Drama But No Theater

No One Buys Mediocre Theater

Nothing speaks to the inadequacy of book retailing better than some recent news from Barnes & Noble. To ‘celebrate’ Black History month, the company chose to re-cover some well-known classics with images of ‘people of color,’ presumably to suggest their relevance to consumers of color. Not only was the move ignorant and arguably racist of this move, the images themselves had nothing to do with the story lines in the books – surely a fundamental failure by a bookseller! These books were quickly recalled from sale but the episode did get me thinking about “retail theater” in the context of books and publishing. I really think B&N (and others) are missing a trick.

The retail experience done well is ‘theater’ as sophisticated retailers frequently demonstrate. Consumers visiting Starbucks Reserve Roasting, Nike or Roots Chicago are captivated by those concepts and become participants in those retailers’ theater productions. Retail theater is not a new concept in store design but, as more shopping migrates to the web, savvy physical retailers are investing in theater-like retail experiences to draw foot traffic. The goal of this strategy is to make the store a ‘celebrity’ in and of itself so that consumers trek there specifically to visit, engage and buy.

The best exemplars of the retail theater concept also seem to have a strong sense of branding and consumer marketing. These brands – Nike, Starbucks and others like them – stand for something in the minds of their target consumers which is reinforced by the in-store experience. There are few, if any, similar examples in book retailing (and I don’t count Amazon) despite the inherent advantages of publishing and book retailing. Arguably, not since Crown Books in the eighties and nineties has book retailing communicated a strong brand association to consumers. And, no book retailer to day has shown the kind of imagination and ‘theater’ necessary to combat declining interest in reading and purchase migration to the web. Walk into any bookstore across the country and they all look the same: Flat top tables up front, shelves lining the walls and bookmarks by the register. The "outreach" to consumers is entirely passive with very little real engagement.

In their Union Square (New York) location, B&N has one of the finest retail footprints of any retailer. The store should be the chain’s flagship location, where they can build the kind of brand loyalty companies like Nike, Apple, Burberry and others have created. This requires a wholesale rethink. Walk into the Union Square store today and it is a mess: Books, games and outdated electronics. But what if the first floor – which has double-height ceilings, large windows opening on to Union Square and clear views from front to back – was a theater space? This vast space could easily be redesigned to feature frequent ‘scene’ changes and new “sets” ‘flown in’ from above (and below) like a theater in the round with books, characters and storytelling on stage.

I’d go even further by bringing an actual performance space to the ground floor and orienting a movable stage against the immense front windows which would – like the Saks 5th Avenue Christmas windows – grab the attention of shoppers outside the store. Moving the entry doors to the rear of the store would provide a real attention grabber and more ‘theater’ to the book retail experience.

Take, for example, African American History Month: Rather than an insulting and ill-considered gesture, what if B&N Union Square gave up the entire ground floor to the African American Museum of History and Culture? Working together with B&N brand and merchandise managers, what might B&N and the museum’s staff do with the space if everything on the ground floor was movable or reconfigurable? Rethinking book retailing can and should benefit from audacious and deep use of  authors, stories and characters in merchandising. Drawing on a wealth of African American history to create a month of engrossing book theater is a far better idea than those cynical and manipulative book covers. I am certain that the museum’s staff would be able to curate compelling retail theater around the celebration of African American authors, performers, celebrities and others which, for a month at least, would show reading in a fresh light and bring new perspectives to bear. And that’s the point.

Then what do B&N and other book retailers do for the other eleven months of the year? Clearly, most book retailers don’t have the space or financial resources to engage in reinventing the sales experience every 30 days. But it is clear there is room to fundamentally re-think the bookselling experience. Building on the inherent strengths of the publishing industry – characters, themes, genres and partnerships – with a little more imagination and design expertise, booksellers could provide a more experiential shopping adventure for consumers. A recent report from McKinsey notes that companies offering a high level of design and consumer experience grow revenues and shareholder return at nearly twice the rate of less inventive competitors. Retail theater should be second nature for an industry so based on storytelling and it is only shallow thinking and lack of imagination which both holds back the book retailing industry and resulted in those appalling book jackets.

*******

Michael Cairns is a publishing and media executive with over 25 years experience in business strategy, operations and technology implementation.  He has served on several boards and advisory groups including the Association of American Publishers, Book Industry Study Group and the International ISBN organization.   Additionally, he has public and private company board experience.   He can be reached at michael.cairns@infomediapartners.com

Read more articles on my Flipboard magazine:

*******

Are you considering an investment in new technology?  Check out my report on software and services providers.  (PubTech Report)

More Posts:

PND: Get Caught Learning

PND: Exclusive Access Comes to Campus

PND: Questioning my Education

PND: The New McGraw-Hill: Where is Education Textbook Publishing Headed?

Enjoy that?  Here are my predictions from past years:

2020: Predictions 2020: War is Hell
2018: Predictions 2018: Somewhere Else
2017: Predictions 2017: Subscribe To Me
2016: Predictions 2016: Education, China, Platforms and Blockchain.
2013: Predictions 2013: The Death of the Middle Man
2012: Predictions 2012: The Search for Attention
2011: Predictions 2011: The Growth of Intimacy
2010: Predictions 2010: Cloudy With A Chance of Alarm
2009: Predictions 2009: Death and Resurrection:
2008: Predictions 2008
2007: Predictions 2007

NetGalley Announce Hachette Digital Galley Program

One of my favorite new technology companies Net Galley has announced a new client agreement with Hachette to deliver their digital galleys. Here is the press release:

Hachette Book Group announced today that they will use NetGalley to distribute digital galleys and digital press kits (including video, audio, tour schedules, author Q&As, and photos) to reviewers, bloggers, media, booksellers, librarians, and educators.

Using NetGalley, HBG will be able to share secure, text-searchable, full-color digital galleys, which the reader can download onto a variety of devices, including Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo Reader, and the user’s desktop.

Distributing galleys and marketing material through NetGalley is a faster, more efficient, and environmentally conscious method of sharing content. HBG looks to expand its reach into the reviewer and blogger community, delivering digital galleys to their own extensive contact lists, as well as NetGalley’s network of readers who are both hungry for books and embracing the technology—and ease and speed of delivery – that this new platform offers.

NetGalley’s membership currently numbers 12,000 “professional readers.” Readers can register and use the site for free at www.netgalley.com. HBG’s launch catalog on NetGalley includes new titles from Brad Meltzer, Lawrence Block, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Darren Shan, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, Don Winslow, Michael Koryta, Tom Holt and Nic Sheff.

The catalog will expand in the coming months but the current title list is here.

More on NetGalley

Edelweiss Is Blooming

Today’s announcement of the cooperative relationship between Above the Treeline and BookExpoAmerica is a perfect introduction to the potential of the book catalog and electronic promotion tool Edelweiss which launched just over a year ago. Edelweiss will power “Books@BEA” to create an online catalog of new titles from publishers exhibiting at Book Expo 2010 and will be free to both publishers and attendees. Since launch, Edelweiss has grown rapidly to 350 active catalogs containing more than 30,000 titles from nearly 600 publishers and their respective imprints. The exposure at Book Expo will allow new users to recognize the significant advantages that an Electronic catalog has over traditional printed book catalogs.

Building workflow solutions that embed an application into the production flow or process of a business or organization is a powerful way to build customer loyalty. Traditionally, those are not the type of applications you generally see in the book retail space less you happen to be the software provider Above the Treeline, which is doing exactly that.

When I was at Bowker in 2004, I met John Rubin who was rolling out the first version of his software product for small independent retailers. I was immediately taken by the product he was launching. Notably, his product development originated from real experience working with his family-owned independent store and this theme – taking a workflow approach to development – continues to serve the company well as it gains more recent success from Edelweiss, the company’s catalog application.

The core Above the Tree Line product enables booksellers to manage their inventory and store product mix in far more productive and profitable ways. For many stores, using this tool has probably enabled them to weather the recent cruel economic times far more effectively than they may have without it. Stores using the tool are able to see both their own inventory mix and turns and those of other stores in their geographic areas. This ‘collective’ knowledge encourages better market awareness and more intelligent buying decisions, supporting better sales performance.

Edelweiss is a newer product application that builds on the base Above the Treeline application. In speaking to John recently, he emphasized that, in the development of Edelweiss, the workflow approach was key to understanding how a typical bookstore, publisher and publicity person worked with book catalogs. The application has been in full roll-out for just over a year and continues to garner unsolicited positive comments from users. “Timesaver” and “efficiency” seem to be the recurrent themes of this feedback. Above the Treeline was able to establish an early relationship with the ABA and has recently announced an agreement with Association of American University Presses (AAUP).

Edelweiss allows any registered user to create a catalog which can then be marked up and emailed (distributed) to others. The users can order from the catalog and data is also integrated with a store’s point-of-sale system. Users can also add more information to a title such as covers, internal reference materials or other content, and using WYSIWYG screens makes adding this content very easy. From the publisher perspective, they can set up catalogs any way they want. No longer does a publisher or sales rep have to rely on a generic catalog: Building one by genre, previous seasons buys or any other criteria is simple, efficient and effective. The sales rep is also able to create custom address lists so they can create their own mailing lists within the system to make their communication far more productive.

This is a “publisher pays” model with free access to the service for retailers. The publisher pays a base administration fee and then a per-title charge for each six-month period. The payback for publishers should be obvious in reduced hard-copy catalogs, more effective sales reps and better and more efficient buy-in from the stores.

In coming months, the company expects to enhance Edelweiss with several new enhancements that they emphasize (again) come from the feedback they have received from the marketplace. These will include:

• Subject/Format Mapping: Retailers will appreciate the ability to map to POS departments using a combination of bisac subject category and bisac format code.
• Google Map Authors and Titles: Soon the company will introduce the ability to search Edelweiss based on geographic criteria in conjunction with the currently available filter criteria. Set an address and a radius to search, and results will be mapped on Google maps based on available author bio info (residence, birthplace, universities attended or affiliated) and title setting or relevance.
• Custom Market Views: As the number of users and publishers have grown, the company has seen a need to provide different views of the system. Soon retailers and other catalog readers will be able to choose between a number of different market views such as General Trade, Christian Trade, Academic and others. Each view will provide a custom set of publishers, catalogs and titles specifically for that market.

Not only is Above the Treeline expanding the functionality of Edelweiss, but they also continue to look for other opportunities to improve the relationship between independent retailers and publishers (such as the Book Expo relationship). Late last year, the company announced a partnership with Firebrand Technologies that allows integration of the Net Galley e-Galley service into Edelweiss. From their press release:

Edelweiss publishers will be able to use NetGalley’s powerful functionality to offer digital galleys, with or without DRM, directly from their Edelweiss catalogs. NetGalley supports a broad range of dedicated reading devices and platforms and publishers can select reading options and security features based on their specific needs.

For NetGalley publishers with Edelweiss catalogs, this additional functionality will come at no additional charge. Edelweiss publishers who are not currently using NetGalley will be able to purchase the NetGalley add-on on a per-title basis for their Edelweiss catalogs through Above the Treeline. The first electronic galleys provided by NetGalley will appear in Edelweiss in the second quarter of 2010.

As the Net Galley integration takes hold and more Edelweiss functionality is implemented we should see even wider acceptance of Above the Treeline products and services. Interestingly, other publishers outside the traditional independent retail segment are starting to take note of the Above the Treeline products with Moody Publishers and their 34,000 titles announcing that they have chosen Edelweiss as their web-based catalog of choice. And I am sure there will be more to come.

Dayton Literary Prize

Giving authors an opportunity to join the ranks of luminaries like Studs Terkel and Elie Wiesel and acclaimed new talents like Edwidge Danticat and Brad Kessler, The Dayton Literary Peace Prize today launched its call for submissions for 2009’s best fiction and nonfiction works that promote peace and non-violent conflict resolution.

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize is the only international literary peace prize awarded in the United States. It was founded in 2006 as an outgrowth of the Dayton Peace Prize, which commemorates the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords ending the war in Bosnia.

Winners receive a $10,000 honorarium and will be honored at a gala ceremony in Dayton on Sunday, November 8^th, 2009.

As part of the kick-off for this year’s call for submissions, organizers also announced the launch of a Nominating Academy to ensure that the widest possible cross-section of books is considered for this year’s prize. Members of the Nominating Academy include a diverse mix of leaders from the literary, publishing, and progressive worlds including: authors Alan Cheuse (NPR’s “Voice of Books”), Amy Hempel, Brad Kessler (2007 fiction winner for Birds in Fall), and Mark Kurlansky (2007 nonfiction winner for Nonviolence: Twenty-Five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea); Lea Thau, executive director of The Moth; WETA’s books blogger Bethanne Patrick, and Susannah Lupert, executive director of New York City’s Housing Works Bookstore Café. The list of books nominated by the academy will presented to publishers in late February so that titles can be officially submitted for consideration

Book Website Developers - Update

An essay in the NY Times book review on book web site developers who are gaining some notoriety as really good cover designers have in the past. (NYTimes):

The task of the book Web designer can be a tricky one. “Book sites present challenges that fashion and other sorts of sites do not,” Rabb said in a telephone interview. Because of the nature of the book medium in general, and the hope of selling movie rights in particular, “any time I get too specific about the appearance of a character, people start to get very nervous,” he added.

Instead, Rabb aims to represent a book’s “gestalt,” as he puts it. His sites often include original material from the author, as in the one he created for “The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet,” Reif Larsen’s much anticipated first novel about a young Montana prodigy obsessed with mapmaking. That site — which will be rolled out incrementally starting later this month until the book’s release in May — represents a failed “Smithsonian exhibition” of the title character’s work, with some 10 different “cabinets” documenting everything from a taxonomy of all the animals on earth to a map of the American West.

It is nice to see Sheila English (friend of the blog) get a mention in the article as well:

The book video business began back in 2002, when Sheila English, an unpublished romance novelist, trademarked the term Book Trailer and started her own company, Circle of Seven Productions. Her first clients were mostly science-fiction and romance novelists, but the invention of video-sharing sites brought interest from mainstream publishers. Three years ago, English’s company had 12 projects. In 2008, it had 140.

Update:
Over at Publishing Trends they remind me that they did this last month:

And any remaining skeptics out there, take note: Website visits translate directly to the number of books bought. Book shoppers who had visited an author website in the past week bought 38% more books, from a wider range of retailers, than those who had not visited an author site. “Is putting up a website going to make a book a bestseller? No,” says Chin. “Is the website going to help the author build an audience? I believe it can. What you don’t want is for someone to hear about your book, search for it with Google, and find nothing. That’s a potential lost sale.”

Web presence is especially essential in today’s economy. “Websites have become even more important as people are not in stores discovering books,” Fitzgerald says. “We need to get them jazzed about a title and their favorite author and give them reason not just to buy the book, but also to have a relationship with the author and his or her work so they become evangelists for them with fellow readers. These next months, author websites and communications with readers are going to be critical for engendering excitement in readers online, since something as crucial as in-store browsing is not happening.”

The point, of course, is not just to get readers to visit an author site once, but to keep them coming back. How do you make a website sticky?“The saying ‘build it and they will come,’ well, they won’t,” says Burke. He and the other designers we spoke with agreed that flashy design is not a key to success, and the Codex Group research bears that out, with Stephenie Meyer’s website as a case in point. It receives more traffic than any other fiction author site, yet its design is extremely basic, “probably a generic template where you plug in your header graphic,” says Hildick-Smith. “She may only be paying $15 a month for this site on some server system. It’s not elaborately designed at all. But she’s got a daily blog, and more than any other site in our study, she has links to fan sites. Fan site links appear to contribute to loyal audience traffic.”

Why The Embargo Doesn't Work

LA Times on book review embargos and the particular case of Ron Suskinds The Way of the World. They see something fishy:

As Ulin said Tuesday, publishers' "embargoes are contrivances designed not to protect the contents of the book but to create a media feeding frenzy when a book comes out. Often, the entire purpose is to protect some kind of exclusive arrangement with a particular news outlet. That's not about news; it's about publicity, and it implicates the news media as part of the publicity juggernaut, reducing us watchdogs to lap dogs."The willingness of major publishing houses to take on projects like Suskind's is an act of public service as well as commerce. Projects such as Suskind's don't need to be marketed with the sort of calculation routinely reserved for celebrity tell-alls. In fact, the aura created by an orchestrated publicity campaign can even undermine the authority of the sort of journalism Ron Suskind practices.

Book Launch 2.0

This is funny video about book promotion in the web 2.0 age. Sadly, the 1.0 world wasn't that great but it's only got worse.

Tip of the hat to Brantley

London Book Fair

BBC video from the London Book Fair.

Here

Traditional Marketing is 40% Less Important

The editors at Publishing Trends have annouced the results of their recent online marketing survey which indicates that 40% of book publicists believe traditional marketing makes less of an impact than two years ago. The Publishing Trends survey reveals that nearly all book publicists (70.9%) claim to devote up to half their resources to online marketing, but that the New York Times and Publishers Weekly still make the most impact when it comes to publicizing new titles.

Publishing Trends emailed the survey early in January to publicists at publishers, independent publicity firms, and agencies, and sent a companion survey to members of the book-related media, both online and off. Though most publicists polled say they devote up to 50% of their resources to online marketing, 90% of the publicists working at publishing houses say they should be doing more.

While their publicity counterparts did not reach a consensus, media respondents consider online marketing a “must” for Technology, Travel, Business, Sci-fi, and Health titles. When asked to describe in their own words what the online book marketing world will look like in five years respondents predicted “smarter, more targeted practices,” “all authors MUST blog and have scheduled chats,” and “huge increase in digital content.”

What are the obstacles keeping publicists from doing more online marketing? Not having enough time to explore it (67.1%), cost (52.9%), lack of technology know-how (31.4%), and luddite bosses (5.7%) rank the highest.

For further information or a copy of the article, go to publishingtrends.com.

Graphic Realities

I wrote a post last week about Graphic novels related to an article that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer. My post generated this comment from Van Allan and it is a post in and of itself about the developing graphic novel marketplace:


It is amazing to see how much the medium of graphic novels have grown over the past 20 years. And it's been fascinating to see Hollywood come calling. However, I do believe quite strongly that there are some major barriers on the distribution side of things that have inhibited this growth and have prevented comics from growing as much as they could. The main issue isn’t in the book trade, however, but rather in the Direct Market (the “comic shops”).

Diamond's monopoly on the Direct Market has become far too onerous for any of the non-brokered publishers. It boggles my mind that so many of these publishers signed exclusive distribution deals with Diamond that have really gotten them nothing at all. Diamond will still not take an inventory position on titles and "out of stock" titles become defacto "out of print" in many, many cases. Getting re-orders flowing through Diamond in a way that I'm familiar as a bookseller with would seem to be nearly impossible. From this point of view, Diamond is not a distributor at all, but rather a freight-forwarder. And since they are the exclusive supplier in the Direct Market, they really are the only game in town. Certainly the ability to use just-in-time inventory management is a major problem on the retail level as a result of this. Factor in low discounts to retailers and you have a situation that leads to conservatism in ordering. It is fascinating to me that a title like Persepolis performed so much better in the book trade channel. I think the same can be said for manga.

Just to drive this point home even further: it is no surprise to me whatsoever that both Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly have set-up retail operations (in Seattle and Montreal respectfully. The distribution situation is fundamentally untenable as it stands right now and publishers are trying to find alternatives. This all means that if a small press title (and really, that means anything published by anyone save for Marvel, DC, Image and Dark Horse) has small initial orders from Diamond, growing sales long-term is almost impossible. A title is dead right out of the gate.

In my own case, I know that if I tried to launch my graphic novel through Diamond tomorrow I'd be facing initial orders of no more than 300 copies. I'd be looking at re-orders at only another 100-200 if I was very lucky. Even if I managed to get into Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Bookazine, North 49, etc..., orders would most likely be very poor. Printing 1000 copies of my graphic novel is about the minimum I can shoot for with offset printers like Lebonfon. I suspect the odds are long that I'd sell that many over the course of a year.

I think this partially explains why so many graphic novelists are turning to the web and trying to gain traction that way. It certainly does in my case. While I think the diversity in what is being brought to market is truly amazing, I suspect we’re heading towards a schism between the two channels (if we’re not experiencing it already). And that is a somewhat scary proposition for those of us trying to earn a living in this medium.

Philadelphia Graphic

The Philadelphia Inquirer (philly.com) has an overview of the the growth of graphic novels and the accelerating relationship with movie productions from these works:

The genre's success has carved out new bookshelf space in bookstores, and caused Hollywood to come calling: In addition to Miller's Sin City and 300, recent movies such as V for Vendetta, Road to Perdition, and A History of Violence began as graphic novels. The holiday season brings the animated film version of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, about girlhood in Iran after the fall of the shah; Satrapi served as codirector. Satrapi lives in France, a nation where graphic novels have been a respected form for decades. In Japan, the bulky comics known as manga are read by businessmen on the subway. In many ways, America has embraced its graphic novelists a little late. Even so, the genre's success is due to its global appeal, Mahoney said. Graphics with straightforward dialogue enable the medium to simplify complex issues and cut through language and cultural barriers at the lightning speed of the Internet.

The article orients itself around an exhibit at the Norman Rockwell museum in Stockbridge MA. which is described as 'captivating'. I will do what they didn't which is to link to the exhibition which runs from November 10 - May 26, 2008.

LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel
A burgeoning art form with roots planted firmly in history, graphic novels, or long-form comic books, have inspired the interest of the literary establishment and a growing number of readers. For today's aficionados, graphic novels, with their antiheroes and visual appeal, are positioned to usurp the role that the novel once played. Focused on subjects as diverse as the nature of relationships, the perils of war, and the meaning of life, graphic novels now comprise the fastest-growing sections of many bookstores‹an accessible, vernacular art form with mass appeal.

Cancelled: Lynne Spears Parenting Book!

Is it really a surprise that Lynne Spears book on Parenting that was to be published in 2008 has been cancelled? Thomas Nelson is saying it has been delayed not cancelled. Perhaps she can rethink this as "Lynne Spears: Grand Parenting for Dummies."

Why digital galleys are not scary

I’m currently working with a product that has, among other features, the capability to send digital advance reading copies to media and reviewers—a concept that they are working diligently to under-emphasize because of the instinctive “that wouldn’t work for us” reaction they have received from media, reviewers and publishers alike.

This is unfortunate and short-sighted. Yes, of course, we aren’t at the point where digital galleys can replace the good, old-fashioned portability of the physical book---for a full read. But outright rejection of the digital underscores the many other ways reviewers and media use content.

Full-text digital galleys are searchable, for one, invaluable for fact checking of reviews and articles. And especially helpful because galleys often are sent without indexes. Publications could benefit from digital galleys when preparing roundups (Essential Cranberry Cooking for the Holidays—New Hot Recipes from 10 New Cookbooks and all). And let’s not forget that for certain types of media, reading the text isn’t essential—a colleague of mine gave me an example of a gossip columnist who might skim or search a text for a reference but whose need for speed would always usurp a full, critical read. Radio and television producers often mine upcoming books for content of interest to their audiences or host, and what better way to pass along a potential find than digitally? For large organizations with multiple levels of approval this is especially salient.

Finally, there is the green element, of some interest as evidenced by BISG’s and Green Press Initiative’s recent U.S. Book Industry Climate Impacts and Environmental Benchmarking Study. What interests me about the green element is the potential for media to use digital galleys to read first chapters, often an essential step in deciding if a book will be reviewed or covered.

Overall, publicity is about selling. Even reviewing, albeit more high-brow, is about recommending worthy reads. Why wouldn’t publishers and media want to share their content faster and more accurately? A production soldier at a major publisher told me that many authors, agents and editors lament the inaccuracy of galleys, since the text often changes between the time the galley goes into print production and is mailed. Digital means capturing a timelier version of the text, and aren’t we all happier for that?

I am not advocating a truly paperless advance publication workflow; that time has not yet come. But as an industry we could be braver about trying digital galleys as a supplement to print. I think the results would be surprising.