Digital Departments Are Overrated. Most Important Innovation to Happen At Store Events.
So George Bush and Bill Clinton were in town today. Some 6000 people paid to see them. One week ago in the same room some 600 people paid to watch Larry King be interviewed by Indigo’s Heather Reisman. The two events had me thinking of the first author signing I remember where you had to pay at the door — Douglas Coupland, ten years ago.
(IFOA doesn’t count.)
I have praised Random House Canada in this space before but I was cynical of their effort then to take my money for both Coupland’s book and a chance to meet him. After all this time I think I was wrong. Ticketed events clearly were working. They continued to do them. Not for every case but they experimented here and there. They tested the audiences’ willingness to pay for certain authors at certain points in their careers. They tested how much to charge. It isn’t like they invented ticketed events, but in retrospect that was pretty smart — even if there was no master plan beyond basic cost recovery.
Last week Richard Nash dropped “event-i-ness” into a conversation we were having about the future of the industry. By this he meant creating value around an author that would make people want to pay for an experience — be that a signing or history walk or interview. People wouldn’t begrudgingly pay. They would actually want to give you money. The industry, he said, needs to be better at creating eventiness.
In the days since Nash mentioned it I have come to think eventiness is a huge blind spot for publishers. Publishers are worried about a lot of things these days but piracy, ebook formatting, and market consolidation at Google and Amazon will run a straight course. Learning how to build value at the author level is such a difficult problem it has yet to be adequately defined. If you are publisher, please take up the challenge. Recruit a willing bookseller. Convince an author. Get out there and get readers to buy the t-shirt. You don’t have ten years to figure out how to make your midlist authors draw 60 people let alone 600.
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