Creating a Model for Business-to-Business Book Sales: 800-CEO-READ

In the early 1980s, Jack Covert was hired by the late David Schwartz to run Harry W. Schwartz Bookshop's business book and computer section. Over the next two-plus decades, Covert helped transform and grow that section into what is now Schwartz's e-commerce business-book division, 800-CEO-READ. Along the way, his reputation as a kind of a guru of the best business reads grew, too. Now, Covert, with 800-CEO-READ Vice President Todd Sattersten, is parlaying that reputation and is joining the ranks of business-book authors with Business Books for a Desert Island: 100 Titles Everyone in Business Should Read (Portfolio, January 2009). "We live and breathe this genre, and we felt it was time to put a stake in the ground, declaring what the best of the best is," Covert told BTW via email.

Jack Covert

800-CEO-READ, which sells to corporations, educators, and individuals, officially launched in 1998, but the seeds were sown back in the '80s when Schwartz hired Covert because he had retail experience (he ran his own record store for a decade), and "I knew something about computers," Covert explained. "I quickly figured out that I needed to get out in the business community if I was really going to sell books. I built relationships with corporate librarians at companies through Wisconsin and slowly grew sales one business card at a time."

Over the next decade "a lot happened ... with us creating a huge catalog business" with quarterly mailings of some 200,000 pieces. However, this success, Covert reported, was followed by Amazon.com "completely destroying the business in a matter of about six months."

Nonetheless, after some retooling, the company got back on track and found itself a niche market. In 1998, the name 800-CEO-READ was coined after Covert and colleagues set up their own space to concentrate on selling direct to businesses and organizations. "We saw a wide set of people who bought business books and built our business around that idea," Covert said. "Universities often use trade books in their MBA programs. Corporate trainers use them during their internal classes. Fortune 500 companies use business books to transmit an idea to their employees. The diversity of buyers make the business book genre really unique."

Today, 800-CEO-READ helps authors get books to an event, professors get books for a class, and corporations get books for a sales conference. Covert said the company focuses on customer service through its Milwaukee-based call center and full-service e-commerce site. In addition, it's creating a kind of business-to-business book community with its website, 800ceoread.com, where users can go and see the top-selling business books, read the web blog, listen to podcasts, or check out the popular Jack Covert Selects.

"Our online efforts are extremely important to our success," Covert said, and added: "We ran a great site called inBubbleWrap for about 18 months where we gave away books every day and built a huge following. The Internet is such a great space for experimentation."

There is nothing "virtual" about picking the Jack Covert Selects, however. "I have a table in my office where all of the books arrive from receiving and a couple times a week I go through them to see what is interesting," Covert said. "Some books catch my attention immediately. Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly did that this fall. There are others that stay on the table for months waiting for me to find some extra time. I found Chasing Daylight by Gene O'Kelly by finally going through the pile and sitting down with the book."

Importantly, Covert said he would only choose a book for his Selects list if he feels the reader is better for having read the book. "What I mean is, they need to have learned a new skill, been given information that they didn't know, or been moved to take some action that they didn't consider prior to reading the book. If I have an 'aha' moment, I can be pretty certain my readers will."

Hopefully, readers will have that kind of moment when they pick up Business Books for a Desert Island. The book is going to have a series of reviews and "a number of clever devices to help readers find other books both within our book," Covert noted, "but also outside our book." For example, the book will have a "choose your own adventure" feature at the end of each review, where it will point readers to other appropriate titles on other pages. "It is going to be a fun book that is meant to encourage business people to read more by reading better," he said.

Also on tap for 800-CEO-READ: the company has started an awards program, "The 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards." These awards will recognize the best business books of 2007 and the authors who committed time and energy to the books' creation. The winners will be announced on January 15, 2008. --David Grogan