Savvy Booksellers Use Twitter to Draw Crowds, Boost Sales

Web-based chatroom, micro-blog, whatever you want to call Twitter, booksellers have been using the free platform to generate sales. Beyond plugging upcoming events, some have created Twitter-themed parties or used the real-time capabilities to broadcast quotes from readings. Fountain Bookstore has drawn a crowd by tweeting about free chocolate, Skylight Books uses Twitter to hold tweet-ups and live-tweet author readings, and Rainy Day Books even hosted a Twitter-based Best Indie Bookstore contest.

At Fountain Bookstore (@FountainBkstore) in Richmond, Virginia, owner Kelly Justice said she uses Twitter almost "as though it were a radio show." As an example, she pointed to an event for the backlist title Best Garden Plants for Virginia (Richard Nunally, Lone Pine). Customers who couldn't make it to the store were invited to tweet or e-mail questions for the author. During lulls in the in-store Q&A session, Justice read questions submitted via Twitter and then tweeted back the author's answers.

Adding Twitter to the mix made the lightly attended event more interesting, said Justice. "It made it seem like there was more going on than there was."

Last February's tweets about a spontaneous chocolate tasting at Fountain Bookstore attracted an SRO crowd. Just before lunch hour, Justice tweeted that the bookstore, which is downtown in the financial district of Richmond, was giving away free chocolate. "We got completely mobbed," Justice said. "I don't think we've ever had that many people in the store at one time. It was the day before Valentine's Day so the timing was perfect."

The store has also used Twitter to promote a chili tasting event. "We did a bookseller chili cook-off using Chili Madness [Jane Butel, Workman]. Again we tweeted it right before the lunch hour." It wasn't as big as the chocolate tasting, but was still a successful event, said Justice.

"Along with bringing a lot of people into the store, the events generated sales" and created a wave of publicity and goodwill, she added. In the case of the pre-Valentine's Day giveaway, "we sold some books, and we sold a ton of chocolate."

About Twitter, Justice said, "It's worthwhile for now. We'll stop using it when it stops being effective. We're constantly looking for what works."

At Skylight Books (@skylightbooks) in Los Angeles maintaining the store's Twitter feed is a collective effort. "I think that our strength in tweeting is just an extension of the strength of our staff," said Emily Pullen, Skylight ordering manager/book groups liaison, via e-mail. "We have many different interests and styles that make up the kaleidoscope of Skylight."

Gauging the impact of Skylight's Twitter use, Monica Carter, manager of bookstore operations, added, "Although I can't definitively say that it has generated huge amounts of sales for the store, it has created interest, web traffic via our Twitter account, which also resulted in more followers, and some sales of particular books that we tweeted about during events."

Carter pointed to tweets offering "tidbits and mini-quotes" about new titles presented at an independent press salon and tweeted quotes from a Lambda Literary Award finalists reading that both resulted in sales.

However, finding the perfect balance of how and what to tweet is important, said Carter. Instead of tweeting, "He's walking to the mic," for example, she suggested posting an interesting line from a reading.

And, she observed, too many tweets make for fewer responses. Carter recommends tweeting about five to seven times during a reading, unless it's a panel. "I think twitter can be used as a real-time description for events that are not twitter based, which can evolve into a chatroom style of discussion," she said.

Edan Lepucki noted that using Twitter with the sole intention of advertising isn't effective. At Skylight Books, "we like to bring personality and voice to our tweets (and since there are about five of us doing it, the voice varies)," she explained. "We sometimes talk about what music we're playing, or a funny thing a customer said, or we comment on the Los Feliz sky, or how we're ready for our coffee break. It reminds people that Skylight is run by real, interesting, smart people -- it's not a faceless company. It's my hope that through Twitter, people feel more connected to our store and what we offer."

Among Skylight's successful events was a tweet-up, which was only publicized to the store's 1,700-plus followers on Twitter. It was scheduled for a slow night, Lepucki said, to increase sales. "We offered 15-percent off all books in the store, and 20-percent off hardcover fiction and graphic novels. In order for customers to get the discount, they had to say the password ('Moby Dick'), which we only released a few days before the event -- and only on Twitter. About 15 - 20 people showed up that night, and we had cookies and some beer and wine."

Participants were given nametags with their twitter handles on them. "I was surprised (and relieved!) that people so easily socialized -- it definitely had a party atmosphere," Lepucki said. "The most fun part of this tweet-up was our 'reading.' Via Twitter we asked people to bring their favorite books to share with other customers. People read both fiction and nonfiction, and there was a real dialogue afterward about these books."

Pullen added, "Sometimes you'll hear that social media results are hard to measure. True. But we have had a few direct results. Once, we tweeted about an interesting title we received -- The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade (Sheila Jeffreys, Routledge). A customer tweeted back, we offered to hold the book for her, and she bought it the next day. We also had a customer request a special order via Twitter. We ordered it, notified her via Twitter, and she came in and bought the book. Recently, we had an online order that was a direct result of a tweet that directed someone to a review on our blog.... Finally, about a week ago, a bicycle ice-cream vendor from a new organic/local convenience store was parked outside our store. We were so excited about it that we tweeted it, and now we're a regular stop on their route."

Twitter, Pullen said, "has definitely been a useful tool for us so far, and we've been using it for less than six months."

As reported in last week's BTW Rainy Day Books (@RainyDayBooks)in Fairway, Kansas, and the blog my3books.com have used Twitter to host a contest (with the hashtag #RDB714) that gave indie fans a chance to proclaim their love for their favorite bookshops. The prize for five winning bookstores was a complete autographed hardcover set of the Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer.

Rainy Day's Geoffrey Jennings chose Twitter as the platform because of its succinct "real-time" feedback that was ideal for creating a conversation exploring the question "Why do people like their independent bookstores?" He also wanted to give others the ability to start their own conversations. "I wanted to steer people back to their favorite indies, not us," he said.

"We were overwhelmed by the level of interest in this contest from indie bookstores, publishing folks, and good old-fashioned book lovers," wrote Jennings and independent sales rep John Mesjak on my3books.com. "The number of tweets that were tagged with #RDB714 over the past couple of weeks has been amazing."

The winners of the contest, announced this week, are:

• Copperfield's Books in various locations in California
• Next Chapter Bookshop in Mequon, Wisconsin
• Oblong Books & Music in Millerton and Rhinebeck, New York
• Page & Palette in Fairhope, Alabama
• WORD in Brooklyn

Need a Twitter primer? ABA's Sarah Rettger (@SarahABA) has written a concise introduction to Twitter.

Want to share your interesting uses of Twitter? Let us know @KSchechner. --Karen Schechner