Advice freely given...
November 15, 2006
A document pops into my inbox entitled New Promotional Strands at Waterstone's. Frankly much of it is gibberish that sets out our default promotional strand for both Front of Store and In Section and is designed to help compliment our "book matchmakers" strategy. (What the fuck?).
It is far too tedious to go into at any length, but should you be a publisher you have my sympathy.
A few highlights from the rate-card:
Should you wish your book to be the Offer of the Week it will cost you £10,000, but they do hope to sell 10,000 copies of the book. Now I was famously away from school the day they did maths, but even I can figure out that as a publisher you would, if you were lucky, be paying the W, £1 a copy to sell your book at half price.
Should you wish your book to nestle neatly in the New Titles bay it will cost you £1000 a month.
Should you wish your shiny new hardback to appear on a shelf in its rightful section (without being graded) then that opportunity is yours for £250.
Oh, and should you wish to hoodwink the punters with one those If You Like, You'll love promotions where some tit suggests that if you like Joanna Trollope you might like Elfriede Jelinek that will be a £1000 a pop.
Of course, if you go along with this guff, then you only have yourself to blame.
Ah the joys of co-op promo in the corporate jungle ; little W trying to compete head to head with Tesco and Amazon (who of course demand and receive similar co-op promo).
Posted by: Clive Keeble | November 15, 2006 at 07:01 PM
Staff picks gets my goat. Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski. Sure. It was on staff picks about a week after hitting the shelves. It would take a couple of pairs of compound eyes and a whole lot of self-loathing to get through that bilge in a week.
Posted by: paul morley | November 16, 2006 at 11:00 AM
Paul - don't hold back now.
Clive - Turns out Christina Foyle had the *right idea* all along.
Posted by: JonathanM | November 16, 2006 at 11:04 AM
OK. I'm depressed ...
Posted by: Debi | November 16, 2006 at 11:25 AM
Hi Debi, Sorry.
*Goes off to practice his book matchmakers strategy*
Posted by: JonathanM | November 16, 2006 at 12:19 PM
God! Quick, where's the whisky?
Posted by: Fiction Bitch | November 16, 2006 at 05:04 PM