Book stores are well known for being a relaxed, educated, and enriching experience. Turns out there’s a dangerous game happening behind the scenes. Publishers are paying top dollar to get their book covers in front of your eyeballs. Just like in advertising in any other location, book stores are no exception.
Literary agent Andy Ross is spilling the beans on the situation in a new article called ‘Shelf Wars.’ He details a surprising but somewhat not unexpected battle for bookshelves. Also not surprisingly, it all comes down to money. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
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Picture this: An irate local author can’t find his latest title on the neighborhood bookstore shelf. So he slips into the storeroom, grabs his books from the back stock and heads straight for the store’s most exclusive patch of real estate – the front table – where he elbows aside the bestsellers and drops his own books down in their place.
True story.
That anecdote comes from veteran bookseller Andy Ross, who for 30 years owned the venerable Cody’s Books in Berkeley (when bookstores still carried back stock.)
Bookstores account for 60% of sales
Make no mistake: Book placement matters. Brick and mortar bookstores account for more than 60 percent of all book sales, so we publishers agonize over where our books are placed, and struggle to get higher visibility, title-by-title, for the books we love.
And where a book sits can incite bitter shelf wars among authors, publishers, sales reps, and retailers, leading to frequent incidents of guerrilla merchandising, with the interested parties surreptitiously rearranging the stock for their own benefit.
Can the right book placement produce a bestseller? Probably not, but sales can jump if a book is displayed face-out near the cash register – considered the absolute best spot in the store. Sales can also surge if a title has an enthusiastic hand-written staff recommendation tacked to the shelf.
Pile ‘em high and watch ‘em fly
That’s bookseller lingo for building those towering monoliths of stacked bestsellers you see near the entrances of the biggest bookstores. Other coveted placements to increase visibility and sales include the end caps of bookshelves and book posts with all the titles facing out.
Face-out or spine-out?
What author wouldn’t rather have their book turned face-out, with the cover visible to bookstore browsers? That placement decision, it turns out, is up to the store staffer who shelves the books. It’s usually a factor of how many copies are on the shelf; if there are more than a few, there’s a better chance the stack will be turned face-out. An eye-catching book jacket helps too.
(check out the full article here)
