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Two days of Christmas

15.12.11 | Scott Pack

I do hope you are all looking forward to Christmas, because we are going to have two of them. Lucky us.

We all know about the first one. We spend most of the year building up to it. Publishers are used to presenting their festive line-ups to retailers during a few frantic weeks in spring or early summer, and then occupying the next three months haggling over discounts and marketing spend until the final selections are piled, stacked, shelved and plonked across various display units up and down the land. And then crossing their fingers and hoping the buggers sell.

OK, I know it is more complicated than that, and my friends in the marketing and publicity departments would be keen to point out how important their campaigns are to the end results, but there is still a lot of finger-crossing, and the combination of publishing offer and retail selection is never perfect. There are always hundreds of thousands of books left over, and always many titles that come out of left field that no one had piled up anywhere in the first place.

Nonetheless, this is the way we do things in publishing. It is antiquated, far from perfect, time-consuming, expensive and stressful, but it is the best we can do. And it sort of works. It needs to—most of our careers, and the future of high street bookshops, are dependent on a bloody good Christmas this year.

But this year Santa is giving all of us a second chance to get things right.

At some point on the 25th December, when all the presents have been opened, the wrapping paper has been chucked in the bin, the Baileys has been poured and the nuts have been cracked, the people of this nation will switch on the Kindles, iPads, Kobos and other devices that they have received from loved ones. And then a spending spree will commence.

The e-books they choose to download will not be influenced by who paid what to be in which position in the store, or how many posters were splashed over the underground, or who is sitting on which television sofa two weeks before the big day (well, perhaps they may be be a bit, but nowhere near as much as normal). Instead, they will be influenced by what is already popular on their device’s e-book chart, what other readers have recommended, and what a bit of a play around and a few searches throws up for them.

Whatever they purchase—and a glance at the Kindle and iBooks bestseller charts would suggest it would be a very different selection of books to those in the actual Nielsen Top 50—they will do so in their tens and hundreds of thousands, creating a whole new Christmas surge when all the high street action is over. So bring on this second Christmas—one with no returns!

Ho ho ho.

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By COMMENTATOR

Scott your picture looks amazingly like Harry Hill

Thu, 15/12/2011 - 16:24
By Scott Pack

I am Harry Hill.

Thu, 15/12/2011 - 17:04
By Old Bookseller

Scott, all well and good, but this is the Bookseller magazine. The benefit to booksellers in your scenario above is zip, nowt, zilch, nothing. Great for publishers and the resellers of the content, but a kick in the teeth for the traditional bookseller. Who will be lucky to be trading Christmas 2012.

Thu, 15/12/2011 - 17:13
By Scott Pack

So, Old Bookseller, are we supposed to not mention this at all?

The benefit to booksellers in this scenario is significant if they are prepared to embrace it. Hundreds of thousands of books being read, many of which would not have been read otherwise, offer many opportunities for word-of-mouth, for recommendation and for future purchase. Some of that will be digital, but some will also be in print.

Every single ebook that I publish that has performed well as led to an increased sale of the printed book.

Increased sales of ebooks are harming print sales, of course they are, but it would be interesting to see what would happen if some booksellers got behind the print editions of the bestselling ebooks. They would sell quite a few, I reckon.

If they choose to ignore them, then they won't sell many at all.

Thu, 15/12/2011 - 17:24
By Anthony Haynes

Not to mention the Coptic Christmas and then the Orthodox one, so guess that makes 6 in all.

Fri, 16/12/2011 - 10:32
By Philip Jones

Good comment Scott. We are hearing of lots of activity this year over Christmas from publishers looking to land the golden goose (sorry turkey). Scott is right, there'll be an explosion of reading activity following Christmas day, some of that will spill over into physical stores.

Fri, 16/12/2011 - 10:42
By Old Bookseller

You are deluded - Scott's a publisher making money from downloads and (not unreasonably)couldn't care less where his income comes from. He talks about second chances - for publishers, Kindles etc are the main chance, not the second chance.

Fri, 16/12/2011 - 15:32
By Old Bookseller

And the news from Luxembourg reinforces the point that downloads will get cheaper and cheaper until there's only one player in the game - and that day isn't too far away.

Fri, 16/12/2011 - 15:35

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