World Book Night 2012 – suggestions
Posted on February 14, 2011 by Vanessa
Imagine a project to promote reading which provided entertainment for readers; tempted non-readers to dip their toes into literary waters; emphasised the importance and joy of libraries; encouraged more people to venture into bookshops; boosted the income of publishers, authors and booksellers and made sure that books and the wonders that they hold were something everyone was talking about without alienating a single element of the book trade. Imagine if that project could get millions of people sampling books they might never have known about or heard of and borrowing them from the library or buying them in a bookshop – buying them at a discount too, so that they could dip their toes still further into the magic of language and the power of story-telling for less than the price of a packet of fags. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Since I voiced some criticisms of World Book Night, I’ve been accused of being overly cynical, angst-ridden, negative and all sorts of other things – though mainly by people whose livelihoods aren’t threatened by giving away £9 million of stock it has to be said. However, I’ve also had dozens of emails from authors and booksellers who are worried about disappearing royalties and profits. After all, the Society of Authors has found that the average earnings of authors is about £7k per annum so to see a precedent being set for giving away content is disconcerting at the very least for them. It seems to be unique to the book and music industry – I don’t remember anyone expecting surgeons or bus drivers to provide their services for free.
Actually, I’m not a negative person – mostly I’m fairly cheerful and I do have a strong streak of optimism (we run our own business and wouldn’t get by without that). I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself fluffy but I’m generally pretty enthusiastic about new ideas, which is why I’ve been working up an idea of my own. After all, it’s easy to criticise but it’s important to make suggestions as to how things could be better. Although we were vehemently opposed to the ‘bookaholism’ notion, we did make some suggestions that were later adopted by the Booksellers Association in conjunction with the American Booksellers Association.
Firstly though, before I explain the cunning plan, we need to look at what a free sample is. When I was in the supermarket a couple of days ago, at the deli counter they had a plate of little biscuits with dollops of pate on them. Nearby were whole packets of that pate. Obviously, the idea was that shoppers would try a little and buy a packet. Giving customers a whole packet of it as they walked through the door wouldn’t have increased sales, except possibly of the little biscuits to spread the pate on, but I don’t suppose that was what they were trying to promote.
A sample is a lure, a taster to tempt the consumer to purchase (or in the case of library books, borrow) the whole thing. That’s one of the reasons why World Book Day works for children – they can exchange the voucher that they all receive for one of the books and discover a new author or a new story by one of their existing favourite writers. For authors to be selected, it can be a massive boost to their sales as children, having enjoyed one book often want to buy more. And the contribution from authors is comparatively small – it isn’t a full length novel that they’re forgoing the royalties on and although they might not get royalties for this WBD title they will usually see a subsequent uplift in sales of their other books.
So, here’s The Edinburgh Bookshop’s proposal for World Book Night 2012. Instead of producing special editions of 25 different books, the first chapter or so of the same number could be included in an anthology. This would be cheaper to print – economies of scale being a wonderful thing – and less complicated to distribute.
Although the printers of this year’s book are producing it for just the cost of the materials, that can still be a hefty amount for small publishers to find. With our suggestion the cost of taking part would be lower – assuming the printers have enough spare capacity to produce the book again for just the cost of the materials, publishers would only have to pay part of the costs. I can’t guess at what that might be as so far no-one’s given me any examples of what this year’s costs are but obviously it would be much lower. That would mean that the project would be open to a wider number of publishers – poetry from Salt for example as well as Faber. It might be possible to include some non-fiction too as there are plenty of people who don’t read novels but do read history or biography.
One could include a wider range of authors because you haven’t got to choose books that you think will generate enough interest to warrant printing 40,000 copies. So that makes it possible to include debut and lesser-known authors. For example, our best-selling fiction author is Per Petterson who, despite winning the IMPAC prize, isn’t that well-known – it would be great to include the beginning of Out Stealing Horses, a book which has won over so many people who’ve bought it from us. And what about a classic or two – everyone knows the first line of A Tale of Two Cities and the inclusion of the whole first chapter might prompt a few people to rediscover – or discover for the first time – Dickens. Each excerpt could be introduced by a page with a bit of blurb and maybe few suggestions along the “if you like this, you might also like…” line. Or maybe a megastar author or celebrity introducing the books that they love. It’s doubtful that even the most poorly-paid author would object to a sample of their work being included – it’s clearly a marketing opportunity with massive potential.
However, it is being organised by the book trade and all of us, whether authors, publishers or booksellers need to turn a profit. Simply giving away samples of great books isn’t going to boost sales and get more people reading; it’s important to get the recipients of these anthologies into libraries and bookshops. So, in the back of each book we could include a voucher entitling the reader to buy any of the books included at half-price, with publishers and wholesalers ensuring that the discounts provided to bookshops enabled them to sell the books that cheaply without making a loss – obviously everyone has to chip in something and I’m sure that booksellers would have no problem covering the associated costs such as staffing, storage, display, card payment fees etc. And there should be some information about libraries – maybe publishers could donate some copies to libraries so that the books are available for borrowers or to be reserved. Authors also benefit from that through PLR payments.
Now, that we have our lovely book, with a fantastic cover design using the names of these authors so there’s something to attract as wide a range of people as possible and a good strapline, we have to distribute it.
Well, because we haven’t alienated anyone, bookshops will be happy to give it away, with in-store events and other promotions. Authors too, would be delighted to join in, even the ones who are currently expressing disquiet because of concerns re devaluing their work, because we’d be raising the profile of books generally and – crucially – encouraging people to buy them or visit libraries. I’m sure many of this year’s ‘givers’ (such a hideous noun, nearly as vile as the phrase ‘it’s a big ask’!) would be keen to take part again and because it’s not as specific as each of them finding 48 people to give the same book to, it would make it easier to give out. Libraries would doubtless want to give it away, people could give it away outside tube stations, on buses, outside football grounds and at rugby matches, in pubs, at hospitals, prisons, nursing homes, petrol stations, shopping centres, nightclubs, supermarkets… there really are no limits.
World Book Night 2011 is a great idea with a number of significant flaws; with some work it could become a scheme which didn’t limit itself to book-loving people giving books to other book-lovers. Because for all the people who plan to try to pass the books on to people who wouldn’t normally read there will be at least as many who – like the customer in our shop on Saturday – simply plan to give the books to their family and friends.
With some revisions to the scheme, it would be possible to get this book into the hands of so many more people than the one million planned recipients of this year’s books. We could show readers and non-readers alike the amazing breadth of work out there whilst at the same time supporting a library service currently threatened by huge cuts, authors who are constantly seeing their income eroded, and publishers and booksellers who are trying to keep going through the worst recession for two generations. It would be sustainable enough to grow into a genuinely World Book Night and to become an annual celebration of literature in all its forms.
Do let me know what you think…
I’m sorry this was so long – if you got this far, thank you for sticking with me!
Comments
23 Responses to “World Book Night 2012 – suggestions”
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February 14th, 2011 @ 7:38 pm
I wanted to stand up, applaud and cheer! A superb idea and a terrific piece of writing.
February 14th, 2011 @ 8:44 pm
Yes ma-am – my whiskers are out, my tail is up and that noise you can hear IS a purr!
February 15th, 2011 @ 7:06 am
I am one of the indies who has signed up to WDN. I like the scale and ambition of the project and I like to get behind and support anything that promotes books and reading and despite all the (completely valid) flaws that you have pointed out, I do believe it will promote reading which will ultimately sell books.
However this idea is SO much better. I can’t see any problems with it and the WBN team would be crazy not to take it up as the way to go next year.
Or are they planning a next year? I’m worried this is a one off gimmick which would be a shame as WB Day has grown so much over the years. You idea Vanessa is one that could realistically be done year after year and significantly help book sellers sell books.
Jamie Byng – get Vanessa on your team!
February 15th, 2011 @ 9:38 am
It is great that you have challenged the ‘Emperor’s new clothes’ and although there will be some issues in your proposal, it is in principal far more logical to that on the table today.
It just takes people to engage and communicate and listen to other perspectives.
I would strongly recommend you to email your thinking to the WBN body and obviously lobby the BA for them to promote the debate. You should also send this piece to the Bookseller who i believe are aiming to do a piece on WBN.
Thanks for the breath of fresh air!
February 15th, 2011 @ 10:07 am
WBN could definitely use some new ideas every year to keep it going and people interested.
However, publishers already do samplers and I’m not sure how successful they are at spreading the word. But if they were also heavily promoted at venues that only sold books as a small part of their range (rather than bookshops or libraries), this could work, I think.
Byng will have moved on from WBN as his ‘baby’ after this year, I reckon (unless it’s so successful and gets so much attention it never stops reminding him of its presence), so you’d be best contacting other members of the team to put the idea forward.
February 15th, 2011 @ 10:16 am
Fab idea!. i was thinking something similar. but i was thinking that short, exclusive books like the Children’s World Book Day Books or even the Quick Reads, would be good give aways, and would promote reading, books and authors. thats where my mind was, but i think i like your idea better.
February 15th, 2011 @ 12:07 pm
Dear Vanessa,
We are seeing each other in a couple of hours so I will save most of my responses to your thoughtful post about WBN 2012 for talking through face to face.
But I wanted to say that I think the suggestion of a sampler is a really interesting idea that could play a key role in any future WBN and that it offers additional opportunities for marketing books and driving book sales that this year’s initiative does not have. Quite how the mechanics of the sampler would work needs further thought and finessing but we will make sure that this discussion happens and that it involves even more people than were involved in the conception of the first WBN.
Personally I think the sampler should be a complementary aspect to any future WBN rather than the only giveaway of WBN but nothing is set in stone and the thing that I care about (despite what some of the people who post on your site think) is that we develop WBN in a similar way to WBD – and see WBN as an opportunity for galvanising the whole of our industry to do something high-profile, far-reaching and above all EFFECTIVE when it comes to reading and promoting adult books (and that includes the buying of them!).
Despite the fact that there are a number of people who think WBN is ill-conceived and that it will have a detrimental effect on book sales and the perceived value of books in this country, one of the things that has been great about WBN is that it has ALREADY involved many people from every part of the industry and in that sense has been genuinely collaborative.
I still believe that World Book Night has the potential to have a hugely beneficial impact on our industry if it embraced in the right way and we make the most of the opportunities it provides.
The media coverage alone will put books and the reading of books very much in the public eye come the weekend of the 4th and 5th of March. As well as the entire evening of dedicated book related programming that is going out on BBC2 on Saturday the 5th March, there is something we are shortly to annouce that is happening on the 4th March that is going to generate even more media coverage for books and which I think stimulate significant further interest in books and the reading and buying of them. Watch this space!!
I will write another post after my lunch with Vanessa as no doubt will she. Hopefully the posts won’t contradict one another too much although I am certain we will retain a healthy difference of opinion! At the end of the day, we both care about books and readers and ensuring that we have an industry that is dynamic and forward-looking and healthy. Booksellers are crucialto that. And so are publishers. So are authors. And so are readers. There is a complex and symbiotic relationship between all of these stakeholders.
I’ve a final point and it concerns this notion of value. Whilst I agree that simply giving away content without thought is a dangerous thing to do, I believe that the value of a book is ultimately more to do with what lies within the pages than the price someone might or might not pay for the book. IF someone reads a book and is enriched by the experience then the chance of them reading another book is that much greater. This is not to belittle the importance of selling books as I fully recognise how important this aspect is too. Without the market economy we are all, on one level and to put it bluntly, fucked. But it is what Lewis Hyde calls the gift economy that we must not forget either as this is arguably more powerful than anything else. And by the gift economy he means not just the literal giving of something physical. He also means the giving of an experience that the author (or any artist)enables the receiver to have through the work.
IF through World Book Night and the the personal recommendation by 20,000 givers of 25 brilliant books to 1,000,000 readers, we get a significant number of these people to read the books in question and then hand them on to someone else with an additional personal recommendation, we could have done something extraordinarily positive for books in this country. And something that booksellers, authors, their agents, publishers and readers (including lapsed and new readers as well as regular) will all benfit from. Every time someone reads a book and enjoys it they add value to what that book is and it will sell more copies. This is why King Lear is invaluable. Or To Kill a Mockingbird. Or The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Or Out Stealing Horses (which I am so glad to hear is your best-selling novel Vanessa – I love this book).
I still appreciate that we are going into unknown territory here and that none of us know exactly what the impact of this million book giveaway might be. Nothing on this scale has ever been attempted before. But I would urge anyone reading this post to embrace the possibilities of what we are doing rather than dismissing it before it is attempted.
and to feel free to email me on jamie@canongate.co.uk if they wish.
90 minutes from Edinburgh Vanessa! Just pulling into Newcastle
Best
Jamie
P.S. Andrea is right in saying that samplers have been done by publishers before (we used to do them fairly regularly for Payback Press and Rebel Inc back in the 90s and I think they were effective although much of the effect was never directly monitored – as an aside it was in these payback samplers that we first featured Iceberg Slim, along with Ice T’s introduction to his books, and I am pretty sure I would have given one of these to Jonathan Main when I was trying to hustle our wares to him back in the 90s!). And they have been done by retailers too (Books etc used to put out a quarterly Fiction etc sampler and did this for several years and I know they felt it was effective and part of the way Rita and Luthfa and Hartley used to extend the branding of that chain).
February 15th, 2011 @ 12:09 pm
Without more bookshops it will be very difficult to increase book sales and reading.
Most books are sold on impulse and publishers know this.
The Borders store in Glasgow I believe had a turnover in the region of 12 million and since it’s demise I don’t think Waterstones has picked up more than a tiny amount of this.
We have run our own bookshop in Glasgow since 1983 and are now the last independent in the city. We are finding business quite healthy and have just signed a new long lease.
We used to take part in many of these trade events and were always out selling books in schools and anywhere that would entertain us.
We do none of that now and do not take part in any BA sponsored events and never now go outside of the shop to sell.
We also stopped selling National Book Tokens and are extremely close to ditching the BA altogether. ( one of the best decisions we ever took )
We also never discount except for a short sale in January.
Result? Our turnover and profitability has been on a rising trend for years and is looking good for the future.
When the NBA was abandoned the publishing industry should also have got rid of RRP and moved to a dealer price letting bookshops decide the gross margin they needed. I suspect we are the only retailers on the high street who do not decide their own margins. All my neighbours price their goods according to their costs for rent, rates, staff etc.
In the book trade we have to take what crumbs are thrown to us by publsihers and wholesalers.
With a dealer price publishers would also not be under so much pressure to discount.
Those who open bookshops tend to be either in the trade already or are individuals who have a passion for the product. We do not get the type of investor who is looking to make a profit. They all open coffee shops or boutiques. I doubt they would be able to see how they could make a bookshop profitable.
But this is the bottom line – bookselling has never been a profitable business and won’t be if people see us giving away books for nothing.
February 15th, 2011 @ 12:17 pm
Christ that was a long post.
I hope the content justified its length!!
Jamie
February 15th, 2011 @ 12:28 pm
I still have an old Rebel Inc sampler on my book case at home (though it is sadly a bit chinchilla chewed!). My entire Christmas list used to be made up from things like that. My mum didn’t think it was so great as she and various relatives had to try and find these books!
February 15th, 2011 @ 3:34 pm
As a librarian, I really like this idea. True, we don’t earn money per book issued as you do per sale, but we do get rapped over the knuckles when our issues go down; we like things that bring people into the library saying, “I’ve just seen/heard/read something about XXX; do you have a copy?” (For example, I spent a chunk of last Friday making sure that we had copies in stock of all the books featured in Sebastian Faulks’ TV series.) I think hooking people with samples is more likely to bring them in than hooking them with whole books – and at this point I am reminded of the child who asked for a book and was told, “You’ve got a book, you don’t need another.”
I also like the idea as a reader. Puffin published at least one sampler volume (I Like This Story) when I was a child, and it led me to many books I have continued to enjoy.
February 17th, 2011 @ 7:48 am
Love this idea, not least becuase it reminds me of the Penguin 60s, which introduced me to a huge range of new authors.
February 17th, 2011 @ 7:48 am
(excuse typo)
February 23rd, 2011 @ 1:11 pm
Anyone want 48 boxes of very soggy books?
After discussions with the B.A. my delivery was reduced to 10 ‘givers’ worth of stock. I’ve just received 48 boxes from a delivery driver I depend on and have taken pains to build a good relationship with. So now I’m awaiting a call from W.B.N. to arrange collection. As I am unable to use the fire exit or office because of boxes of free core stock I’m planning on stacking the boxes on the pavement in the rain. See if that promotes reading.
February 25th, 2011 @ 4:13 pm
Vanessa ! GENIUS ! Jamie !!!$%^&*!!:-(
David Kinnear Top Man!!!
Victoria J. they can have mine as well.
Along with electronic book tokens and the ridiculous World Book Month (sorry day), and Gardeners “hive” the future is…………………………
February 28th, 2011 @ 1:16 pm
Anyone fancy a Bookseller’s jenga tournament with the uncollected boxes? Bring your own Gin.
March 2nd, 2011 @ 3:23 pm
Just read this via Nicola Morgan’s blog. I think it’s a wonderful idea. As a writer who’s just struggling to make any kind of impression with a debut novel, this kind of sampler would be a godsend to somebody in my position.
I’m actually involved in a WBN event, but I think your idea for next year is wonderful. Let’s hope Byng et al take it up.
March 3rd, 2011 @ 5:45 pm
I think this is a great idea Vanessa, well done! It would take all the positives of samplers an make this WBN book an annual must have book leading to lots more sales for all.
BTW, Jamie, I think the WBN books are really very attractive and beautifully designed. I was worried they’d look cheap but they look great so well done! We are “a giver” (horrible word!) and also a “drop point” and we’ve had 22 boxes of books and our givers are just starting to appear to ask for their books – still some 10 givers unaccounted for! We’ve had one taxi driver who is planning to give a copy of his chosen book to everyone who uses his cab on Saturday night!
But count me in for giving away a combined sampler in 2012 – and it must contain info on other books by that author, books in that series, and if you like then you’ll love…
March 4th, 2011 @ 12:15 pm
[...] for the inaugural World Book Night. This event has had it’s critics, both very negative and critical yet supportive and I agree with many of the points, especially that this could be a lot of terribly nice bookish [...]
March 4th, 2011 @ 1:16 pm
WBN puts me in mind of school when we all received our school ‘reader’ for O level. Up until then I had been an avid reader of paperback adventure stories and heroic biographies. The book we were expected to read was ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ by Thomas Hardy. All I can say is it was great way to put a 14 year old off books. I have long since recovered from my brush with a ‘classic’ and continue to enjoy crime fiction especially the modern genre of Swedish detective novels. My point is that the politics of reading never cease to amaze me. Why do some people feel the need to get everyone reading, first of all, then effectively tell those people what they should be reading? Reminds me of my ex-mother in law, a retired teacher who was very sniffy about children reading comics when they should have been reading Dickens et al. They were reading something though, wasn’t that enough?
So, why these particular 25 titles for WBN? Who chose them? Who did they see as the audience for them? And why does the event feel a bit like it will be bookish folk giving a free book to their bookish friends somewhere in North London? I’d like to know how many people will step outside their comfort zone to ‘spread the word’.
March 5th, 2011 @ 12:22 am
[...] if it took some suggestions on board. The best I’ve seen is handing out a more extensive catalogue of first chapters of books (rather than a ‘carefully chosen few’) to encourage people to actively buy books they [...]
March 16th, 2011 @ 4:18 pm
Just wanted to say how excellent these blog posts are re WBN. In the WBN survey from the BA I have put a link to this blog re ideas for 2012. Well done!
April 10th, 2011 @ 9:24 pm
[...] if it took some suggestions on board. The best I’ve seen is handing out a more extensive catalogue of first chapters of books (rather than a ‘carefully chosen few’) to encourage people to actively buy books they [...]