Marketing

Flowh, a platform designed to turn an online events calendar into a marketing tool, is offering a free year of its premium service exclusively to ABA member stores.

Here is an array of great ideas for promoting bookstores as hubs of creativity, community, and activity, all gleaned from the bookseller discussion groups following Steven Johnson’s plenary talk, “How We Got to Now,” at Winter Institute 10.

Recent research has found that people born between 1982 and 2004 — the generation known as Millennials — are more interested in print rather than digital reading. 

Flowh is a more social version of the traditional event calendar. The online platform can turn an independent bookstore’s calendar into a marketing tool that connects with customers in new ways.

There are a variety of ways for booksellers to get involved in this year’s annual celebration of Screen-Free Week, which takes place from May 4 – 10 and coincides with Children’s Book Week.

Booksellers and e-mail marketing company representatives discussed three different platforms at the Wi10 education session “E-mail Marketing Options: Shelf Awareness, Ingram Sendr, Constant Contact.”

In celebration of the 96th annual Children’s Book Week, running this year from May 4 to 10, booksellers are once again invited to participate in the Children’s Book Week Display Contest.

At a Winter Institute panel presented by the ABC Children’s Group at ABA, booksellers offered strategies for communicating with customers about products, encouraging and training staff to upsell, and buying and displaying book and non-book pairings to maximize sales.

The official 2015 Children’s Book Week poster, commemorating the 96th year of the reading and literacy celebration, was designed by Grace Lee, a storybook artist for Disney Publishing Worldwide.

To Kill a Mockingbird author to release second book; Government censorship may shutter independent Belarus bookstore; Anne Enright named first Laureate for Irish Fiction; Penguin inks sales/distribution deal with America’s Test Kitchen; BISG, ALA to survey library patrons’ digital preferences; Random House’s independent bookstore liaison expands duties to Penguin; Simon & Schuster introduces new multimedia imprint

Matchbook Marketing to offer consulting to indie bookstores; Images from upcoming illustrated Harry Potter released; Simon & Schuster authors to teach online courses; Readers to win prizes, raise funds for NBF on National Readathon Day; Penguin Publishing Group announces big changes; Betsy Hotel Writer's Room offers residency for James Laughlin Award winners 

The Asheville Internet marketing firm JB Media Group will present a session on the ABCs of social media strategy and analytics on Tuesday, February 9, at the Winter Institute.

Claire Anderson-Ramos of The Book Cellar in Chicago, Illinois, has created a colorful, inspiring logo for Independent Bookstore Day.

Deck your walls and website with four new winter/holiday designs for banners and posters available now, along with past favorites, in the Bookseller DIY’s Designs & Downloads.

Here are tips to help booksellers spread the word via social media about their upcoming Indies First plans and Upstream partnerships.