Bookselling

Over the last year, author and conservative commentator Glenn Beck has interviewed 40 thriller writers, from David Baldacci to James Patterson, becoming a coveted new stop on the book tour trail for publishers.

In a NY Times article about this phenomenon, thriller author Brad Thor quipped: "He's our Oprah ... God love him, we're very fortunate." According to the article, Beck reaches 9 million radio listeners every week and 2.7 million television viewers every day. On the Morning Media Menu today, we pondered why the thriller appeals so strongly to Beck's audience.

Former GalleyCat reporter Sarah Weinman wrote about the gender politics underlying these figures: "Beck definitely has a line into what his viewers--especially the 800,000-odd people in the coveted 25-54 demographic--might be interested in reading. Chances are they are not avid book buyers, lucky to put a couple of hundred bucks' total into publishers' coffers. Beck's viewership also skews predominately towards white males, and at the risk of gross overgeneralization, fall into the stereotypical category of those who shy away from reading books outside their own gender (or ethnic and cultural worldview.)"

In bookselling news, eWeek analyzed five ways Barnes & Noble (BKS) could beat Amazon.com (AMZN) at the e-reader business. Here's a sample: "the right leveraging of its retail space could give Barnes & Noble a broad venue through which to push its product--particularly if they allow features such as in-store Wi-Fi browsing of text. Unless Amazon.com signs a deal with a big-box store such as Best Buy, it's restricted to online."

GalleyCat has been tracking the stock performance of the major companies that influence the bookselling business. We created this chart with eight publicly-traded publishing stocks hand-picked by our readers--including company name, symbol, current stock price, and price increase or decrease at week's close.

-Name- -Symbol- -Last price- -Change-
The McGraw-Hill Co. MHP 28.78 -1.31
Books-A-Million, Inc. BAMM 8.66 -1.18
Borders Group, Inc. BGP 1.94 -0.25
Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN 118.81 -3.77
Barnes & Noble, Inc. BKS 16.61 -0.18
Wiley John & Sons Inc. JW.A 35.22 -0.41
Scholastic Corporation SCHL 24.88 -1.13
News Corporation NWS 13.6 -0.44
Google Inc. GOOG 536.12 -14.93
Apple Inc. AAPL 188.5 -7.85
Sony Corporation SNE 29.39 -1.15

As American stores battle to have the lowest price for new books, some European publishers are, for better or for worse, exempt from fighting these pricing squabbles.

A few weeks ago, Walmart (WMT) slashed book prices online, reducing the "10 pre-selling books on its website" to $10 apiece--sweetening the deal with free shipping. This move touched off a book discounting war in between Amazon.com (AMZN), Walmart, and finally, Target (TGT). According to the Wall Street Journal, many countries in Europe are protected from these price wars through fixed price system--illustrating how stores in France and Germany must sell books at the publisher's price point.

Here's more from the article, outlining the scope of two different countries: "The system protects independent booksellers and smaller publishers from giant rivals that could discount their way to more market share. Along with some 7,000 bookshops, nearly 14,000 German publishers remain in business.Together, German companies published more than 96,000 new titles last year. In the nearly four-times-as-large U.S., 275,000 titles were published." (Via Publishers Weekly)

The Association of American Publishers reports that the book sales it tracked for August 2009 were up 0.9 percent compared to last year—and that the tentative prognosis looks like another year of "stable but modest growth" as the first eight months of '09 show a 2 percent increase in sales over the January-to-August range in 2008.

Adult hardcovers and paperbacks showed increases for the month but are still down overall for the year-to-date. Children's and YA hardcovers dropped in August, but have built up a sufficient lead to still be up 14 percent for the year; paperbacks in this category only dipped 0.2 percent for August and are still up 1.7 percent for the year so far. Religious books... does anybody know what's going on with religious books? They're down 13.8 percent for the month and 9.2 percent for the year, and it seems like they've been going south for a while now. And yet this seems like a time of no small religious fervor, right?

It all started last week when Wal-Mart slashed ten not-yet-published books to $10, as much as two-thirds off the cover price in some cases. Amazon.com matched Wal-Mart at $10, so Wal-Mart went to $9; Amazon matched them again, and the next move was $8.99.

At that point, as the Wall Street Journal reports, Target entered the fray, which prompted Wal-Mart to shave another penny off, bringing us to $8.98—and maybe lower a little later. ""It remains to be seen if we will go lower if the competition slashes prices further," says a Target spokesperson. "At the moment we are only matching what others are doing, but we're watching closely. We want to remain competitive."

So now Sears steps in and says it's not cutting prices on any of those books (beyond its usual discounts, we suppose), but as part of its new "Keep America Reading" promotion, you can show them your receipt for any of those cheap hardcovers from the other three stores, and Sears will give you up to $9 in store credit.

Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) has slashed book prices online, reducing the "10 pre-selling books on its website" to $10 apiece--sweetening the deal with free shipping.

Here's some perspective on that price point, from Reuters: "The $10 price represent a 66 percent cut on the $28.99 listing price for Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue: An American Life", or a 64 percent cut on the $27.99 price for Michael Crichton's 'Pirate Latitudes.' The titles will not ship until November, but eager consumers can now place orders for the books online -- representing 'pre-sales.'"

In addition, the article also explains how site will also launch a new feature called "America's Reading List," where they will list the 200 bestsellers and cut the list price in half for these books. (Via Publishers Weekly)

The New York Times reported this morning that Amazon.com is now offering same-day delivery service. If you order a book by 10 a.m. (in select cities) you can have it on your door that same day for an additional $15.

For readers who prefer traditional books to ebooks, this service could be the new ideal, as it fuels our society of instant gratification. Yet, could this be a direct assault against already struggling brick-and-mortar stores, especially the independents?

continued...

If you love your book, set it free. Frustrated by the old advance copy review system, author Stephen Elliott broke one of the old rules of book publicity--giving advance copies of his book to anyone who asked.

Elliott mailed a copy of his new book, "The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder," to one interested reader, and let that reader mail the advance copy to the next reader. As he explains in this exclusive video interview, this informal "lending library" had some unexpected community-building results.

Here's an excerpt from the interview: "It used to be only the media elite would get advance copies of books. But now, I think anybody that wants to read the book, you should give them an advance copy. It used to be you would send out five galley copies to media professionals and maybe one of them would read it. With my lending library, I would send out one copy and five people would read it. So it's a lot more efficient."

Many contemporary authors are worried about having a Facebook page, but most writers don't reveal how the bookselling strategy worked.

Today Publishers Weekly launched a special "viral edition" of the publishing magazine, looking at how literary types can leverage the networking possibilities of the Internet, from Facebook widgets to good old fashioned blogs. The cover story was an essay by journalist Adam Penenberg entitled, "The Viral Loop." The essay contained a frank look at how a Facebook application worked for his new book, "Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today's Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves."

Here's an excerpt from the article: "So far, a small percentage of users have clicked on the 'buy the book' tab to order it pre-pub. Thousands more, however, are being made aware of it. As the old publishing saying goes, if seven people hear the title of a book, they are more likely to buy it. As the widget spreads--we are on pace to amass 10,000 users within two months of launch--we hope to 'own' the term 'viral loop.'"

This week a federal judge denied Amazon.com's (AMZN) request to dismiss an anti-trust lawsuit filed by the print-on-demand company, BookLocker. According to MaineBiz, the suit argues that "Amazon's demand that publishing companies use a specific printer in order to sell their books in the Amazon marketplace" violates federal antitrust laws.

GalleyCat has been tracking the stock performance of the major companies that influence the bookselling business. We created this chart with eight publicly-traded publishing stocks hand-picked by our readers--including company name, symbol, current stock price, and price increase or decrease at week's close.

-Name- -Symbol- -Last price- -Change-
The McGraw-Hill Co. MHP 24.62 -0.76
Books-A-Million, Inc. BAMM 10.67 -0.71
Borders Group, Inc. BGP 2.93 -0.02
Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN 89.85 -1.19
Barnes & Noble, Inc. BKS 21.65 0.04
Wiley John & Sons Inc. JW.A 34.16 -0.42
Scholastic Corporation SCHL 23.49 -0.58
News Corporation NWS 13.24 -0.05
Google Inc. GOOG 484.58 -2.62
Apple Inc. AAPL 184.88 4.02
Sony Corporation SNE 27.16 -0.86