Marketing tips to help you get the word out and customers in. Come join in the conversation.
Advertising doesn’t have to be expensive to be effective. A lot of in-store book sales come from walk in traffic. Even if you’re in a high traffic area getting people in the door isn’t always easy. Just because they’re there doesn’t mean they notice your store. To up the odds people do notice your store, … Read more
I have tidied up the shop, cleared out the rugs, moved the tables around, taken all the big books off the trestles and relocated the trestles, and I feel – well, almost refreshed!
Advertising in the Used Book World Shane Gottwals Gottwals Books www.gottwalsbooks.com A recent article I wrote really got me to thinking about advertising and the small, independent bookstore. Is it just my experience, but do you never see bookstores advertise in any sort of medium that people actually see? I know that, obviously, direct sales … Read more
The problem with free clipart is its free. It means it gets used by everybody and all blends together. If you’re getting ready for a big advertising push in the downmarket, it is probably worth your time to actually commission your own one-of-a-kind artwork. It’s hard to establish a distinct presense if you look like everybody else. So here’s some guidelines for how to commission art for your bookstore.
We all know that we need to advertise, and we all know that it’s very difficult to know how and where to advertise. It tends to be expensive, and so often it doesn’t work. We know that people aren’t going to come to our book store if they don’t know we are there.
I’ve given this a lot of thought.
In my previous piece – ‘The Second Renaissance’ – I wrote about the internet and how it is changing communication and attitudes. It would seem that the internet is a good place to advertise. Websites are neither difficult nor expensive to set up and maintain. The downside is that there are, literally, billions of websites so the book buyers aren’t likely to find your website unless they already know about it.
We also know that book people – and especially used book people – like to visit as many stores as they can, because, unlike B&N or Chapters, every one of our stores is different. So I thought it would make sense to have a lot of used bookshops on one site. Actually, it would be best if ALL the used bookstores were on one site, searchable by location. If that were the case, anyone going for a drive, or moving, or visiting another city, could go to the site and find out what bookstores there were in the area, their hours, location, number of books, etc.
Twitter is one of those social media services that people either love to deathor just plain don’t get. Who wants to read a 140 character update saying things like “I just realized I accidentally had some books on “Judaism” marked as “Jedism” instead. Kabbalah does not give you a light saber”? At least 787 people read that yesterday on my Twitter feed.
Twitter is probably best described as microblogging. It’s the bastard child of blogging, social networking, news feeds, and online forums. Stick web 2.0 in a food processor and chop it into 140 character bite sized pieces and there you go. That’s Twitter.
The premise is pretty simple. 140 character updates on “what are you doing?”. This can be anything from deep thoughts to mundane tasks to actual plugs for your business. And you read the same thing from people you follow. Lots of Tweets are simply passed along links indicating what people are reading. There is where the power lies. Twitter is in some ways like a turbo charged mailing list. You’ll get a fast turnaround on anything you post, generally within minutes. Got a customer that’s given you a vague description of a book but you aren’t sure what it is? Post a query to Twitter and if your pool of followers is big enough, you often will get a response. It lets you pick other people’s brains.
We have a magazine here in southern Ontario called ‘Daytripping’. I imagine there are similar publications elsewhere. It’s published every 2 months and can be picked up free at all its advertisers as well as tourist booths and so on. All the ads are for individual stores – no chains. It’s just about the only … Read more
There are plenty of success stories out there and I can confidently tell you that making a used bookshop work is not impossible, even during tougher times. What you don’t often hear is a story from a failed dealer explaining his mistakes. I’ve made a few and I don’t want you to do the same. First of all I want you to know that I don’t consider my bookshop to be a complete failure, only a partial one.
