Bookselling

Vintage has sold a combined total of ten million trade paperback, eBook and audiobook copies of E.L. James‘ Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy in the last six weeks.

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group president Anthony Chirico had this statement: “This is an astonishing number. The sales velocity for Fifty Shades of Grey is unprecedented, with reader demand still growing. BookScan data indicates that the trilogy has captured twenty-five percent of the adult fiction market in recent weeks.”

At the same time, The New York Times reported more libraries debating about carrying the racy books like the Brevard County Public Library in Florida. The Wisconsin library that serves the Fond du Lac community has refused to purchase any copies. Several libraries throughout the country have chosen to do the same.

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Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

John Oakes, the co-founder of OR Books, has written an opinion piece for Publisher’s Weekly, encouraging publishers to free themselves from the traditional print book supply chain (as well as from the shackles of Amazon) by selling eBooks directly to consumers and fostering community around small bookstores.

Oakes said that with good marketing its is possible to train the consumer to bypass Amazon and buy eBooks from the publisher. He also explained how this can help build print sales among small bookstores. He wrote:

By creating a buzz around a book online and fostering online communities of readers around each book, we create a small but reliable in-store demand as well. And we’ve found that increasingly stores are open to buying on a prepaid, nonreturnable basis; we give them a flat 50% discount, not dithering over a percentage point here or there. Stores order a smaller amount than they would under the old “order now, pay later” system, but they sell what they take in stock, and reorder.

The American Booksellers Association has posted a very useful article explaining how self-published authors can sell their books at a few independent bookstores around the country. We’ve posted links to those helpful resources below, but you should read the whole article.

If your bookstore has an option for self-published authors, share a link in the comments section–we will update our article with more resources. Watermark Books and Cafe owner Sarah Bagby explained how self-published writers can add books at her Wichita, Kansas bookstore. Check it out:

“No questions asked, we’ll take five copies of a book on consignment,” said Bagby. The terms are 60/40, and the store keeps the books on the shelves for 90 days. “If they sell, we’ll get back to the author right away and reorder. If they don’t, the author needs to pick up their books.” … A second Watermark program offers tiered event options, which can cost from $50 to $500. Elements include a signing, newsletter inclusion, and front-of-store title placement, or a reading and signing, 100-postcard mailing to the author’s list, a four-color 11″ x 17″ poster hung in the store, and more. (Via Victoria Strauss)

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Just because your book is a few years old does not mean that it is bound to live in the dark corners of The Strand.

To help you figure out how to polish off an oldie but goody, Mediabistro put together a list of marketing tips. With some savvy positioning, any book can seem like a gem. You’ve just got to make it appealing to readers. For example, here is advice about how to run an eBook promotion:

“For authors who are less inclined to do a second PR push, eBook price promos have proved to be a great way to boost discovery, word of mouth and reviews,” said Tanya Hall, [who directs marketing and business development for Greenleaf Book Group]. She recommends dropping the book price down to $.99 for a month or another low price, which can also aid in getting more units sold. She also uses social media ads to build brand awareness.”

Books-A-Million executive chairman Clyde B. Anderson and his family have made a bid to acquire all the publicly-held shares of the bookseller.

If the deal is accepted, the release noted that “the Anderson family expects the Company’s management to remain in place following the merger along with the rest of the Company’s valued employees.” The family currently owns 53 percent of the public company stock.

Here’s more from the release:  “public shareholders would receive $3.05 per share in cash, representing a premium of approximately 20 percent over the closing price on April 27, 2012, and 13 percent over the average closing price of the Company’s common stock for the past 90 trading days. The proposal values the total equity of the Company at approximately $48.8 million.”

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While no Pulitzer Prize was awarded for fiction this year, it didn’t hurt book sales as many booksellers worried.

In fact, the controversial press may have helped sales for Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, Swamplandia! by Karen Russell and The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, all of which were nominated.

The New York Observer has more: “Thanks to the coverage surrounding the non-awarding of the 2012 Pulitzer, sales of all three finalists were spiking; one of those titles, Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, had even sold out in hardcover on Amazon. (My own informal canvass of half-a-dozen Manhattan bookstores last week likewise failed to turn up a single copy of Train Dreams.) These initial returns suggested two healthy correctives to the general publishers’ alarm.”

The 100th anniversary of the RMS Titanic sinking has made a classic book on the subject return to the bestsellers list.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the 1955 book A Night to Remember by Walter Lord, will be the top selling nonfiction book on The New York Times‘ chart of combined print and eBook nonfiction sales this Sunday. The book was turned into a film by the same name in 1958 directed by Roy Ward Baker, one of many films made on the subject.

Here is more from WSJ: “The paperback was published by Henry Holt and Company. The e-book was released last month by Open Road Integrated Media, a digital publisher that says the e-edition has been downloaded around 30,000 times.”

There was no Pulitzer Prize for fiction awarded this year, despite the fact that Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, Swamplandia! by Karen Russell and The Pale King by David Foster Wallace were all picked as finalists.

The news came as a blow to independent booksellers around the country, frustrated to lose sales bump that generally comes from the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Using our Best Indie Bookstores on Twitter list, we collected responses from booksellers around the country.

We recommend our readers follow Kimberly Burns’ advice: “No Pulitzer for fiction means go to an independent bookstore & ask a bookseller for a recommendation.” This GalleyCat editor also joined a Marketplace segment about how the fiction snub will hurt bookstore sales.

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Cartoonist Greg Farrell has drawn a cartoon strip about union contract negotiations at the Strand Bookstore.

Earlier this month, union members at the New York City bookstore voted to reject a contract proposal from the famous bookstore. Follow this link to see the complete comic strip.

The New York Times has more about the negotiations: “The workers, along with the Strand’s roughly 140 other union workers, had just concluded a four-day vote on the management’s latest contract offer. As expected, it was rejected because many of the employees felt that it would have significantly reduced their benefits.” (Via The Awl)

Neil Strauss‘ The Game, law enforcement guides and Tintin comics made the list among Quora users who have been discussing the question, “What are the most frequently shoplifted books?”

The poster who posed the question wrote, “Neil Strauss’ ‘The Game’ is kept behind the counter at my local Barnes & Noble because people frequently walk out the door with it, a salesperson told me. What else do stores stash back there?”

Quora user Tamara Troup wrote: “At our library some of the most frequently stolen books are the Law Enforcement Officers training manuals, the civil service exam prep books, and the ASVAB prep books.” Quora user Alice York wrote: “At the two  public high school libraries where I have worked: A Child Called It by David Pelzer (a book about parental abuse) and The Rose That Grew From Concrete poetry by Tupac Shakur.”

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