A New Look at Bookstores for Aspiring Publishers

Getting into publishing is very competitive so it is best to start building your awareness of not only books, but bookstores, marketing, and sales techniques as early as possible. This does not have to be a strenuous task nor do you need to spend hours reading articles online, it can simply be a tour of your local book retailers. This is also relatively inexpensive (if you can hold yourself back from buying any more books)!

Even if you’re extremely busy, just remember to note window displays next time you’re passing, or take a brief walk down the book aisle in the supermarket during your weekly shop. Also, look for books being sold in non-traditional book sellers and consider their chosen titles – are they gift/impulse buys or high literature?

Different bookstores take different approaches to marketing and selling books (and merchandise) in attempts to create their own powerful USP (Unique Selling Point). For instance, on UK high streets you can often find a W H Smiths and Waterstones in close proximity, but do they attract the same people? Often they sell some of the same books, but looking at their store layouts, other products and promotions it appears they target rather different audiences (though there may be some crossover).

Waterstones is first and foremost a bricks-and-motor bookstore which may also offer book related products e.g. bookmarks, branded merchandise and gift items, whilst W H Smiths is known for variety – specialising in magazines, gift cards, stationery, books and other media (CDs, DVDs).

Waterstones will display new titles prominently at the front of the store, and new and popular choices on table displays throughout (depending on the size of the store), some with discounts (buy one get one half price), some with recommendations/reviews from booksellers and some organised on tables by specific categories i.e. ‘unputdownable’, ‘cult classics’ etc. All this encourages browsing.

W H Smiths will sometimes offer deeper discounts, but does not generally carry the same range of titles, usually focusing on the most popular or recognisable titles and authors e.g. Jamie Oliver, Harry Potter, Mills and Boon, David Walliams etc. Rather than encourage extensive browsing W H Smiths aims for impulse or multi buys; you may go in for a birthday card or stationery but end up spending a short time walking through the book aisle.

This is where target audiences crossover, you may use W H Smiths for stationery and, as I mentioned above, pick up a book on impulse, but when you go to purposefully shop for books you may choose Waterstones for its easy, browser-friendly comfort and more knowledgeable staff.

Here you represent two different target audiences, a serious book-buyer and a casual shopper. Consider your usual store choices and think about how you shop differently in each. How do the stores facilitate this? What are the promoting at the tills (POS – Point of Sale)? Are you encouraged to walk slower and look around or does it take a massive, bright discount poster or interesting display to slow you down as you march to the section of the store you were aiming for?

If you start to think about these questions during your normal shopping trips you will start to develop an insight into the tactics deployed by marketing professionals, how these are translated into displays by book sellers, and possibly why certain titles become better known than others.

Whatever area of publishing you wish to enter, be it editorial, marketing, rights or production, it is helpful to have an understanding of the other departments and how the decisions made in each influence consumers (and consequently the best seller charts).

 

Photos in the image, above, where taken at various points around Oxford. Bookstores included Waterstones, Blackwells, OUP, Oxfam and St. Andrews.

The North - South Divide

As someone just starting out in publishing one of the key barriers I have noticed is geography. The publishing industry is very London-centric, leading to a rather elite network of London or Southern based professionals and students, with a few others from outside the commuter belt who are able to afford travel and accommodation costs. Whether it is attending a conference, a networking event or finding work experience London, it seems, is the place to go.

Of course, this has a lot to do with the number of publishers and publishing services based in the South compared to the rest of the country. London alone is home to 326 publishers, Oxford 32 and Cambridge 14, whilst Edinburgh hosts a meagre 11, Birmingham 7 and Manchester 6 (not including specialist localised magazines etc.). The number of publishing services present in UK cities follow suit, with London and Oxford on top. (publishersglobal.com)

Publishing is therefore a very southern enterprise (as well as being white and fairly middle-class), a fact that New Writing North’s Claire Malcolm bemoans, stating in The Bookseller that more diversity is needed.

And why shouldn’t regional diversity be addressed as strongly as class or ethnic diversity? After all the same argument stands; people like to read stories they can connect to, and this more often than not comes from reading books by, and about, those from similar backgrounds.

The Spare Room project, supported by the Publishers Association, launched earlier this year in an attempt to tackle regional diversity by helping students and graduates from outside London to find accommodation in the city. An admirable policy perhaps, but limited. Whilst it undoubtedly helped some young people in organising work experience by reducing costs, each placement only lasted one week and was only available in July and August. As a pilot scheme the project couldn’t really be expected to solve all the problems overnight, so here’s to hoping it is re-introduced next year with a wider remit.

Enabling more young people to access work experience with publishers is great, however, it can be argued this only treats the symptoms of a London-centric industry and not the cause. To really even the playing field for aspiring publishers in the North and Midlands a broader perspective is needed. Publishing isn’t the only industry to suffer under the North-South Divide and in order for publishers, especially the big five, to consider investing in projects north of the M25, a fair distribution of investment is needed from all areas.

However, publishers should not look to politicians to help address regional diversity as the North-South Divide has flummoxed Westminster for decades, a state of confusion which isn’t likely to change without severe pressure and perhaps someone with a sharper mind than theirs (and mine) telling them exactly what to do.



Image from The Spectator

Education could be the way forward. As a publishing student I recently researched Masters courses offered in the UK and surprise, surprise most were situated in the south. UCL, Kingston and UAL in London, Brookes in Oxford, Anglia Ruskin in Cambridge, Bath Spa, and Plymouth. Scotland had Edinburgh Napier and Stirling whilst the Midlands and the North had Derby and Central Lancashire (not necessarily a comprehensive list).

(Due to the increased likelihood of work experience placements I chose Oxford Brookes – Derby was far to close (I grew up down the road), Edinburgh too far and London too big and city-ish).

The University of Derby’s publishing course will welcome its first students this month, hopefully opening up the publishing industry to new students who would not have considered entering the industry before due to the cost of living in the south (Oxford and London remarkable more expensive than the Midlands and the North) or distance from home. With programme leader Alistair Hodge a key proponent of the Spare Room Project his students will be able to balance out the advantages gained by studying nearer the publishing heartland.

Although publishing is a London-centric industry, it is hardly the only one and cannot really be expected to redress regional diversity on its own. There are bigger economic, political and social divides between the North and South than even publishing, as a key guardian of social opinion freedom of speech, can realistically tackle. That’s not to say publishing should not play a role, we’ll never get anywhere if each industry simply sat back and waited for someone else to do all the hard work for them.

What we need is more investment in projects which look to improve diversity; whether through financial, cultural, voluntary or political investment, any attempt at opening up publishing to new talent can only be beneficial in the long-term, for individuals and the industry as a whole.

Sources: The Bookseller, The Spectator, The Financial Times, publishersglobal.com, University of Derby, Publishers Association

Networking in Publishing - A Personal View

To Network: To cultivate people who may be useful professionally



Xplore Publishing Image: Networking



I've been researching the publishing industry for over a year now - ever since the idea was floated as a possible career path - and there's one aspect I struggle to champion and enact: networking.

As a relatively compact industry everyone seems to know everyone else. Quite the dilemma when you're not only new to the table but when you currently live the wrong side of the North/South divide and travel and accommodation is too expensive to consider an unpaid internship.

Of course I have heard the popular saying "it's not what you know, it's who you know" but I've always approached it with caution and viewed such situations with the attitude of concerned resignation - a sort of "it's not the best reality but that's life and we may as well get on with it" philosophy.

This is not to say that I've never made use of connections; I got my first job through my best friend, and I then went on to recommend my boss hire our other friends. I got my brother his first job and my father his first post-retirement job. So, I'm not a stranger to the power of networks. However, I would say the positions I gained with no prior knowledge of, or connections with, other employees feel the most satisfactory. I was the best candidate and so I was chosen (I say this quite modestly).

After my first internship (achieved due to a good CV and cover letter) I was advised to build my network and to exploit my contacts. Maybe it's because I'm too British, or just a little introverted, but I don't like asking for things, I don't like to put people out, and 'exploit' sounds far too pushy and dictorial.

This also meant I had to get with all the social media sites (not a bad idea for others looking to enter publishing) and I have now tripled my digital presence by creating, or re-investing in, social media. This is more time consuming than you might first assume but hopefully it'll pay off; especially as I  heard from a recent graduate that the first thing employers look at is your LinkedIn profile.


Google Images

Admittedly, not all networking sounds that bad, and at least with publishing its expected. Also, unlike the stereotypical networks between politicians and big business it's not an exclusive 'golfer-only' club. In fact, my confidence in networking within the publishing industry has grown since realising contacts are there for friendly, professional advice and not brown-nosing; and more importantly publishers seem happy to share experiences and welcome new members into the fold.

I was of course encouraged to network when I found out that wine is often available at events and you always learn something new (about publishing, not wine). So with this in mind, and a wary enthusiasm, I'm off to exploit, exploit, exploit.

To this aim, hello lovely reader! How about clicking one of these cute little share buttons, or treating me to my first subscriber? Or maybe just add a comment about your experiences of networking, any tips to share?

 

Is Facebook Still Relevant?

With the number of social media platforms increasing consistently and younger generations flocking towards the newest and trendiest sites, is owning a Facebook page still a relevant marketing strategy?

The Facts

Excel chart: original data Jetscram

As can be seen in the chart above, the average age of Facebook users has increased, with 35-54 year olds now occupying the largest slice of the pie. Compared to Facebook’s early years this is quite a shift, indeed, between 2011 and 2014 it lost 25% of its teenaged users whilst the number of over 55s using the site increased 80% in 2013 alone.

However, this may not be a bad thing for advocates of Facebook since the younger generations are not likely to be the biggest spenders, with most still in school, unemployed, on low wages and/or paying off student debts.

In fact, with an older age demographic Facebook may be a better platform for businesses to engage with than other social media sites which attract a younger crowd. For instance, Instagram with 53% of users between 18 and 29.

Although the age demographic of Facebook has changed over the years it has remained equally attractive to the urban, suburban and rural communities and is used by people of every educational background and income level as well as by different ethnicities and nationalities.

Moreover, on average users spend longer on Facebook than on any other site, suggesting the fall in popularity with under 18s does not mark the end of its usefulness to businesses or advertisers.

Google Images*

However, this does not necessarily make Facebook a dead cert for successful business use. To be sure of a decent ROI (Return On Investment) social media profiles must be kept updated and must capture and retain the attention of users. Extremely challenging in a world where we are faced with over 5000 adverts a day (from food packaging to online pop-ups).

Creativity is key, and this takes time and energy. It’s been suggested effort is better concentrated on strategies such as email marketing as this has a proven track record of being more profitable, with a higher percentage of users clicking through to the business website or campaign page.

Despite this argument for email marketing over social media, can you really expect people to click on your email offer if they’ve never really heard of you? And worse still, emails from a low-profile business may be relegated as spam.

Facebook, with its exceptional membership stats and wide demographic, is a great base for engagement. Social media is (surprisingly) designed for socialising so setting aside time every week to upload new content and reply to potential customers can prove beneficial in the long term.

Engagement is key – it’s probably worse to own a Facebook page and not use it or to use it infrequently and badly than it is to now own one at all.

And what about Twitter?

Well, whilst Twitter incites engagement, Facebook boats a significantly larger membership base (1.3billion to Twitters 288million active monthly users) and so immediately offers a larger potential audience. Twitter’s demographics are also not as diverse, with the majority of users from more affluent backgrounds, urban and male.

Although Twitter delivers a higher click through rate on paid-for adverts, Facebook wins when it comes to traffic referral (e.g. direct traffic, social referrals and search traffic); driving 20% more traffic to external sites than Twitter.

At the start of this post I was ready to write Facebook off as an irrelevant and dated social site for business – merely a place for mothers to check up on their children’s partying habits at university and to reconnect with cousins they haven’t seen for 30 years. However, when you compare the length of time users spend on Facebook compared to other social media sites it appears there’s still an argument for maintaining a presence on Facebook.

Ultimately, Facebook is a site to show the ‘human side’ of the business, to build a friendly relationship with potential customers, discover what they’re talking about and aim to develop the business accordingly. Email marketing is more about informing subscribers about news and upcoming projects rather than engagement; and Twitter, whilst being a popular site for users to catch up with events in real-time, has a narrower demographic and does not encourage traffic referrals as well as Facebook.

Its clear Facebook is far from finished when it comes to social media marketing and cannot be easily dismissed. Does this fit in with your view? Or were you more like me and considered Facebook to be on the way out? Do you still consider Facebook to be past its peak?
 

Sources: bufferapp; adespresso; Business Solutions Center; Jetscram; Investopedia; abc.net; pewinternet; google images*; CosmicUK

 *data referenced on several sites in various graphs/images