BookMarketingBuzzBlog: 2025

Sunday, May 25, 2025

If Malls Survive, So Can Books!

Before leaving the Twin Cities for home in New York, I stopped off, out of curiosity, to visit The Mall of America. It was less than 15 minutes from the airport, so I figured, why not?

The Mall of America, located just outside the Twin Cities, in Bloomington, MN, is the largest shopping mall in the United States. It boasts of having over 5.6 million square feet of retail space — and it is host to over 520 stores. It has a comedy club, movie theater, aquarium, and an amusement park. Plus, it offers lots of restaurants and fast-food dining options. It even has a bookstore, a Barnes and Noble.

The mall is huge, but totally conquerable. Even though malls have been dropping like flies once Amazon grew into the behemoth that it is now, The Mall of America has been enduring. It has made the act of shopping a tourist destination activity.

Malls peaked around the turn-of the-century. Covid’s arrival five years ago sealed their fate. And yet, this mall, at near-retail capacity, had a vibrancy running through its miles of shops. The place was quite crowded on an ordinary spring Saturday, when I visited.

I wonder how all of these stores can stay in business. Many of them compete for your attention and money, just as millions of books compete for readers. There were several stores in each consumer category: restaurant, fast food, teen clothes, women’s stuff, shoes, etc. Similarly, there are many books that fall under different genres, each trying to stick out.

Is there room for everyone to get a piece of the pie?

Business Insider, in an October 2022 article, shared this:

“Ten years from now, there will be approximately 150 malls left in the US, Nick Egelanian, president of retail consulting firm SiteWorks, told The Wall Street Journal.

“That's down from around 2,500 locations in the 1980s and 700 today,” Egelanian said.

That is just wild!

Bookstores, however, after bottoming out during The Great Recession and Borders’ bankruptcy closing some 15 years ago, have been on an upswing. There are more bookstores today than from a decade ago.

If malls can still make it in this economy of change and 24/7 international online product availability, then books will too. In fact, malls can literally drive sales for books, because they can draw crowds to the bookstores contained in the malls.

Books have not been replaced by the Internet, nor have brick-and-mortar stores been completely supplanted by digital retail — but both have absorbed hard hits from the online world. They seek a symbiotic co-existence.

Physical books exist because they feel familiar to olde people. And because kids need to hold them and turn the pages. And because they have a texture and feel that humans want to experience. Printed books can be shared. They can also be gifted, donated, regifted, and displayed. Some 80 percent of the book market is in printed books. Audio is 10 percent. So are e-books.

I did not buy anything at the mall, despite sauntering past hundreds of stores, not even at the B & N. I was just gawking, being a tourist, watching others shop ‘til they drop. Consumerism drives capitalism. When it comes to bookstores and malls, here is to hoping Americans feel they can never get enough.

Do You Need Book Marketing & PR Help?

Brian Feinblum, the founder of this award-winning blog, with over four million page views, can be reached at brianfeinblum@gmail.com He is available to help authors like you to promote your story, sell your book, and grow your brand. He has over 30 years of experience in successfully helping thousands of authors in all genres. Let him be your advocate, teacher, and motivator!

About Brian Feinblum

This award-winning blog has generated over 4.4 million pageviews. With 5,300+ posts over the past 14 years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” Copyright 2025.

For the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully).

He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the 2024 IBPA Book Awards.

His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook. It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum

Saturday, May 24, 2025

How One Book Collector Can Make A Difference

What can one person do – about anything> For one guy who was concerned about the disappearance of his heritage, he made his mission to collect over 1,500,000 books – all in a language that was quickly fading – Yiddish. The remarkable story is told in a 2004 book, Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued A Million Yiddish Books.

Author Aaron Lansky went on to be the founder and president of the National Yiddish Book Center (www.yiddishbookcenter.org). According to his book’s back flap, “The Center has translated Yiddish titles into English; digitized the entire collection and placed it online (with the help of Steven Spielberg); distributed books to students, scholars, and nascent Jewish communities throughout the world; and sponsored programs to help fuel a renaissance of Jewish literature in his country.”

Lansky’s tireless efforts should be a model to anyone who thinks they can’t make a difference. It is just an incredible, uplifting story that I could not put down until I read through it. I never read a book in Yiddish but recall learning a few words, like schmuck, putz, chutzpah, klutz, nosh, and mensch – all of which have made it into the mainstream American lexicon. Schmooze, schtick, kvetch, schlep… so many good words!

The author saw in the early 1970’s that Yiddish was fading as a spoken language. Though for most of the last millennia, Jews in central and eastern Europe had spoken Yiddish and not Hebrew, or German, it was falling out of use. He decided he wanted to collect books in Yiddish before they were all destroyed and discarded.

His book identified the steps, setbacks, and his wins that he undertook and experienced in order to finance and facilitate the finding and storing of tons of forgotten and ignored books.

“It was the holocaust, in the end, that sounded the death knell of Yiddish literature in Europe – and paradoxically gave rise to its most powerful expression,” Lansky writes. Yiddish literature would later find its largest audience in America.

Making sure Yiddish literature will not be consigned to oblivion, Lansky single-handedly preserved and revived Yiddish literature. Esquire magazine had praised his organization’s efforts as “the most grassroots Jewish organization in America.” Once the Virtual Yiddish Library went online, having scanned over 35 million book pages at the time, The New York Times proclaimed: “Yiddish is now proportionately, the most in-print literature on Earth.”

His preservation – and readily available collection – of Yiddish literature mirrors the remarkable resilience of the Jewish people, who despite a history that includes thousands of years of war, anti-Semitism, slavery, the Holocaust, and deportations, are still here, vibrantly contributing to society.

“With one or two exceptions, there has never been a significant Yiddish writer born in America. Like it or not, Yiddish literature is finite, bound to a specific time and place.

“But probably because Yiddish literature is finite, it is enormously important, a link between one epoch of Jewish history and the next. Its world’s having been ferociously attacked and almost destroyed only serves to underscore its significance. The books we collect are the immediate intellectual antecedent of most contemporary Jews, able to tell us who we are and where we came from. Especially now, after the unspeakable horrors of the twentieth century, Yiddish literature endures as our last, best bridge across the abyss.”

--Aaron Lansky, Outwitting History

Do You Need Book Marketing & PR Help?

About Brian Feinblum

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully).

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum

Friday, May 23, 2025

What’s Your Standard For Marketing Your Book?

To live a good, full life, it seems to me that one has to live by some type of standard, something that grounds them. You then measure your actions against the standard you have set for yourself. The same could be true for your approach to book marketing.

So, what type of standard should you set for yourself?

Presumably, the first thing to look at are your goals. Why are you marketing your book and what do you hope to accomplish? Your answer may include one or more of these answers:

· Sell more books

· Get more readers

· Establish your brand

· Have a certain message spread to impact society

· Lead to increased web traffic

· Get more social media followers

· Sell other products/services

· turn a book into a movie

· Garner a big publishing deal

· Score 15 minutes of fame (ego)

Once you know your why and set measurable, attainable goals for yourself, you need a plan to get you there. You will have a vision, create a mission, and explore what specifics must be executed to enable the achievement of your goals.

So, not every marketing plan is the same -- goals vary and the means to achieve an end also vary. It also depends on what you are willing or are able to do – and at what cost.

For instance, if your goal is to sell 1,000 books over the next six months, you may look at methods that can net you that many sales – but they will come at a loss.

You can get 1000 sales if you lower your book price, advertise it heavily, pay influencers to push it, hire a marketing firm and bundle the book purchase with a give-away. It may end up costing you $10,000+ to do this and you won’t show a profit, but you will have achieved your goal of 1,000 sales in a specific time period.

So, we should modify our goals and temper them – unless the goal-at-any-cost is a priority. Think long and hard about what you want and what you are willing to sacrifice, risk, or pay to get it.

Let’s say your goal is to market your book, but you set a budget, and once that runs out, you cease the promotions. That only makes sense if (a) You lack new, viable options to promote your book, or (b) You spent wisely but saw such poor results that you don’t believe more of the same makes sense. Some people, however, give up too quickly, too early. You need to give your book time to break through and you need to try multiple ways to promote it before throwing in the towel.

Most writers are focused on their writing output, and less so on marketing. They either don’t know what to do, don’t do it well, or don’t have the patience, time or money to do it right. And yet, you can put out 20 books, each better than any bestseller, but no one will ever read it unless you market, market, market.

Set a standard for your book marketing and contract with yourself to demand more from yourself. Make marketing a priority and use it to achieve the goals that your writing deserves to see they are met.

Do You Need Book Marketing & PR Help?

About Brian Feinblum

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully).

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum

Thursday, May 22, 2025

Speaking of Writers Podcast Interview With Book Marketing Guru Brian Feinblum

Listen To Book Marketer Brian Feinblum Share His Insights On Book Publicity
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1DL94djVcD39uyU5TlP0P1?si=xluvxOB7RUOAhuuBsDjKDg

Do You Need Book Marketing & PR Help?

About Brian Feinblum

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully).

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum

Wednesday, May 21, 2025

In Judgment Of Self-Help Books

I recently had the honor – and burden – of being a book awards judge. It was for a solid group – Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA). I chose a genre and was flooded with about 45 books to read over the course of three months – about one every two days.

It was not easy to be a judge. I am not sure that I would do it again.

First, the time commitment was nuts. I was not getting paid to do what amounted to at least a full-time, one-month job. In addition to reading the cumulative effect of some 10,000 book pages, judges were asked to fill out evaluation forms for each entrant. The paperwork didn’t just ask us to rank the top 10 books in order but to also give feedback on every single book and to rate each one based on certain sets of criteria.

But it was a feeling of accomplishment to go through so many books and serve as a juror for the book world. It was harder than serving on jury duty – which I have done twice. What I and the other judges did for this and at all book awards is to help set a standard for readers.

Still, I couldn’t stop seeing the many hazards to this process. For one, who is to say all of the judges did what they were supposed to do? What if the standards that they used – as well as their tastes – differed from mine? I know that book awards, book reviews, publisher acquisition choices, and writing contests are terribly subjective. I still hope that our reading community could develop some type of reasonable barometer for judging a book.

A lot of how I reacted to a book had to do with several factors:

· My familiarity with the subject matter.

· My personal experience with it.

· My reading history.

· My standards and opinions.

· My mood.

· My knowledge.

I was a judge in the self-help category, a subject that I have consumed for more than four decades of reading books as an adult. I could not help but think none of what I read in any way compares to the classics, like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Think & Grow Rich, As A Man Thinketh, The Road Less Traveled, How to Make Friends & Influence People, Awaken The Giant Within, The Power of Now, Atomic Habits, and The Power of Positive Thinking. But then again, that was not the standard here. The standard was simply to compare these books to each other – a much smaller universe to cover.

The next challenge was how to reconcile the various subjects that fell under self-help, for it really is a broad category that overlaps into how-to and inspiration. A book on how to overcome addiction is lumped with ones on how to make more money, have a better relationship, deal with a rare disease, rebound from a setback, manage one’s time better, seek happiness, and on and on.

You can look at the pieces of a book – the cover, the title, the editing, the layout, the writing style, and the length, and give scores for each thing. But a book is a complete product and is more than each of its parts. It is the bottom-line feel and the lasting message that a book was more worthy of one’s time than another that separates one book from the other. That’s so subjective.

We can probably agree on books that are pretty bad and really good — with the rest left in a vast middle. Of the really bad or really good, it can be difficult to rank one just a little better or worse than the other in any meaningful, definitive, objective way.

One of the challenges to writing a self-help book is to recognize that regardless of the quantity and quality of such books circulating for decades, society is quite screwed up. Despite all of the advice, analysis, and encouragement, suicide is at an all-time high rate, obesity is at a record number (unless corrected by drugs or surgery), addictions are high, so many have lousy relationships, and plenty struggle to come to terms with loss, pain, and childhood trauma. So, can a self-help book cure us of our many ills? Some books work for some people. I guess we need to match people up with the book that speaks to them.

Self-help books need to strive to:

· Say something in a new way.

· Raise an issue or cure not yet discussed.

· Be better, first, or unique in the messaging.

· Either address one’s personal or professional life – but not necessarily both.

Most self-help books are written based on:

· Research and studies/polls/studies or

· One’s personal experience or

· One’s professional experience/position

Today’s self-help books must not repeat what genre-leaders said years ago –they need to contradict them or show how to apply this timeless wisdom to modern-day lives. Readers want relevance, customization, and immediate results.

We live in an era of multiple generations of readers who are flooded with self-help, how-to, and inspirational books. After a while it is hard to find something new or special. Few books demonstrate proof they can work for the masses. Readers really have no way of even knowing if the writer truly lives by what he or she tells others to do.

We will always have self-help books and there will always be awards to judge them. Like the books and readers themselves, the awards are imperfect. But it is the best that we have to offer for now.

Do You Need Book Marketing & PR Help?

About Brian Feinblum

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully).

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum