The Big Bad Book Blog » bestsellers

No More “Tuesdays with Marley”: Avoid Copy-cating Bestsellers

Aaron Hierholzer — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:46:42 +0000

One of our favorite moments of last May’s BookExpo coverage was this one-liner from Bob Miller of HarperStudio: during a discussion on “Stupid Things Publishers & Booksellers Do,” he said, “No more Tuesdays with Marley?” He was, of course, referring to the hastily (and poorly) produced copycats that tend to follow breakout successes in the book world. (Here’s looking at you, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.)

The lesson is to not let market trends alone dictate the book you decide to write and publish. Most of the time, book buyers will see right through a blatant attempt to piggyback onto a successful book that was probably a success because it was a well-written and smartly packaged book—not because it contained special subject matter (boy wizards, emo vampires, etc.) that readers craved in and of itself.

Anyway, if you thought Tuesdays with Marley was clever, you’ll love the fake-bestseller contest put on by Steve Hely, author of How I Became a Famous Novelist (Grove Press). His book includes a mock NYT bestseller list [PDF alert], and he invited others to come up with their own bogus book titles. A personal favorite, from @ami_with_an_i: “Punk Girls Don’t Get Fat: The Secrets of Staying Skinny on Just Two Packs of Camel Wides and a Flask of Cheap Whiskey a Day.” See them all on Twitter and on Facebook. (PS: This is also near-brilliant social media marketing, obviously.)

Harry Potter = Death Star

Matthew Patin — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 16:47:33 +0000

The Nielsen Company has released a report on the pervasive, indomitable Harry Potter brand in media, PW Daily reports. Most curious in the report is the money made from Potter transubstantiation: U.S. consumers spent $11.8 million on Harry Potter-licensed trademark cookies, candy and gum products since June 2002. Some other highlights:

The first four Harry Potter films have grossed more than $3.5 billion worldwide
The four Harry Potter movie soundtracks combined have sold more than 1.1 million copies in the U.S. There have been 180,000 total downloads of songs from those soundtracks.
According to a recent Nielsen Cinema survey of moviegoers, 28% of persons 12+ in the U.S. have read one or more of the previous Harry Potter books, and 15% have read all the Harry Potter books to date.

According to Nielsen’s press release, of the top selling books in the U.S. since 2001, three were Potter books. Four Potter films are included in the 20 highest grossing films of all time.

Bigger Discounts Just in Time for the Holiday Season

Aaron Hierholzer — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 21:39:52 +0000

Barnes & Noble announced deeper discounts for their membership club members to help compete against discounters, warehouse clubs and online retailers. Members pay $25-a-year and receive a 40% discount on fiction and nonfiction bestsellers, and a 20% discount on all hardcover titles. They will also continue to receive a 10% discount on everything else sold in the store, including coffee and paperbacks. Members had received an extra 10% discount in addition to the usual 30% discount off hardcover bestsellers, and a 10% discount on other adult hardcover titles.

In an article by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg of the Wall Street Journal, Joseph J. Lombardi, Barnes & Noble’s chief financial officer, is quoted as saying “You have to be competitive. We’ve been talking about softness in the hardcover business, and this lets us support that format with our best customers.”

To learn more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116174027712702867.html?mod=2_1167_1

Return to Sender: The Story of a Love–Hate Relationship with Book Returns

Aaron Hierholzer — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 16:04:38 +0000

The history page on Simon & Schuster’s website proudly declares that its founders made it “the first publisher to offer booksellers the privilege of returning unsold copies for credit—a practice that revolutionizes the book business,” happily oblivious to all the anger and controversy their little invention has caused.

Some numbers:
• 40 percent of manufactured books never sell.
• The typical waiting period before books start the long and expensive trek back to the warehouse is a mere four months.
• The industry return rate is 36.3 percent for hardcover and 25 percent for paperback.
• Superstores like Barnes & Noble sell around 70–80 percent of what they order, discounters like Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club only 60 percent.
• 37 percent of all books sent to stores in 2002 were returned.
• HarperCollins lost $250 million in 2002 on returns alone.
• Between 65 and 95 percent of returned books are destroyed once they come back from a bookseller (that’s a lot of time, energy, and money to be turned back into pulp).

The process was developed to help the little guy. In 1924, Max Schuster and Dick Simon were two enterprising young men scrambling to get the world’s first crossword puzzle compilation off the ground. They pitched the idea of a completely refundable product to the bookstores in hopes that it would make them more willing to buy. It worked, but in retrospect the practice seems almost as gimmicky as the little pencil that came attached to The Crossword-Puzzle Book. Bookstores decide how much to order; if they order too much, they can send it back.

So why continue such an antiquated and outmoded system? It’s a good question. The most important benefit is that returns allow bookstores to take risks, just like they did back in the crossword craze of the 1920s. A book buyer with a bit of intuition can have a spunky little unknown rubbing spines with Dean Koontz and Anne Rice in no time. Without the guarantee of 100 percent returnable merchandise, bookstores would be tempted to order only bestsellers or books with huge preestablished appeal.

So returns are a vital part of getting the book into stores. But once your book is on the shelf, returns become the enemy. As it exists currently, the returns process is often an exercise in inefficiency and waste. Perhaps reform is the key: Several years ago the advisory firm KPMG produced a report called “Tackling Returns,” which detailed steps to a more organized and less wasteful returns process in the U.K. That report sparked the Book Industry Returns Initiative, a movement that now lists hundreds of companies as supporters of its cause. Key to the proposed new methods are better organization and improved stock management. In the U.S., returns have been getting worse in the last decade, but the climate for small publishers has been improving. It’s also worth noting that of all bookstore outlets, independent stores have the highest sell-through rates (around 80 percent), suggesting that careful and insightful buying can minimize returns.

On the publisher’s side, preventing returns means getting back to basics: producing a quality product in numbers you can sell through, then timing publicity to coincide with distribution so you don’t have huge numbers of unpromoted books sitting on the shelf. When you do have to deal with returns, just remember that the ability to return your fresh-printed babies may be what nudges a buyer into giving them a place on the shelf and a chance at a reader’s attention. There’s something to be said for the process—but if you could give those ol’ crossword-puzzle hustlers a piece of your mind, even they would probably understand.