Article by Mary Hoffman
[Armadillo 6.2 Summer 2004]
Where do Authors figure in the selling of childrens books? That was the subtitle of this meeting at the Society of Authors in March. There was a panel of speakers, Elaine McQuade, Marketing and Publicity Director at Puffin and Chair of the Puplishers Associations Childrens Group, Wayne Winstone, Childrens Director of Ottakars and Ted Smart and Seni Glaister of the direct-selling business, The Book People.
Elaine McQuades background had been in teaching, everything from History in secondary school to being a Primary Advisory Teacher with the old ILEA. And shes still a governor of a Primary School in Fulham. She has been at Puffin, where she went to run the Puffin Club, for fourteen years and had seen the industry change dramatically in recent years.
Post-Harry Potter, publishers and retailers both take childrens books more seriously and so do the national media. This is the upside. But the downside is that, if you take HP out of the equation, the market hasnt grown that much since 1998. With 10,000 childrens titles published every year, every book has to fight for its place.
The big chain bookshops are øabsolutely key.Ó
She gave us a fascinating behind-the-scenes insight into how our books are marketed. At Puffin they go to Elaine and the Sales Director, maybe also to the Rights Director and are discussed at a weekly acquisitions meeting. Their role is to assess how big it will be in terms of sales, to pinpoint who it is for and how to position it in terms of cover, price and distribution.
There is also discussion of the channels through which it will be available. The big chain bookshops are øabsolutely keyÓ but the Independents might øtake a puntÓ on a new author. Schools are still good buyers, with classics like Mildred Taylors øRoll of Thunder, Hear my cryÓ taking a steady fifteen ot twenty thousand copies a year. øThey are good on quietly brilliant books,Ó said Elaine.
There are also Book Clubs in schools, which are good for joke books and SAS type books for boys and pink and sparkly books for girls (94,00 copies of øMy Secret UnicornÓ in the first few months of this year). Supermarkets are a growing outlet, though they dont take much for over-7s. And then there is direct selling. Which is an entirely different matter.
Format, cover, price and sales
The first big decision is øhardback or paperback?Ó It is øvery difficult to sell hardback childrens fiction, except at Christmas,Ó said Elaine. But the old belief that paperback originals dont get reviewed is a myth. And books by big names, like Jacqueline Wilson, will still go into hardback first.
Covers are a whole specialist area in themselves, with close attention paid to the age and gender of the target reader. At Puffin a class of children come in once a month to look at covers. If the book is a øClassicÓ, it is no longer designed with øa gifty look for grannies and aunties.Ó They now have a more retro feel but with modern typefaces.
A piece of very good news is that Puffin is committed to printing prices on their books and they try to keep them low - £3.99 for shorter, younger books. Puffin have a specialist childrens sales team and there is a huge amount of marketing to the trade. Every six months all publishers go to the Head Offices of the chains, Independents and The Book People etc, to present their titles. The decision might be taken by Head Office or left to local branches.
You cant buy your way in
To run a promotion can cost anything from £50 to five figures, but, said Elaine, øyou cant buy your way in.Ó The reps go into all bookshop branches, book clubs and book fairs. One and a half million leaflets go into schools and approaches are made to supermarkets and internet sellers like Amazon.
Twenty-four per cent in a non-Harry Potter year
Wayne Winstone, who is øNon Book DirectorÓ of Ottakars as well as Childrens, said they were øseriously committed to childrens books.Ó They form 27% of their sales ¨ ø24% in a non-Harry Potter year.Ó There are now so many more outlets selling childrens books ¨ supermarkets, DIY centres, even shoe repairers and keycutters ¨ but the cake wasnt getting any bigger.
Initiatives run by Ottakars included a Red Star Collectors Club for picturebooks (4th book free when you buy three) and this has been extended to books for babies. Ottakars also have a Childrens Book of the Month in four categories ¨ 0-5, 5-8, 8-12 and Teenage. These are chosen by staff.
They also run a '3 for 2 offer on the øHottest New Talent in Childrens Books.Ó But only 20% of their sales come from price promotion. They run table top promtions of themed books and also push øforgotten gemsÓ from backlists.
øPeople think books are expensive,Ó said Wayne, which was a nice lead-in to the next speakers.
Cuddly grandfather
It had been a coup to get Ted Smart, because he has become a bit of a bogeyman to childrens writers; all we tend to know of him is that The Book People get our titles at an 82% discount from publishers and that Smart is a multi-millionaire. In the event, he was a disarmingly frank and friendly presence, clearly a businessman from head to toe, but a cuddly grandfather figure too, which might account for why the group gave him such an easy ride.
Seni Glaister spoke first and she is the Chief Executive of the company. øThere are a lot of myths about us,Ó she began. The main one of course, believed by Society of Authors Chair, Anthony Beevor amid many others, is that they øcannibaliseÓ sales in the open market. Seni was firm: øAll publishers research suggest that that our sales are incremental ¨ extra to those made through other channels.Ó
They take a very limited number of books ¨ under a thousand overall ¨ and put about fourteen into a catalogue at a time. She maintained that buying books can be overwhelming for many people, because of the huge amount of choice. The Book People put their catalogues into fire stations, hairdressing salons etc to reach people who have lost touch with books. øThe ambition is to capture their imagination ¨ working parents are our target market.Ó
Price is key
A six-year-old can finish a short book, costing £3.99 or £4.99, in thirty minutes, so they bundle books up. They sell boxes of ten Roald Dahl or Jacky Wilson titles in a box and they go like hot cakes. (Not surprisingly, since TBP sell them at £12.99 a box, when the RRP would be £54.99). But surprisingly, they cant sell an individual Jacky Wilson title in hardback, even at a low price.
Their market is ønervous and not well-informedÓ and some people cant physically gain access to bookshops, such as the disabled and those living outside towns. ø90% of people dont go into bookshops,Ó said Seni. And their top 10 or 20 titles doesnt match with the published bestseller lists. øWe might sell 300,00 copies of a book no-one has heard of.Ó
Controversially, they claim to pay three and a half million pounds worth of royalties to authors, but this figure seems enormous when one considers any individual author is likely to get about 10p a copy on a £10 book. But both Seni and Ted Smart were adamant that all deal were negotiated with authors agents or publishers and seemed genuinely surprised that these deals could be made without consulting the writers themselves.
A part of the industry
The Book People sell 16 million books a year, 40% of them childrens titles. øWe have became a part of the industry and publishers come to see us every day.Ó But tellingly they dont imagine customers will necessarily buy the next book from them: øWe see ourselves as starting readers off,Ó said Seni.
Questions
In answer to questions, Ted Smart said he saw himself as øan unreserved supporter of the book trade.Ó They arent in competition with the chains and independents. But they do print six million copies of their autumn catalogue and their was much anecdotal evidence from the floor of finding them in places like The Radio Times, which hardly supports the non-bookshop-using-market thesis.
Ann Jungman, who spoke almost uniquely from both sides of the business, being both author and publisher (Barn Owl Books), talked of teachers buying books from TBP and authors getting only a penny a copy. Kate Petty pointed out that a book of hers published in hardback at £9.99 last October was offered by TBP at the same time at £2.99. This was the argument for a three month delay. Seni said that more often or not there is a delay.
Books were now being sold like cans of beans, said one member of the group; royalty statements were so full of High Discount, Medium Discount Sales etc ¨ when was a book ever sold at full price? This brought on lamentations about the demise of the Net Book Agreement.
But the evening ended on a positive note with Ted Smart saying that øChildrens books just get better and better.Ó