Simon & Schuster Wants Booksellers to Be a Part of the Club

Those who join Book Clubs do so for any number of reasons -- they love to read, socialize, and/or talk books with other bibliophiles. And while Book Clubs can offer its members enjoyment, if there is one potentially difficult aspect to it, it is choosing what title to read next. The same goes for booksellers, who are often called upon by Book Club members to help direct them to the perfect choice for their reading group.

With that in mind, Sue Fleming, vice president, director of marketing for Simon & Schuster, told BTW that S&S has created promotions that attempt "to connect book group members with retailers" to make it easier for them to choose a good Book Club title. The publisher is offering booksellers an incentive focusing on particular titles it believes are appropriate for Book Clubs and is offering to host "symposiums" on Book Clubs at bookstores around the country through its Book Club Reader program.

For its retail incentive to booksellers, S&S has created a list of 20 S&S titles that booksellers can market to customers who are members of reading groups, Fleming reported. With the list of books, S&S sends the bookseller a free merchandising kit, which includes one copy of every book, a packet of self-mailers, and a two-sided tent card, which can be placed on top of a display stack of the chosen book. The incentive is open to all bookstores, though "we are primarily seeing independents to take part," she said. "The titles are all trade paperback and have been published for a while and have a solid backlist life."

As for its Book Club Reader program, Fleming explained that, with its three-year-old www.BookClubReader.com website, it has developed an active database of book club members that "we talk to... we have various [Book Club] advisory boards" consisting of 250 reading group members per board. There are clubs for numerous genres, she noted. Board members are sent potential book club picks to read and review. "The advisory board members have to be willing to get back to us in a timely fashion," she said. "But over the past three years, we have become very good at it."

To expand on the BookClubReader.com concept, S&S decided to offer 90-minute in-bookstore seminars that focus on the various aspects of Book Groups, and held its first at R. J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Connecticut, last October. S&S decided to offer these symposiums because "we wanted to have an opportunity to connect book group members with retailers," Fleming said. Furthermore, the attendees offer S&S valuable market research as to what drives book clubs to a particular title and what they are looking for to create a better book club experience.

"The goal is how to involve the customer in the process and in this case, [the customer] telling us what works for them," Fleming said. Each seminar features a Q&A with attendees. "At R.J. Julia, attendees were very vocal and very constructive," she reported. "They asked a lot of questions and we had them fill out a survey.... Some really terrific ideas came out of [the seminar]."

Upcoming Book Club Reader seminars will be held at Book Passage in Corte Madera, California, on March 31; Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vermont, on May 5; Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, Kentucky, on May 19; and an invitation-only seminar at BEA on Friday, June 3.

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List of S&S-recommended Book Club titles:

• At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill
• Brick Lane by Monica Ali
• City of Dreams by Beverly Swerling
• Evidence of Things Unseen by Marianne Wiggins
• Flesh & Blood by Michael Cunningham
• The Gardens of Kyoto by Kate Walbert
• The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner
• Liars and Saints by Maile Meloy
• The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
• Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult
• The Royal Physician's Visit by Per Olov Enquist
• Say When by Elizabeth Berg
• She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
• The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
• The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
• Tumbling by Diane McKinney-Whetstone
• Two Girls Fat & Thin by Mary Gaitskill
• Underworld by Don DeLillo
• The Wife by Meg Wolitzer