's human nature to believe someone who is excited about someone else's books as much as they're excited about their own.
8. Let the store's staff know about your books. At independents, it's the people working on the floor who handsell the books. A good staff pick or an enthusiastic handseller can move a lot of copies in a year. When visiting stores, check out the staff comment cards and see if you can find a person who would be interested in your book. It sounds silly to spend time trying to contact one person, but it does work. Save time by reading through the Book Sense 76 - see if a bookseller is recommending a book similar to one of your own. Send a review copy addressed to them with a personal note. If you have great independent bookstores nearby or you travel to bookstores a lot, offer to meet once or twice a year with the whole staff to pitch your list. Or gather three or four independent publishers together to meet on the same night. Employees frequently take on more responsibility on a small staff; you'll never know when this year's clerk is next year's fiction buyer.
Two independent press titles on my staff picks shelf right now:
So Many Books by Gabriel Zaid, ISBN: 158988003X, Paul Dry Books
The first half is meditation on what it means to read books, the second half is insight into the publishing world and ideas on making books more important in our culture.
Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link ISBN: 1931520003, Small Beer Press
Nebula award winner and Clarion writing school grad, Link is rapidly becoming a talent on level with Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Carroll.
9. Make Booksellers part of your publishing house. There are at least three small presses that solicit bookseller comments through an advisory board.
Scala House Press (www.scalahousepress.com) in Seattle, WA uses an advisory board to suss out marketing ideas, bookseller response to a particular title, and collect distribution ideas to sell more books.
Sarabande Books (www.sarabandebooks.org) in Louisville, KY has bookseller Richard Howorth on their board of advisors.
Perhaps the most extensive use of this is Dalkey Archive's advisory board of dozens of booksellers (www.centerforbookculture.org).
Having a network of booksellers allows you to get instant feedback about a big idea you're thinking of trying, or just for getting word out about your books. I think it's just fun to exchange information, too.
10. Shop at Independent Booksellers. The most basic, but effective. By shopping at independents you get to see the character of the store, their strengths and weaknesses, and you get to build your relationship with them. Trust me, stores are more likely to carry your books, host events, and promote your titles if you're a valued customer. We're fighting a big fight here. Every customer counts.
