Paperback Dreams Director Beckstead to Present Multimedia Session at Day of Education

Alex Beckstead Photo: 4SP Films

On Thursday, May 28, as part of ABA's Day of Education at this year's BookExpo America in New York City, Alex Beckstead, the director of Paperback Dreams and the owner of 4SP Films, will present the education program "Using Multimedia to Market Your Store." The session, which will build upon the popular, eponymous ABA Winter Institute 4 [Wi4] program, will take place in Room 1E10 of the Javits Center.

"I think a lot of the value in this session will come from booksellers responding to what they see and asking questions," Beckstead told BTW via e-mail. "It's not likely that the best ideas in that session will come from my brain, and I have a feeling that there will be a much deeper pool of knowledge and experience from the audience than even in January [at Wi4]. I hope the folks who are making videos show up not just with questions but with stories from the trenches."

At the session, attendees will learn how to tell the story of their store -- store history, staff and owner bios, place in the community -- in a way that will capture the imagination of customers. The program will instruct booksellers on how to use sight and sound to make their stores interesting, exciting, and a place consumers will want to visit over and over again. Attendees will also see concrete examples from booksellers who have already taken the multimedia plunge.

Beckstead said the session "is really an overview of the landscape of web video, and the opportunities it provides for bookstores."

The Internet has revolutionized the possibilities of what can be done with video, Beckstead noted. "Traditionally video has been a very expensive way to reach a very broad audience," he explained. "But now it's also a way to put your personality front and center. As Seth Godin has pointed out, in the golden age of TV media was expensive, but attention was free. You could put a prime-time commercial on a national network and be guaranteed an audience. That's now reversed: In the age of YouTube, media is free, but attention is not. The good news for independent bookstores and other small businesses is that the bar to entry is not millions of dollars anymore, it's creativity and human connection."

This fact is "really huge for independent bookstores -- the key difference between an independent bookseller and a large retail corporation is the bookseller. In indie stores, people sell books, not algorithms. And web video is probably the single best way to make a human connection with people outside your store."

Beckstead said many more booksellers have embraced the multimedia concept, in the few short months since Wi4. "When I did this session at Wi4, I had to reach out to bookstores and encourage them to put together videos, because there weren't a lot out there," he said. "Several booksellers have really gotten into videos now, and they are doing some really good work that is worth critiquing and that will, hopefully, spark ideas for attendees."