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The Booksellers Association is exploring the opportunities for indies to maximise sales on pre-orders, with BA m.d. Meryl Halls describing the market as a huge opportunity for them despite the long dominance of Amazon and bookselling chains.
The move follows intense discussion at the American Booksellers Association's Winter Institute in Albuquerque, where the ABA's Joy Dallanegra-Sanger said pre-orders can account for 3-30% of book's total sales.
Halls said: “When we went to the US with a group of UK booksellers in January, we were all fascinated by the topic that ended up dominating all others: the potential for indie bookstores to get a piece of the action with pre-orders. There was palpable shock at the proportion of pre-order sales which were bypassing ABA member bookstores (3-30%) and going online. We were really interested in the ABA project which alerted bookstores to this phenomenon and set out to help bookstores inform customers that they could pre-order at their local bookshop."
Halls thinks the UK indie sector is less active in the pre-order market partly because bookshops are not necessarily aware of the commercial opportunity it represents, partly because they don't have the resources to embark on it, and partly "due to a lack of consumer awareness they could pre-order at their local high street bookshop." She said: “In recent conversations with publishers, we’ve been mulling over the opportunities for high street bookshops to grab back some of this pre-order market and publishers have been really open to the ideas."
She added: "Publishers are obviously in the best position to create information and resources for bookshops to promote the pre-order in-store and online—and I think we are all intrigued by the possibilities for bookshops, and pleased that the conversation has started. Booksellers will relish any means by which they are able to market forthcoming titles by great bookshop authors to their customers.”
Indies need to work with publishers and authors to generate higher pre-order sales, says Nic Bottomley, BA president and owner of Mr B’s Emporium in Bath, with posters, point of sale marketing, release details and other advertising assets just part of the push to drum up pre-order sales.
Bottomley said: “Amazon have a big dominance of pre-orders and Waterstones has done a good job of chipping away at that but what about the rest of us? Are we as organised and strategic as we could be? I don’t think we are. It’s not rocket science. It’s working with publishing partners to get the information quickly to shops and assets to shops early, posters for windows, covers. It’s a way of drawing people into these shops. We are talking to publishers about it and I think they had not necessarily thought about it in these terms either. It’s an open goal for publishers.”
Ben Hurd, trade marketing director at Harper Collins, said the publisher is working on various pre-order materials for indies following a meeting with the BA. He said: “We’re always keen to work with Indies to help them promote and sell our titles, and this new BA focus on pre-orders is something we are fully supportive of. Following a meeting at LBF with BA president Nic Bottomley and Fleur Sinclair from Sevenoaks Bookshop, we’ve been working on various pre-order materials and offers for independent booksellers which we will send out through our reps and our Independent Thinking programme. Our focus for now is on lead titles likely to be supported by the majority of independent bookshops—but booksellers can also contact us via Independent Thinking to request material for a specific title that they would like to actively pre-order at their shop.”
With some publishers releasing bibliographic detail on Nielsen further in advance than others, there are some limits on how far in advance a customer can order certain titles with pre-orders affecting Amazon's chart with strong pre-orders helping boost chart positions on publication day. Waterstones, which centrally organises its pre-order campaigns for the biggest titles, showcases upcoming titles online and in store with customers able to pre-order months in advance with social media playing a large part in the company's pre-order strategy as well as working with publishers for POS for shops and online, targeted customer emails and window displays.
James Daunt, Nic Bottomley, Meryl Halls
Waterstones m.d. James Daunt said there are more ways publishers can help booksellers with pre-orders as he acknowledged Amazon's dominance of the issue: “The reality is Amazon is an efficient way to place a pre-order. You can do it at four in the morning or on a train but when a book is recommended and talked about often the publisher hasn't delivered to shops and then people come into shops and shops don’t have it so customers pre-order from Amazon," said Daunt. "I think there are ways they [publishers] can help booksellers."
Bottomley added booksellers must have the mechanism in place to take pre-orders and crucially deliver the stock to customers on publication day. "There seems to be a consumer trend toward pre-ordering books and if you look at the music industry, it has been really good at that. You go in and you know what the new releases are and what's coming. You don’t get that in a bookshop and historically we have a funny system with embargoes. They are overused and for books without them there can be a mismatch on when parts of the trade receive the book. Sometimes the wholesaler will be quickest—there’s some structural issues. If you’ve going to get involved you need to not just take the order, but you need to get the books to customers on publication date."
As well as speaking to publishers to improve logistics, Bottomley said booksellers must put the groundwork in with authors too. "Where a bookshop supports an author, if they have a second book there’s a real opportunity to work in tandem with the author. For example Tim Clare’s The Ice House is published by Canongate, it’s his second book. When it was announced, because of his relationship with us he decided he wanted to push most pre-orders through us. He said if Mr B’s gets 100 pre-orders then he was going to produce extra content for our customers and he also signed all of them."
With Amazon links for pre-orders commonplace on authors' social media book announcements, Bottomley said: "I don’t think anyone on the BA side, speaking in both of indie and chair members would be naive enough to remove Amazon links but there should be a link alongside to find your local bookshop or if an author has a fantastic local bookshop, then add that in too. There needs to be multiple options and booksellers need to be on it in taking pre-orders."
Pre-order discounts are commonplace online and Bottomley added the decision will come down to each individual bookseller. “Ultimately whether a discount is offered will be down to each individual bookseller and the negotiation between publisher and bookseller—so it won’t be something for the BA to address," said Bottomley. "BA member bookshops are well-practised at delivering offers, incentives and services to their customers that aren’t based solely around price-point and so we don’t see it as a barrier to competing effectively in the realm of pre-orders.”
A BA session on best practice is in the pipeline with a Twitter tutorial, hosted by the Unwin Charitable Trust, on how to increase pre-orders scheduled took place on Tuesday 14th May under the hashtag #UCTmentor with tips on encouraging customers to reserve copies of the biggest titles of the year in return for benefits including limited edition extras and discounts.