With my new book “Cashing in with
Content” now five months away from publication, I visited the midwinter meeting
of the American Library Association this weekend. The huge show featured 800 exhibitor
booths including hundreds of publishers plus other companies serving the library
market (stuff like shelves and furniture, audio/visual equipment, databases, and
so on).
I was hoping to see what’s new in the
world of book promotion. Although it was certainly fun to pick up
pre-publication editions of the featured titles publishers are pushing to be
hot for upcoming release, I was disappointed by how similar the online marketing
of books is.
Consider one category—Children’s Books. I jotted down the names of the
publishers that had the largest and most trafficked booths and then went back
to check out the Web sites. The sites all feature a photo album approach of
pretty book covers with marketing blurbs. There didn’t seem to be any
innovative organization, other than by age category (young kids, middle school
readers, etc.) Sure the sites were all
well designed, but the basic navigation was forcing a visitor to wade through
countless books. Harcourt and Hyperion did a better job than some of the others
with the book listings themselves, offering links such as How To Buy
(both consumer and book trade buyers), More Titles by This Author, Author's
Biography, and Author's Website.
It’s just amazing to me that companies with the most content
at their disposal – publishers – seem to do a poor job of cashing in with that
content. Also interesting is the online version of the show guide , which has all the information about each exhibitor, does not include a listing for the company Web site. I had to use a search engine to even find these publishers on the Web. It seems that print publishers are simply rooted in print marketing.
Here are some children’s book sites to
check out:
Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young
Readers
Harcourt Children's Books
Hyperion Books for Children
Penguin Young Readers Group
Random House Children's Books
Simon & Schuster Children's
Publishing
