Steve Potter
Commercial 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