nce upon a time, not all that many years ago, it was all quite straightforward. A writer would write a draft, an editor would edit it, the publisher would publish it and a bookshop would sell it.
It is not so easy any more. Today, a speciality sales manager may well be involved at an early stage working out with the editor and the publisher how the concept of a book and its cover may appear side by side with a chunk of meat, or coffee bags, or an electric chainsaw. Colour coding has become a buzzword, where content used to reign supreme.
In the past few months, what began as a sideline in book publishing has become a major source of income for the big American publishing houses, from HarperCollins to Random House, Simon & Schuster and beyond.
What is known as speciality marketing has, from modest roots, expanded into what is now the fastest growing sector for many publishers, outstripping growth in traditional bookshop outlets and even that of websites such as Amazon.
A recent article in The New York Times tracked publishers peddling their wares in cheese shops, cattle markets, hardware stores, butchers and office supply chains. With United States book sales down almost 3% year-on-year, and with profit margins becoming increasingly competitive in the main retail areas, the frontiers are being expanded rapidly.
HarperCollins is preparing a range of books for its spring catalogue that are colour coded to sit alongside other products. ‘Books compliment other products — they can become the ultimate accessory,” said Andrea Rosen, who handles the publisher’s special markets division.
So HarperCollins has done a brisk trade in Dare to Repair: A Do-it-Herself Guide to Fixing (Almost) Anything in the Home to hardware stores throughout the US. It has sold Beautiful Jim Key: The Lost History of the World’s Smartest Horse at several of the country’s racetracks; and The Emperor of Wine by Elin McCoy has been doing good business in wine outlets in the major cities.
The publishing house also reprinted one of its books about fondue so that the colour palette of the cover was in greens and browns to match the decor of the shop it was appearing in, Urban Outfitters.
A similar story is related by Penguin’s US arm, which has the honour of being able to call itself the only US publisher currently selling books at cattle auctions. It also uses farming supply stores as distribution outlets in rural states such as Tennessee and Colorado, with Penguin books nestled among the cattle feed and tractor tyres.
Within speciality book marketing, custom publishing has become the new holy grail, says Barbara O’Shea, who heads Penguin US non-trade sales operation. That means specifically creating books to suit a new outlet.
She gives the example of Penguin’s Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur, a well-known series of cookbooks that reveal how you can make your own versions of big-name brands popular in the US, such as McDonald’s burgers or Outback Steakhouse BBQ Sauce. The books were not selling particularly quickly in bookshops, so Penguin decided to try something new. It published a new collected volume of Wilbur’s recipes as a one-off customised venture and put it on the cable television shopping channel QVC. They billed it as a unique product that could only be bought there and then. In one day, with just five six-minute slots, they sold 100 000 copies of the volume.
‘We’ve moved beyond trying to find new places where we can sell a book,” said O’Shea. ‘We are now spending a lot of time thinking about different ways in which we can produce a book that is custom-made for the way in which it will be sold and promoted.”
Surprising techniques such as this are leading to surprising results. One of the more recent success stories in the US is Wall and Piece by British artist Banksy, who has made his name through ‘guerrilla” art. The book has sold 20 000 copies in the US already, mostly from clothes shops. —