BookMarketingBuzzBlog

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

How Bookstores & Libraries Inspire Reading

How do our nation’s booksellers and librarians impact what Americans read?

A lovely book by James Patterson and Matt Eversmann, The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the magic of Reading, shares stories from those who help put books in the hands of others.

Finding the right book for the right person is an art form.

One person interviewed says: “Encouraging kids to read gives them tools to safely navigate the real world, and to protect themselves. Reading helps them think critically and it gives them the opportunity to learn about themselves and others, to create empathy and compassion. Students need to be able to see themselves in books but also be exposed to and experience somebody else’s life through books. Books are supposed to trigger conversations.”

Another says: “I love doing this. I love reading a great book and recommending something that people haven’t heard of before, getting, to have interesting conversations with customers. And once they’ve read and loved it, they come back. They're so happy that you found something new for them.”

And yet another in the book says: “I try to keep up with the trends, so I can make sure we have whatever the customer is looking for or so that I can offer great suggestions. ‘Let me feed you all these other books that you’re missing out on. Let me give you all these experiences, so that you can keep that newfound passion.’

“A bookstore has many powers. If you want an escape from your life with a thrilling tale of adventure or romance or a good murder mystery, you’ll find it. If you want to learn something or locate information on a particular subject, you can find that too. Whatever you want or require, a bookstore will almost always have something to meet your needs. It can also be an incredibly healing place.”

So many workers in the book ecosystem share the same sentiment -- their mission is to get *kids excited about reading books. But, as Patterson’s book notes. “33% of high school graduates never pick up another book and that 42% of college grads don’t either.” And yet, so many of us could not imagine a life without books.

Though bookstores provide a central location for ideas, information, and curiosity to intersect, Patterson writes: “Books have deep connections. People are always looking for books on big life events - relationships, breakups, deaths, grief, getting married or what to expect when you’re pregnant- and there’s nothing better than recommending books that can have a meaningful and positive impact on someone’s life.”

But bookselling, notes the author, is “a weird world where it’s kind of like rainbows and unicorns and magic.” Bookstores are places of business but they're also social institutions that provide for the greater good and benefit society.

To help get kids to be reading-positive, you may want to connect with a nationwide program, Readers As Reading Partners (also called Pick A Reading Partner).

“It doesn’t matter what you like to read as long as you love to read,” says Patterson.

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Brian Feinblum, the founder of this award-winning blog, with over 3.9 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

Brian Feinblum should be followed on www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2024. 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. 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). This award-winning blog has generated over 3.9 million pageviews. With 5,000+ posts over the past dozen 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.” For the past three decades, including 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and director of publicity positions 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. 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. 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.

Monday, October 21, 2024

Do Ads Make Sense – Or Dollars -- For Authors?

Many authors try their hand at advertising their book. Often, they blindly make choices, poor ones at that, and then lament they wasted hundreds or thousands of dollars. What is a sensible strategy for authors when advertising their book?

As with any endeavor, you must first ask yourself why you are doing something. So, in the case of advertising your book, why would one advertise their book?

Here are some common answers and my responses:

· It will help generate sales. (Will it net sales but at a loss? Is that the goal?)

· It will increase brand awareness (To what degree – and how does that translate into something like sales or something of value, like getting a movie deal?)

· It will help me hit a best-seller list (Possibly, but in conjunction with what else, and at what cost?)

Then, once you are under the impression that advertising could help you achieve whatever goals you have in mind, or because it is a desperate stab in the dark after not much else has worked, you need to figure a few more things out.

You will need to determine:

What is my ad budget?
Where should I advertise – and for how long?
How will I measure results?
What if it doesn’t work?

There are lots of ways to advertise a book – and you probably get solicited for a lot of them.

Your many options could include these - -but there are more:

Printed ads, ie: newspapers, trade publications, newsletters
Billboards ie: the highway
Digital search ads ie: Amazon, Google, Facebook
Infomercials
TV or Radio spots
Sponsorships
Bookstore shelf placement positioning
Fliers

Advertising can be very expensive, offers no guarantees, and can be hard to track its direct results. However, for some it works.

For instance, if you are already a known entity, such as Stephen King, you use ads just to make people aware the new book is out. No explaining of the book or author is needed.

Others who may benefit from advertising are those who have a series, say of five books. Advertising one is a loss leader, meaning you may not sell enough of that book to break even but you will end up getting more sales for your other books as a result of them gaining exposure to, and liking, the first one.

Another way ads may help is if you are seeking generate a higher sales ranking on amazon. Or, perhaps the ad is to create an awareness campaign, not just for your book, but for some other product, service, or business connected to the book. The ad may not sell a lot of books, but of those that sell, they may be lead generators for something much more profitable, such as a paid client consultation or speaking gig.

Authors should really explore what means they have to properly market a book. Advertising may play a role, but likely it will not be high on the list of the things you can, could, and should first do.

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Sunday, October 20, 2024

How To Get Kids To Want To Read More Books

I saw a sobering statistic recently. There was a federal survey about children who read for pleasure. It shows that some 30% of 13-year-olds “never or hardly ever” read for fun. Thirty-five years ago, only 8% said that.

We can guess at the reasons, such as:

Kids have increased their screen time from streaming television to making or consuming TikTok videos to video games.
Children’s time is more scheduled, from sports and dance to therapy sessions and custody visits.
A lack of adult role models
Schools make it forced and mandatory to read vs fun and exploratory

However, it’s not because:

There’s nothing good to read or books don’t have identifiable characters
They can’t afford, or are unable to access, books free online and at libraries
Schools are overwhelming with school work (kids aren’t challenged enough)
They are in-person peer socializing too much (we wished they socialized more)

Sure, there are real reasons why people gravitate towards books and why some just don’t pursue them, but we have to change this shift away from failing to see reading as fun, rewarding, and useful. It’s a lifetime habit to read, one that starts very, very young.

I think – and I have data to back this up - that when kids start to read is when a lifetime decision gets made. When a child is read to at a very young age, and often, that gets the right message out there. Then, when a parent encourages a child to become the reader, it’s important that it doesn’t turn into a chore or a battle, that frustrations and fears get hidden or downplayed and that the joy of discovering words is emphasized and rewarded the way a parent gets excited when little Joe scores a goal at soccer or when Mia performs well at a dance competition.

Next, teachers need to let kids discover books in a way that doesn’t grade them or demand anything. Just put books in front of kids, nurture the process, and be available to discuss the book afterwards. Somehow, when reading becomes homework that is expected and scored, we lose our kids. Of course, we need grades and homework, but kids can be sensitive about reading and first need to become readers before anything else.

We must be super vigilant to express that reading is not a chore or an obligation, but rather an amazing skill that opens the world to us - to learn, explore, and imagine. The minute it sounds like we demand or expect a specific book to be read by a deadline and then dissected in a formulaic way that gets graded, we turn off a potential reader and lose a young mind.

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Saturday, October 19, 2024

Do Bookstores Tell A Story About America?

I recently read The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore, by Evan Friss. It’s an engaging perspective on the American bookstore and a self-professed “love letter to bookstores” for “those who cherish sanctuaries of literature.”

It delivers just that. It shows us why bookstores are delightful literary playgrounds.

Bookstores make a difference in helping us find books to read. Of course, you can shop on Amazon for the book you know that you want, but the discovery in a bookstore is unrivaled. Luckily. people still buy books at bookstores, but the number of bookstores has declined significantly from 30 years ago.

In 1993, the U.S Census Bureau, according to this book, counted 13,499 bookstores. These stories served 19,253 citizens per store. In 2021, just 5,591 bookstores existed, with each one serving triple the population of 59,283. So, our nation grew in size, but bookstores shrank. Of course, there’s one giant retailer that doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar storefront, and that’s Amazon.

But the book industry is healthy. Bookstores are fine. Publishers are okay. And plenty of people want to be authors.

Friss notes: “Nineteenth-century booksellers worried that public libraries would destroy them. In the twentieth century, the bogeyman was the radio, then the movies, then T.V, then mass market paperbacks, and then the superstores. In the twenty-first century, e-books and Amazon have been the existential threats. The fear that the book business is imperiled near death, has always been an industry staple.”

Just two centuries ago in 1828, Friss notes that the book industry was still small. He wrote: “At that point, the national book market was still comparatively meager. Few people read for leisure. Few books found a place in colonial homes. Few bookstores lined the streets. Most of the country’s readers, books, and bookstores were still concentrated in the Northeast, particularly in the larger cities, like not-yet-terribly-large Boston. Clusters of printers, publishers, and sellers were also emerging in New York and Philadelphia.

A generation later, in 1860, New York City the largest American city then - and - now had 2.6% of the nation’s population but nearly 11% of its booksellers. New York has been a literary jewel for most of America’s history.

Interestingly, the book points out how a large percentage of books have always been purchased outside of traditional bookstores. A century ago, for instance, saw readers patronize drugstores, newsstands, gift shops, department stores, and even cigar shops. Now it’s Costco, Target Walmart, & Amazon.

By 1930, New York was home to 31% of all national book sales. Think about that. Nearly a third of all books purchased in the U.S came in New York.

Nearly a century ago was the famous Book-of-the-Month Club., a way to introduce good books at a discount to people who sometimes lived in book deserts. It sold millions of books and spawned copycats.

The more recent history of books has been all over the place.

It was only by 1981 that one company had a store in every state, with Walden Books’ 735 outlets servicing all 50. At the time, nearly a quarter of all book sales came from Walden Books or B. Dalton.

In the 1970s, Len Riggio began turning Barnes & Noble into a powerhouse that would eventually disrupt things by expanding wildly, building super-sized stores with cafes, discounting best-sellers by 40%, and claiming a bigger share of the market. In 1997, then with 538 superstores, they were opening more than one new store a week. At that time Boarders and B&N accounted for 43.3% of all bookstore sales.

“Never had just two companies so dominated the market,” writes Friss.

Between 1995 and 2000, a staggering 43% of independent bookstores went out of business, unable to compete with the chains and Amazon, undercut by price and outdone by a superior amount of book selection offerings.

B&N peaked with 726 stores in 2009. The Great Recession began in late 2008 and came with Amazon’s soaring rise and the establishment of the e-book.

In the 1950s, America bought 72% of their trade books from indie stores. In 1980, it was only 40%. By the early 2000s, just 13%. The number of indie bookstore members dropped from 5,550 in 1995 to 1,512 in 2011, but since then, the number of stores has risen by more than 50%.

Perhaps the real threat to bookstores is not Amazon or even competing content providers, some of which are free. No, it is that America is no longer a book-reading nation. In 2020, a report found that 44.5% of adults did not read a single book outside a school or work assignment. The percentage of adults who could be considered readers dropped from 56.9% in 1982 to 46.7% in 2002.

But the bookstore is a place of beauty, pleasure, and significance.

Friss poetically says: “The bookstore was intended to be a space where words mattered, where people would gather, where writers could meet readers…The bookstore had helped forge a community, a community now more visible and with more supportive institutions… Once upon a time, it was a bookstore that served as a meeting space for organizing protests, an intellectual space for thinking and learning about sexuality, a safe space for people to ask questions and talk openly-maybe even for the first time - about who they really were - It was a space that people visited from around the world and a place where people longed to work.”

Bookstores may be a business but they serve a societal good that few commercial enterprises can adequately claim. Today’s bookstore is still a special place where people can freely explore the world. As Friss concludes: “Bookstores, even the little ones, can shape the world around them.”

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Thursday, October 17, 2024

Does Anyone Care That The World Loses A Language Every 90 Days?

Did you know that although there are a little over 200 nations in the world, there are nearly 7,000 spoken languages?

Further, did you know that only a few million out of eight billion people speak more than 90% of those languages?

However, some experts believe 50-50% of these languages are endangered. Within the next century, 400 languages could be dormant. Does it matter?

The world’s super languages are English, Spanish, Mandarin, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian, and Japanese. Hundreds of millions, even over a billion people, may speak one or more of these languages daily.

One language becomes dormant every 90 days in the world. What, if anything, does the world lose when a language ceases to be used?

Endangered Languages by Evangelia Adamou tells an interesting story about the subject of lost languages. The book notes that nearly a third of all languages in the world are spoken on the African continent. The largest language family there is Atlantic-Congo, compromising 1,300 languages that 600 million people speak. We see just how tribal Africa is, from language to warring factions.

There are plenty of languages spoken by so few people that more people know made-up languages like Star Trek’s Klingon. For example, in North America and Mesoamerica, 45 languages have fewer than 100 users. Another 70 have fewer than 10 language users. That may come down to just one family.

Why do languages die out?

“The formation of modern nation-states created the conditions for language shift to the dominant languages through mass monolingual education,” says the book.

It also notes that wars and pandemics can change things.

“European colonization led to the death pf millions of indigenous people and disrupted intergenerational language transmission by the forced removal of children from their families and more generally by devaluing Indigenous languages,” writes Adamou.

So, why does it matter if a language is no longer used? Isn’t it better if we all speak the same language or just a handful of languages?

Well, language is culture, and language loss means a loss of culture, even knowledge.

Amadou notes: “Languages are important for health and wellbeing, as they help preserve the cultural pride and practical knowledge that come from singing them…From the perspective of western science, failing to embrace language diversity means failing to understand how human languages are used and how they represent the world.”

In conclusion, according to Amadou’s findings, 88% of the world’s languages have virtually no internet presence and no language technologies at all. This means some one billion speakers of languages like Bora, Dahalo, Popoloca, Warlpiri, and Willisian can’t be found online.

Indeed, most of the content on the Net is just a few global or official state languages. Endangered languages are virtually missing a digital footprint and will likely die out over the coming centuries.

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Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Could Our Books Get Destroyed?

These are tens of millions of books stored on the shelves of libraries, archives, museums, and in private collections. There are huge numbers of digitized texts, including things that no longer or never, existed physically. What happens when a war, natural disaster, the environment, an accident, a terrorist attack, a fire, or flood destroys our precious books, documents and records? What happens when something happens to the electrical grid or the technology everything is saved on becomes scarcer or malfunctions?

If history is any kind of guide, we’ll survive, but we will have lost a lot of which we would not even know was missing.

Really, we are there right now, For all of the book and manuscripts that exist today, we may have lost 50-90% of the publications that once existed but no longer do. How many books, scrolls, and manuscripts from around the world were destroyed? Kings, churches, and revolutionaries set fires to many collections, Rats, temperature, water, and environmental concerns may have destroyed invaluable texts and pieces of knowledge. Is it possible theories, ideas, facts, or solutions to problems were made and recorded hundreds of thousands of years ago, but because they did not survive, are lost forever?

One book that explores this is Robert Bartlett's History in Flames: The Destruction and Survival of Medieval Manuscripts. The book cites a study that estimates there are now more than one million Latin manuscripts from the time before Galileo lived but that these represent only one-sixteenth of those that existed, meaning we may have lost 15 million manuscripts.

So, what’s interesting is just as one living in the year 1600 had no access to books that came after say 1675, people today don't have access to things that someone in 1600 may have had but that got subsequently destroyed. We assume or believe, because we have such a large collection of books that we have caught up and know more now than ever before, but what if important books that once existed no longer do are the ones that could really advance our world today?

Books may seem permanent to us, but they are not, Even if we preserve several copies of every promoted book and digitize versions of each one, does not mean this content will safely remain with us forever. Nor should we assume that as time goes on, we’ll actually still understand language and content the way we may understand it now.

What can we do to ensure all currently archived books will continue to survive, despite the challenges? What’s our contingency plan if conditions fail us and our literary culture is put at great risk?

Not only is it important that our documents survive and exist, but that they can be accessed by all. Will books be read the way they are now, or will we develop some other way to consume the content? Will it be free and available to everyone? Will we understand the language and the historical context of what we read?

Just as important as having access to all published works is to have the ability to label, search, and find what we want. If something is mislabeled or designated to be one type of book over another, we will never find the books that don’t get presented to us in these searches.

Our books define our society. We can’t afford to lose any nor can we afford to have books that we can't access, understand, or search for. It would seem that our books should be with us for a very long time, but it’s not hard to envision things going very wrong, where we suddenly shed millions of books and lose history, experiences, ideas, knowledge, and deep thought.

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Monday, October 14, 2024

A Book Marketing Diet For Authors?

“Did you fast?” someone asked me, a day after the most important day of the year for Jews, Yom Kippur.

“Yes, no problem,” I shot back.

“I couldn’t do that,” the man said.

“You would be surprised at what you can do, once you put your mind to it,” I retorted.

The same can be said of book marketing for authors.

They simply need an attitude adjustment, some encouragement and support, and a deeper understanding of the benefits of achievable book publicity.

I know it is not easy for authors, otherwise I would not be in business. I am here because authors fail to promote themselves and market their books, just like nutritionists exist for fat slobs and bariatric surgeons feast off of the excesses of the morbidly obese.

I understand. I need to drop 40-45 pounds.

As much as I was able to block out food for the holiday, I realize I fail on a daily basis to cut down on my snack portions and frequency of eating. I lack self-discipline, even in the face of knowing that eating less is better for my body’s quality of life and one’s ability to live longer. And I would look better and feel better.

What other motivation is needed? What other facts or common sense could be shared to seal the deal and get me to stop biting into a premature grave?

And yet, despite the facts, here I am, on the wrong side of the scale, the product of many false-start diets. Sure, there is a lot of blame to go around, including food companies that addict us, an FDA that fails to safeguard our food, an economy and medical system that benefits from obesity, and a society that encourages eating at every event and emotional state. Often, eating is the event.

But all of that is a pile of excuses. The one sure-fire way to stop all of that is for me to generate some discipline and shut my f&@king mouth!

But it is not that easy. We battle psychological, cultural, emotional, physical, and genetic demons when it comes to our relationship with food. And, so, I imagine authors do battle with their marketing demons when it comes to saving their literary lives.

Writers know better than to ignore their book’s marketing. They know that books don’t sell themselves. They know there are things they can do to help themselves, as well as outsource to professionals. But many just lack the fortitude, attitude, and discipline to do what it takes to market their book.

Dear writer, unshackle your kryptonite. Step away from your whining, fears, insecurities, or a lack of knowledge — and take the initiative to save your book. Your writing soul depends on it.

But alas, we know that most of you reading this will fall short on your book marketing mission, just as I have in my bid to rid myself of my fat ass. Please note: Actually, I have s nice butt, but the gut’s gotta go. Well, you get the point.

So, what are we to do?

Not give up. Stop accepting our current state.
Each day, is a new chance to save ourselves. Maybe if I tell myself that every day is Yom Kippur, I can go deeper into my diet. Maybe half-day fasts or once-a-week fasts will help. And for you, committing to more and better marketing, every day, could need you some valuable gains. We don’t need to strive for perfection — just to do more, do better.

Of course I feel hungry just writing about this but I must rise above it. Life is too important to eat it away. And your book is too important to not market it. Dig deeper. You’ve got this.

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