Steve PotterCommercial Manager

Wordery

Wordery

• Founded October 2012• By 5 ex-employees of The Book Depository• Working with publishers and authors from the UK and beyond • Aim is to replicate the hand selling experience you get from your favourite

independent / high street bookseller

Play.com

• Play.com acquired by Japanese giant Rakuten in 2011

• Network of marketplaces from Europe, US and Japan – great route to reach globally

• Play.com is largely a marketplace for other merchants – organisations and individuals

• Focus is as strong on the local and independent as it is on the global and corporate

• Rakuten also purchased Kobo – so will become a eBook destination

• Publishers / authors can also set up their own store front on Play.com

eBay.co.uk

• The world’s largest network of marketplaces

• Home to the collector, specialist and the niche

• Increasingly known for selling new products

• Unique relationship with PayPal. Other major booksellers, including Amazon, do not accept PayPal

• Again authors can set up and sell their own books

Working with retailers – The High Street

• Get involved – libraries, independent booksellers and Waterstones branches hold

events, author signings, reading groups. Offer to get involved

• Readers and reviewers – online reviews are very important, but remember booksellers

and librarians make recommendations too. Give copies of your book to those with

influence

• Work with local newspapers – mention your local bookshop in articles / interviews

• It’s not just bookshops – book are sold everywhere from gift shops & garden centres

to National Trust shops

• Think about the relevance of your book – would a local / national society want you to

speak at an event

Working with retailers

• Get the basics right• Most important tool for any bookseller

(on and offline) is data and content. Create video, downloadable content, bookmarks, flyers etc. Things booksellers can use

• The best booksellers will know their sections or indeed their whole shop inside out. But online the number of titles available can be in the millions. Bibliographic data must be as up to date and relevant as possible.

• Most retailers will take a feed from Nielsen, but can also add extra content such as review quotations, additional synopses, first chapters and lists of contents.

Working with retailers

• Keep retailers informed about what you have been up to / how you have been promoting your book

• Publicity – updates on press reviews or any upcoming activity are very important for booksellers. Radio interviews are extremely powerful for online purchases

• Share knowledge to promote your book. Anniversaries / events etc that are relevant

• Suggest and promote with retailers. This can be anything from suggesting a themed promotion in which your book could feature, writing a guest blog to giveaways and competitions

• Give your publicity a route to market. Some authors are better than others at promoting themselves. Whether it is traditional or social media, always ensure your efforts are linked to a retail site. Every blog, every tweet and every review is a potential book sale