Handselling books that is. When it’s done with passion and enthusiasm, a handselling bookseller can move mountains of books.
Recently, a friend and I went to a two-story bookstore (It was heaven, I tell you. I would have moved in if they’d let me). We wandered around and were approached by a bookseller. Forty-five minutes later we were still talking to her. She walked us through her section — Young Adult — from beginning to end, pulling out titles and sharing what she’d loved about them (or why I might want to borrow a particular book first). It was clear that she adored her corner of the bookstore and felt proprietary about it. She read the books on “her” shelves. She knew off the top of her head what an author’s previous releases were and what they had coming out soon. I was captivated by her passion for the stories. It put several books on my list that I’d never heard of before, because her excitement over them sparked my own. Book love is highly contagious and addictive. All readers are looking for that next great book that’s going to rock their world.
Handselling is an easy formula: (1) Bookseller loves a book (2) They recommend it with fervor (3) Reader becomes intrigued and must buy. I heard from a bookseller yesterday who has sold 190 copies of my latest book since it released two weeks ago. Holy cow. That blows me away. But I know it happens all the time. Every day. Right this very minute there’s a bookseller somewhere raving about a book that knocked their socks off and there’s a reader soaking up every word with building interest.
When Borders recently announced that they were “seeking renewal through the timeless art of ‘hand-selling’ books” (By HILLEL ITALIE, Associated Press – Tue May 5) I became really excited. I forwarded the article to friends and cheered. I love Borders. I think Susan Grimshaw is invaluable to the romance genre. I want BGI to stay in business (and hopefully build a big Borders store near me). But I was a little concerned about the caveat that the books to be handsold were not individual staff favorites, but corporate choices. I became even more concerned when comments started popping up here and there claiming that employees could lose their jobs if they didn’t meet sales quotas for the “make” books (and that sometimes they didn’t even like the “make” books). It’s difficult to judge the veracity of anonymous comments, but then again, if my job was at stake I wouldn’t post my identity either. Nothing is private online, as we all know.
What are your thoughts on forced handselling? What’s your reaction to it as a reader, author, or bookseller?
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That’s scary, Sylvia – I know handselling was the topic at Murder She Writes last week, but that was for an indie store, and one would hope the staff actually likes the books.
Although I don’t expect my taste to agree with everyone’s, I guess I expect a bookseller’s recommendation to at least be honest. To think that they’re pushing a book because they have to, not because they actually liked it — well, that’s more than bothersome. Doubly so, because my books are so obscure, handselling is practially the only way anyone could find them.
Omigoodness, when they opened the first Borders in Anchorage, Alaska, I walked in and asked them if I could bring my sleeping bag and just live there.
They said no. Sigh. At that time, it was the biggest thing to hit Alaska since the Iditarod. Well, for book lovers anyway.
I’ve learned as a blogging book reviewer that enthusiasm can’t be bought. If booksellers are forced to hand-sell, they’re going to come off as used car salesmen at best and it’s going to backfire. The solution is simple. Let the booksellers hand-sell the books they love. Better to sell a lot of a little-known book, than have readers get all cranky about having a bestseller shoved in their nose whenever they walk into a store. They would completely ruin the bookstore experience and they would find a different bookstore to go to.
Great article!
Personally I like it when a store pays particular attention to their customer’s likes and needs. To me part of that is knowing what they like to read and being able to recommend more books to them. As long as it is done honestly without being too pushy then I have no problem with this.
I don’t have a Borders near me. I’m in Canada and we have Chapters, Indigo or Coles stores. There have only been a handful of times that I have gotten some great recommendations from their staff, but the best recommendations or hand selling I ever got was at my local independent bookstore. Book Stop knows their clientele, some by name (I’m one of them), will hold new books a side for them (they’ve done this for me many times) and can make other recommendations when I come in. Plus the people working there are all avid readers.
As for my books the big bookstores aren’t carrying them in their shelf stock but do have it online. However Book Stop has sold over 50 copies of it. So I’m all for honest hand selling books.
To me, forced handselling sounds like a bad idea all around.
“Would you like to supersize that?”
Forced handselling is going to come across like anything forced– it’ll be obvious and uncomfortable and the informed consumer will be able to spot it from a mile away.
I liken it to the authors who think they “have” to blog– you can always, always tell it’s an obligation rather than something from which they derive joy.
It’s like, nice idea, crummy execution.
Honestly, I don’t think I’d pay much attention to handselling, no matter what, because I kind of like to be left alone in bookstores, most of the time!
But if I were an employee, I would like to make recommendations to people–if they were books I like. I would not like to have to push books that were already guaranteed to sell a bajilllion copies, that I thought were trashy, or were in a genre I knew nothing about. And my reading time is so limited…I would hate to be “encouraged” to read something I would not choose to.
Oh, and when I worked fast food, I never asked anyone if they wanted fries. I assumed they knew what they were doing.
I can’t stand the idea of forced sales. I can understand a store wanting to highlight a certain book as a new release. Maybe wanting to be sure their staff knows what the book is about…but to set quotas!
That makes shopping for a book like trying to avoid a speed trap….you go a different route to avoid the known traps!
I hope Borders rethinks this strategy, it sounds like a surefire way to push good, knowledgeable customers to eBooks and online retailers even faster!
I really wonder how that’s going to play out. Will it be convincing at all, if the bookseller doesn’t like the book s/he’s forced to pimp? On the other hand, it could work to direct booksellers to certain books in a more organized way, and knowing Sue Grimshaw’s taste, on the romance side at least, the corporate picks are liable to be wonderful and universally appealing. I’d definitely be interested in knowing what she likes best in every month’s releases.
As a former bookseller (independent store, not a chain), forced handselling is the devil’s work. As a reader, it’s even worse. I want honest recommendations, not ones that have been paid for.
As a bookseller, I want to be honest, not a paid shill. When I think of some of theworthy-but-overlooked books I managed to sell when I was a bookseller, the thought of having to push books I don’t like makes me ill.
The closest Chapters to me is filled with very pushy employees. The last time I looked for books there, I was approached six times in twenty minutes, mostly by teenagers working on a Saturday afternoon. You can’t tell me they were trying to handsell–they were just doing something corporate told them to do. If I’d have actually asked them to help me find something similar to book x, they would have given me a blank look and typed something into a computer. I’ve completely stopped going in there.
When I am browsing, I absolutely do not want to be interrupted, even if the employee honestly seeks to help me find something I might enjoy. And I don’t want to be rude about it, and the first time I’m approached I’m not rude. When I say I don’t want to hear a spiel–any spiel–it means please leave me alone to browse. I love a shelf full of employee recommendations, especially when there’s a little card explaining why it’s a favorite. But that’s all. Shopping for me–for anything, not just books–is not a group activity.
I like the idea of handselling books. I think it’s fab when a bookseller is enthusiastic about what they’re selling and they can get a reader to feel just as enthusiastic. Now ‘forced’ handselling is a bad idea. How am I going to trust someone to recommend me books when they start trying to sell me books that a) they don’t even like and b) it’s not what I’m looking for.
What Terry and Kimber An said.
Yep, bad idea. It’s going to backfire big-time. Every passionate reader who works there and has other options will quit, leaving behind the people who are just there because McDonald’s wasn’t hiring that day. They may as well change their name to Bob’s Book Barn.
There is a very obvious difference between a book-lover hand-selling a book and a store clerk pushing today’s featured item.
If they really wanted to return to their hand-selling roots, they’d be setting up system to collect suggestions from their book-loving employees and pushing THOSE books, not choosing “make” books from publishers. They’d be setting up systems to reward employees for hand-selling ANY books, not to punish them for failing to push the “make” books.
Dumbness.
I think that’s AWESOME!! There’s a bookstore here that has an entire section of books that are recommended by the staff. Each month each staff person reads a book from a section of the store and writes a mini-review and they display the books and the review prominently in the “Staff’s Recommendations” section.
I just want to clarify, that I think the staff members being passionate about a section or kind of book and knowing the info about the authors is awesome. But it needs to be hand-sold as a staff person fave, not a corporate decision.
I think the spirit of hand selling means you’re passionate about what you sell. If you’re pushing product, which all stores do, and one of the vehicles your store uses is a hand sell, the question becomes – do you believe the pusher and buy off their passion or their push? I think what an indie has, or, a very well run chain store, is engaged staff. Engaged staff will feel comfortable enough to approach a customer and give that extra special push of “I love this and I think based on what I can tell from our interaction, think you’ll love it too”. If that push is a preselected item, I’m not sure the enthusiasm level will be the same, and that insider enthusiasm is what fuels a successful hand sell. It will be interesting to see what the results produce.
I recently went into a Borders for a book and it was not there but bookseller referred me to Connie Willis as an alternative choice. I know that was not a Corporate push as the book was several years old so we’ll see how this all plays out.
I’ve worked in bookselling for 25 years, and handselling is the reason why. We may not make the big bucks, but we influence minds and hearts, and that makes it rewarding, meaningful work.
If a store manager creates a culture where staffers are encouraged to talk about books and stay informed, handselling will come naturally, and their sales will rise as a result. I think it’s also important for bookstores to make enthusiasm for reading and a wide knowledge of books a quality they search for in job applicants. Customers notice enthusiasm and sincerity, and they’ll always come back for more!
There’s nothing wrong with a display of corporate picks, but booksellers should be not only allowed, but encouraged, to give the store some individuality.
Oh no! Seriously? Forced hand-selling with punishment for employees? First off, it’s not really hand selling if they employee has been told they have to. That’s not really hand selling.
This has FAIL written all over it.
As a writer, I would hope that a seller who liked my book (or preferably loved it!) would be permitted to handsell it based on her personal enthusiasm and not a corporate decree. As a reader, I would turn my back on any store that imposed those conditions on its sellers. I can stay home and talk to phone solictors for that kind of forced tactic.
I can remember years ago, walking into my favorite SF store. The cashier looked up and said “Hey, Lianne, I think you’ll like this book I’m reading.” Then she started reading from the first chapter.
The book was available in both trade paperback and hardcover (a brief experiment from Bantam, where the hardcover had a small print run). By the end of the first paragraph, I was reaching for the trade. By the end of the second page, I put it back and picked up the hardcover.
A first edition hardcover of Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, now commonly goes for $200+. Not that I plan on letting go of my copy. It was great book that I probably wouldn’t have looked at twice without the handsell.
And all the staff at that store loved the book. They sold a *lot* of copies. Genuine enthusiasm is a great selling point.