I once had a conversation with a former editor in which I tried to explain why I was confused and dismayed about a particular way my books were being marketed, and I said, “I’ve decided to just think of the way that this would be done in the normal business world, then think of the exact opposite, and then that’s what I’ll expect in the publishing world.” She agreed that this was probably the best way to stay sane. I was sort of joking at the time, but publishing is often a bizarroworld upside down kind of place.
Take the way most bookstores are laid out. It’s just about the exact opposite of the way most other kinds of stores are organized. In grocery stores, the staple perishable items that are the common reasons for frequent grocery store trips, such as milk, meat, bread and eggs, are at the back of the store or on the periphery. If you’re just running into the store for a gallon of milk, you have to go through aisles full of cookies, cake mixes, convenience foods, ice cream, potato chips and frozen pizzas to get there. That exposes you to a lot of items that might not have been on your list but that might tempt you. The quick trip to grab a gallon of milk might end with you taking home a bag full of groceries you hadn’t been planning to buy. A grocery store would lose a lot of sales by putting a cooler with milk and eggs right by the checkout stand at the front of the store.
But that’s essentially what bookstores do. They put the books that are most in demand, that 
people are most likely to go to the bookstores in search of, right at the front of the store. If you want the latest bestseller, you can step into the store, grab the book without breaking stride and head straight to the cash register without even seeing another book. This summer, you’ll have to scale a mountain of Harry Potter books to get to the rest of the store. How many more books would the store sell if you had to make your way past aisles of other books in order to get to the much-hyped bestseller? A variety of books attractively displayed on the path to the bestseller wall at the back of the store would surely bring about more than a few impulse purchases. And would that significantly decrease sales of the big bestsellers? Would someone who wants the new James Patterson book or the new Nora Roberts not end up buying it if she had to walk to the back of the store rather than picking it up from the table directly in front of the store entrance? After all, people usually do end up buying milk and eggs even when they have to go all the way to the back of the store to get them.
The publishers share the blame for the bizarroworld merchandising approach, since their relationship with booksellers includes things like co-op money to pay for store placement. The big bestsellers get the lion’s share of co-op money, which puts them front and center in the store. But you have to wonder if this is really the most effective use of publisher marketing dollars, or if this is merely the way it’s always been done (as well as a way of making the bigger authors feel loved). Does devoting all the marketing money to books that are already guaranteed to sell well result in a commensurate number of additional sales? Or would there be a greater return on investment if that money were spent on a greater variety of books lower in the list, perhaps to place them on displays along the aisles leading to the bestseller wall in the back of the store? That way, in addition to selling the bestseller, the stores and the publishers would possibly sell more additional books that otherwise might have gone unnoticed. The midlist books would probably see a more significant uptick in sales due to store placement, giving publishers more bang for the buck.
The difficulty in changing the way things are done, even if it’s a move to something better and more profitable, is that it’s a challenge to turn the world upside down. No one wants to be the one who leaps first. The bookstore that tells publishers it will be displaying bestsellers at the rear of the store from now on stands to lose a ton of co-op money that likely will go to its competitors and keep it from offering the most competitive pricing after losing publisher discounts. The publisher that tells booksellers it won’t be offering co-op for placement on its next bestseller will likely just lose that space to another publisher’s bestsellers instead of opening up more space for midlist books. The publisher that tells its lead author that her co-op money will now be going to pay for placement for four midlist authors will probably lose that author to another house that offers better marketing support. I’m not sure what it will take before someone realizes that things aren’t working so well, and the earnings reports I’ve seen from both publishers and bookstore chains seem to me to indicate that something does need to change. Maybe all those book people should go grocery shopping and learn a thing or two.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that I’m only pondering these things because my latest book, Damsel Under Stress, may or may not be found on “new releases” tables near the front of the bookstore starting May 1, but is more likely to be found on the general fiction shelves in back. Fortunately, my neighborhood grocery store has really taken temptation marketing to the next level by stocking wine on the aisle that leads directly to the milk coolers in the back of the store, which will come in handy if the publishing industry drives me to drink.
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You know, I never thought about it before but you’re right(and me, having worked 4 years in a bookstore!) All the in-demand books are right near the front, near the registers. Maybe that’s the key – keep them near the registers so those impulse buyers don’t have second thoughts.
I know I am a spontaneous book shopper most of the time – I might walk in to buy one or two books, but end up with five. Not unusual, though I read romance, which is usually located near the back of the store, by the bathrooms, where there is heavier traffic – I really hate that LOL.
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I tend to bypass those tables at the front – I’ve seen them all before, plastered over the windows in posters and displays, on the little stands small newsagents sometimes have, on little train station displays (I’m talking UK here if it makes any difference) etc. etc. I don’t care what’s selling the best. I wanna browse. I wanna find new stuff. I also want to be shown which books are new out and which are worth a look (in reviewer, publisher, hell, store employee opinion).
Bestsellers should be easy to find, since lots of people want to buy them, but it’d be nice to have similar authors ‘if you like x you’ll like y’ placed close by, maybe with one of those little card reviews that one store (Ottaker’s?) sticks on the shelf. I think it’s boring and unimaginative the way they use the space. All that imagination and adventure inside the pages, but none in the stores. Good job I’m overexcited when I find a good bookshop and will happily search for what I want/think I want.
Actually, there are a lot of other things that bother me about bookstores, which is why I tend to use Amazon/Abe…
I have seen some lovely independant shops lay things out like a tantalising buffet table. I’m so much more likely to pile up 10 books from these places.
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The “if you like x, you might also like y” kind of displays are something else bookstores could learn from supermarkets. For instance, when strawberries are in season, my neighborhood grocery store surrounds the strawberry display with things that go with strawberries — angel food cake, whipped topping, sponge cake cups, packaged crepes, jars of strawberry glaze, etc. You might be going to buy strawberries, and seeing all that other stuff gives you ideas for more things you might want to go with them.
Some stores are good about doing that, but I wonder if the co-op marketing situation comes into play. A publisher paying big bucks to get their lead author’s new title displayed front and center isn’t going to want some other book to be a distraction. Going back to the Harry Potter example, the big Harry Potter display is only HP stuff in my neighborhood store. That seems like a huge wasted opportunity to grow readers when they’re doing the midnight release party. Anyone going to the midnight release party probably already has a copy of every other book in the series. A more valuable display would be of books you might like if you like Harry Potter, because you’re going to need something else to read and get hooked on when the series is finished. All those people hanging around in the store waiting for midnight need something new to look at.
And I’m not just saying that because my books would probably be on the “if you like this, you’ll also like this” Harry Potter table. :-)
I bet independent stores that aren’t quite as tied to publisher co-op money do a better job of this, but alas, there are none in my area.
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Shanna,
I’ve got to say that I found Enchanted Inc. on the front table with the new paperbacks,I seen your cover and picked it up on a whim,it looked like a fun read. I’m not big on grabbing the bestseller books in the front of the store,I like sitting in the romance isle looking through books that look interesting.
Hugs, Danette
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Shanna,
I recently saw the movie Blood Diamond, where the characters would shrug and say TIA (This is Africa) when something really screwd up happened or there was some policy that made no sense. LIke Africa was beyond explanation. I decided writers need TIP (This is Publishing)
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Shanna,
Good topic!
The placement of Romances at local bookstores really ticks me off. At Borders in Glendale, CA, after the store was recently refurbished, Romances (bought by buyers who average 100 books a year) have been relegated to the back of the 2ND FLOOR, where older people, who can’t manuever stairs, can’t have access. (There is one lone elevator, if one doesn’t have claustrophobia.) If one wants to dash in & buy a book, it takes a good 20 mins. to run up the stairs, find the book & run back downstairs to check it out. Now, if a customer buys about 100 books a year, wouldn’t it make sense to allow them to pass by those books SOMEWHERE on the lst floor?
I complained about the change & was told that top 10 Fiction were placed with MAGAZINES & the Starbucks counter on the lst floor. All others, moved to 2nd floor. Now, that certainly made sense to me. My solution, never to go there again. What jerks!
Patricia
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I think the reason the milk and eggs analogy doesn’t quite work with bookstores is because ALL books are luxury items, even the bestsellers. All books are frozen pizzas. If you have ten dollars only, you’re going to buy milk and eggs, not books.
So I think that, as Patricia said, if they put those bestsellers, those “guaranteed” moneymakers in a place that’s harder to dash into, they might not end up selling as well, since people can skip getting the new bestseller the way they can’t skip buying food.
Lori, I haven’t seen Blood Diamond, but that line reminds me of Chinatown.