NYT: Non-Bookstore Book Sales
Books are turning up in the oddest places these days.
With book sales sagging — down 2.6 percent as of August over the same period last year, according to the Association of American Publishers — publishers are pushing their books into butcher shops, carwashes, cookware stores, cheese shops, even chi-chi clothing boutiques where high-end literary titles are used to amplify the elegant lifestyle they are attempting to project.
What began as a trickle of cookbooks in kitchen shops and do-it-yourself titles in hardware stores has become, in recent months, the fastest growing component in many major publishers’ retail strategies.
“It’s a way for the book business to stay alive,” said Abby Hoffman, the vice president of sales and marketing for Chronicle Books in San Francisco, which sells most of its 350 offbeat titles each year to places like high-end grocery stores, children’s clothing stores and wineries. “Anyplace that sells merchandise is a place to sell books.”
When Starbucks got into the book business last month, it hitched its brand to Mitch Albom’s latest inevitable best seller, “For One More Day,” helping propel it to the top of the lists. But the shift in the business can more clearly be seen in the sale of lower-profile authors in lower-profile settings, where the right title in the right location can make all the difference for a book that might otherwise sink without a trace.
Is this the beginning of the end for bookstores? Lots of questions. The NYTimes article has more thoughts here.
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Posted by Giles, Thursday, November 2, 2006, at 9:14 AM.
Posted to Books | Publishing | Whatever
Comments:
Giles,
I saw the article, too. Very interesting. And optimistic for pulishers. Hopefully, more book design will emerge due to the “surge” in distribution outlets and sales. Guess we’ll see. Looking good though!
VR/
Interesting post, thanks, Giles. I’ve been reading about this phenomenon in the newsletter of the Publisher’s Marketing Association (a highly recommended organization). As discussed in one recent article, the big drive behind this is not only finding new sales outlets, which is always important, of course, but because these “non-traditional” outlets like gift shops and catalogs sell books on a different arrangement than traditional bookstores: no returns allowed.
A publiser in Marietta, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, recently closed its doors because it just could not keep up with a backwards system that allows retailers to over-order more books than they can sell and then return a third or more of them six months later (in resalable condition or not) and the publusher has to eat it. As a new independent publisher, we’re not even pursuing a traditonal bookstore strategy because the risks are too high.
Dan Read
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