Selling to Specialty Stores
Brian Jud
Every store that sells a product on your book’s topic can be a source of sales for your books. You can sell your cookbooks at food stands or gourmet shops; your book about dogs or cats to pet shops; your book about foot care in shoe stores. You may find yourself selling your books to museums, to zoos, through book clubs and catalogs. As appropriate, you could sell your products in home-improvement centers, auto-supply stores, drug stores, camera shops, toy stores, garden supply stores or computer stores. You can offer your books for sale in car washes, doctors’ offices, banks, restaurants, ski lodges, movie theaters, appliance stores or coffee shops. The possibilities open an entire new world of opportunity as endless and as fertile as your creativity.
Why sell to specialty stores?
People go to bookstores to buy books. There, your books are on a shelf, surrounded by competitive books. In niche marketing, you make your books available to prospective buyers in a non-competitive setting. In addition:
1) In most cases, your books are sold on a non-returnable basis.
2) Proprietors of small businesses look upon books favorably as a special service to their customers, a source of incremental revenue.
3) Most of these venues purchase directly from the publisher, so there may be no distribution discounts.
4) The individual orders will typically be small, but you will find the buying period shorter, the process less formal and access to buyers easier through mass communications.
5) Your promotional dollars are more efficient because of less wasted circulation. You can be very specific in the people you contact and the benefits your present.
How to sell to specialty stores
You may find the buying process different for each segment. If you are in doubt about the proper procedures, “visit local stores, or call major ones, to ask them how they buy products,” says Dan Poynter. Find out if you must use a distributor, and if so, which ones are the best. What are the traditional percentages on which sales are made? What are the industry operating procedures and expectations? What are the major industry trade shows, magazines and associations? Ask questions that will enable you to reach your potential buyers most expeditiously.
When selling to specialty stores, look at your product not as a book, but as an accessory to a particular industry. If you have a title on how to dress for success, office-supply stores might be a good outlet (Staples Inc., 500 Staples Dr., Framingham, MA 01702 (508) 253-5000; http://www.staples.com) or you might consider stores that sell clothes to business executives, such as Burberry (350 Ave. of the Americas, New York, New York, 10019; (212) 246-2570), or Brooks Brothers (346 Madison Ave., New York, New York, 10017; (212) 682-8800).
If you have a title on motivation, or one that serves as a solution for business people, sell it through stores that have similar products such as Franklin Covey (2200 W Parkway Blvd., Salt Lake City, Utah, 84119-2331, (801) 817-1776, http://www.franklincovey.com), or Successories (2520 Diehl Rd., Aurora, Illinois, 60504; http://www.successories.com).
Do not limit yourself to brick-and-mortar stores, but think about selling through online stores, too. If you have educational children’s books, why not sell them through Learning Express at http://www.learningexpress.com/. If yours is a patriotic topic, sell your products at http://www.hnhgifts.com/huttonhammo. If you have a topic related to relationships, money or health for baby boomers, sell it in the Marketplace at BoomerCafe™, http://www.boomercafe.com.
Author Eric Gelb offers another niche-marketing suggestion. That is to “search out magazines for marketing opportunities.” He continues, “Some magazines sell books, which can be another terrific outlet for you. Many magazines use unsold ad space for book clubs, book catalogs and to sell books that relate to articles they feature in that issue. We have sold copies of our books to numerous publications including Ladies’ Home Journal, Success magazine, and The Crafts Report. Study the masthead and contact the publication by telephone to verify the person’s contact points. When you can, speak to the editor or marketing director directly to pitch your idea. Then follow up with a letter and sales kit.”
Additional hints for selling to niche markets
1) Make it easy for people to buy from you and to sell your books. Provide the business proprietors with free counter-top displays with the purchase of a minimum quantity. Include instructions for re-ordering your books to refill the displays.
2) Give the retailers ideas for cross selling, such as suggesting that they place your barbecue cookbook near the display of outdoor grills.
3) Contact the department buyers in large stores rather than the people purchasing general store items. The buyer for cookware may be amenable to purchasing your cookbook when others may not see its value.
4) Research each niche to learn the idiosyncrasies, discounts, terms and distribution methods of marketing to each. How do you find this information? Go to a nearby store that is appropriate to your title and speak to the manager. Ask him or her for insight on how to sell to the industry. Then follow up with the leads you are given.
Read magazines and attend trade shows to learn about the industry, and to network with and contact the exhibitors and attendees. For example, if your title is on a topic associated with music, you might attend the American Music Therapy Association Conference – AMTA (http://www.musictherapy.org), the Music Industries Association of Canada (MIAC) Annual Conference and Trade Show (http://www.miac.net), and subscribe to DJ Times magazine (http://www.djtimes.com).
You can find trade shows and magazines devoted to almost any topic. For example, go to http://directory.tradeshowweek.com/directory/index.asp and search for trade shows by name, type location or date. And there is an extensive and easily searchable list of magazines at http://dir.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/Magazines/, with links to their websites.
5) Be willing to customize your products (cover and content) for an industry or customer. Some stores may want a special size to fit their shelves or existing display racks. Other may prefer a hard- or softcover book. Sell people books they want to buy.
6) Prove to retailers that your titles can help them improve their store traffic, profits or provide some advantage that is important to them. Demonstrate that you have successfully sold your books through similar outlets, if that is the case.
7) Generally you will sell to niche markets on a non-returnable basis.
When you contact small retailers, sell to them in terms that are important to them. Describe how your products will increase their profit per square foot. Tell them how your media promotion will stimulate traffic through their store. Prove that you know what their customers want, and that your titles will help increase their overall sales.
Look for selling opportunities where others see only non-book stores. See these outlets as potential vendors of your books, and work with them to increase your sales and profitability.
Brian Jud is author of Beyond the Bookstore (a Publishers Weekly book) and The Marketing Planning CD-ROM describing new ways to sell more books profitably to special-sales buyers. He is also the editor of Book Marketing Matters, a special-sales newsletter. Contact Brian at P. O. Box 715, Avon, CT 06001; (800) 562-4357; brianjud@bookmarketing.com or visit http://www.bookmarketing.com
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