Im Dennis Johnson from Melville House. Dont know what day of lockdown were in new york city. My stoop is as far as im willing to go from my apartment but die know by machines is still closed and so is a hell of a lot of the independent Book Business so im still calling up friends and trying to find out how to do it and if they have any idea is can steal. Okay, speaking today with the team, the brain trust behind the industrys leading trade magazine for indy books, publishers, and particularly book stores, shelf awareness, and they are jen sko, john mutter, the awe cofounder and he is the editor and chief, and bob gray an editor and columnist for shelf. He is basically a back store correspondent, a wandering book store correspondent. Its an honor and pleasure to see you the last since january. Seems like a lifetime ago. But its good to see everybody and i have to say, just to me seems to have become even more important publication than it was before. Really have kind of a lifeline for indy book sellers in particular to see who is making it and how theyre making it, to hear the stories. Some really great work going on and also this may be the worst moment for Media Companies and publications in my lifetime. Jenn, how is it going . Businesswise were doing okay. Which is shocking considering i dont know. Read a statistic just yesterday that most ad agencies are planning to be 75 down. So shocking. So, we are trending nowhere near that. We have when this first went down we had a few publishers cancel some ads, and then we the bulk of the publishers we pushed their ads to the fall because they pushed so many of their big backs to the fall. And now we see a little bit of budget cuts here and there, but were incredibly lucky in this way. I mean, i think theres the little softness in particular in dish think the publishers are thinking, oh, do i need market my book to a book seller if theyre not really interfacing the customers in their stores . I would say that might be one of the most important times ever to get your book into the hands of a book seller because theyll be either selling online or curbside or in their stores shortly enough. I suppose theres an argument to be made that ads might be more important than ever for publishers as media is shutting down elsewhere and were getting less coverage for becomes, those added may be more important. I mean, john, how many books are published every day . You know this. We said no masks. Thousands . Thousands. Right. So, thousands of books are being still published every day. How do you make yours shine . How do you make yours stand out . I mean, especially with the i cant say self. I always say shelf because of shelf awareness but because of selfpublishing. Theres just so many being published. How is yours go to stan out and its not like people are not reading now. Right . Right. Reading like crazy now. They are. They are. And were seeing the numbers kind of sustained. You go up to last year even, which is amazing to me, well, john, what a time to be celebrating your beat right now . Stores in despair, stores closing, other stores putting on heroic efforts. Whats it like covering the independent book trade right now. Eye been covering independent book stores for several decades and. The been anything like this. Theres been traumatic periods but more of a general thing and not so threatening, and so for us its just i liken it to going to a show like book expo to doing intensive coverage for three or four, five days, and unlike the shows, you can you finish, take a break, you retain your sanity and then go back to normal. Enough its like covering a show now its pushing three months. Just seems to be no letup. Like this tsunami of news and stuff continues and continues. So its been really stressful and also a the kind of stories were doing started some change in them like in the beginning, i remember the first Couple Stores that closed we highlight he them and made a big deal and then everybody pretty much closed and we started doing stores opening, how people are dealing with this. But its even though some of the focus is changing its still this sort of wave of every day so much news, and not that long ago, we sometimes we bob and i would be scrounging around trying to find news stories for at the next mornings issue, and nothing like that anymore. Its more like, well, weve got 12 stories which seven should we run and which ones should we save . And thats more what its more like feels like even on the weekends im doing a lot of a lot moore work than i used to do. Not that it was totally off on the weekends but it just just awful lot of work. Yeah. Well, i want you to talk but how youre doing shelf is run remotely. You guys work remotely from each other under normal circumstances. En. he editorial side. We joke we have been practicing social distancing and perfecting it for 15 years. Careful what you wish for. Bob, whats it like for your reporting right now . You cant even get in a book store. Well, its more about paying attention to what is happening it was much more nationally, i would say, before this hit. Im seeing so much more, say, general Media Coverage of International Book stores. Theres always coverage of publishing and the industry, but sort of human interest, book story in morocco or italy or that International Side changed. A lot of what i do in my little hobbette here is scanning social media and looking at newspapers all over the world and you sometimes look for crumbs, like a store just reopening or opening and now its a combination of all of these general media people discovering book stores are newsworthy what of what theyre dag in the fish of covid and also theyre the face of covid and theres a wide expanse of restrictions of what is wisconsin doing today and a book seller there handling what is happening in wisconsin vs. Somebody in arkansas. Its fascinating to see ill have something put together in the afternoon and go back in the evening and the rules have changed. Ive noticed some very delicate language concerning booksellers in places where face masks are political badges of some kind. Seems like thats been a new kind of area of sensitive reporting for you guys. There are other things like that, that are kind of surprisingly touchy maries now . Touchy matters now . I will say that just thinking today, a lot of Stores Opened monday, a lot of states had a june 1st reopening phase, whatever phase that particular state was in, and the masks in one part of what has become a constant monitoring of human interaction. How do people react to only allowing six people in a store at a tame . If six people are in there and throw are family, why couldnt i go . Because theyre together. Isnt that a unit . Theres a certain debate about everything is about the rules. Heres the rule and why aim being excluded . Right. Its madness. Yes. Its interesting. Interesting madness, yes in a way a car crash is interesting, just you still look when you drive by. There you go. Well, what are you hearing from your readers but your reporting . Either of the two writers. Well, one thing that struck me is we have a lot of book seller readers around the world. We have generally in the past focused on the u. S. But as been was saying were doing more and more International Coverage, and im fine im getting like just this past weekend i got an email from an australian book sell are, just to meet personally saying thank you for writing up in so much detail what is going on in all the book stores around the world because im getting ideas our situation is different in certain ways but a in other ways its very similar and im getting ideas from shelf awareness i wouldnt have gotten anywhere else. I would agree. Theres a certain practical aspect. I did a column about plexiglas barriers and get a significant amount of mail from booksellers saying, im so glad to see what it looks like, like i keep reading but the barriers but seeing being able to link up and see the photos how theyre actually putting these things in place. You become sort of information funnel in a way for some of this. Right. Jenn, id like to speak about how you are responding to the new world, if you are starting any shelf is extremely Innovative Organization as far as how it interacts with become stores with the ada. Can you talk to me about that area of your life . Yes. Is that changing . Are you trying new things . Oh, yeah. I mean, almost everyone that works at the shelf has worked in a book store so were all kind of scrambling our brains trying to figure out the best way to help our book stores, our indies and publishers sell more becomes. I can say that a while ago if you recall the Winter Institute before last, a lot of buzz going on about preorders and the shelf took it to task and started to figure out how to help the independent book sellers with preorders. We have been working on this product for a while but once the pandemic hit, we ratcheted up to release it as soon as possible. Our thinking was that if we can help them help the indies, one, get start getting preorder sales, thats a new bucket of money for them, and i cant speak of a better time to have them get new money. And, two, not that youll enjoy this at all, dennis, but it probably takes some sales away from amazon which is a bonus. I dont know, kind of fun. Thats publishers launching to get the amazon preorders up so on publics day you have this quick large scale when that goes live and that is the times reporting. Exactly. But you were smart enough to realize what maybe the publishers didnt which was that those preorders can come from anywhere. Thats right. And this has been a process of just teaching the consumers of indy book stores and possibly just become readers everywhere that book readers offering that the stephen king they wait for all year around can just as easily get from their neighborhood book store and that will be a message we have a free product now that will help the independent book stores get that bring that message home. Its selling booked for them. We have never had a product more quickly adopted by the book industry ever. So we Just Launched it the month before last and now we have 77 stores in like 410,000 book store customers that read it. Thats terrific. We did that. And we helped the regionals put together a Summer Reading issue that theyll be coming out, the western regional, and the pnba. We helped the ada immediately with the exendinext list to special messaging on everything single newsletter where each and every booker to store can say were doing curbside, bicycle delivery. We have just been pivoting as much as possible and really trying to specifically choose what we can do to help the become stores survive during this time, and john and his team getting them the information if paramount all of that. Enough they know what can help them and then we try to give. The products to continue to help them. Fantastic. And how do you see these products these initiativeslets call them, going interest the future . Going into the future . The preorders obviously will continue, but are you doing things differently now that you think this is a good thing we learned how to do this so ill keep doing this in the future . You know, john and i were just talking about this yesterday. We were talking about how the shelf is about to turn 15 in a couple of weeks, and we were talking about the last crisis which was the financial crisis and how in 2008, and we were only, what, how old then, john three years old. Three years old. Still trying to figure out if we could buy ourselves wine. And what happened was at the time that occurred i think the Publishing Industry no longer wanted to spend 25, 30,000 on present package and business increased. So we benefited from that time of strife. So during this time were trying see it for the same way, as scary at this is and without a doubt much scarier than the financial crisis, but its a time of opportunity. Every eye that we can get on a preorder page on behalf of an independent book store, every independent book store customer, that has learned to just order online from them. We can see those numbers right now that people are learning how to order online from their local independent. John, you were saying the other day pout how a lot of independents werent really embracing online sales. But now its they have been the last month or two. A lot of them are learning simply how to do thatful. Right . Ive spoken to self book sellers who were just overwhelmed. They had a decent website, for example, they were selling books before, but nowhere floor this volume. So even sumple things like dont have envelopes or packing material, just keeping up and its a different business. Do you think that is going to stick around after this is over . I go ahead. Go ahead. I was just going to say, yeah issue mean, as soon as you learn that you can order a book just as easily from your independent book store and i dont know you have a soul i hope you would keep doing that. John . I think its one of the Silver Linings of this crisis because as everybody knows, the trend for the past ten15 years is for more and more book sales to go online. So, theres only one company that has been taking advantage of that and that is amazon, and the indies have for a variety of ropes some of them have the done online sales pretty well in thes but most of them are sort of they offer it but its not a big deal, and then a lot of them theyre people with did some stuff pout stores with website that didnt have ecommerce. Just informational websites and i know the aba hired several extra people pause they were overwhelmed with booksellers going to them and finally saying, we want an ecommerce site and i dont think the indies will good when this settles down or whatever happens and hopefully soon, they wont go back to ignoring online sales only component for sure. I think theres also going to be a long time before a lot of people are comfortable being out in a retail environment. Especially vulnerable people, older people, and so were probably talking months and years of people if hey learn how to pie online from indies during this mad in its a hand and main theyll keep even if they and we cant i dont know if we can quantify how many people start ordering from indies who had never really visited them especially when amazon decide the books were nonessential early in the film. I think that cost amazon a certain chunk of the marketplace. Guess theyll probably survive this but i theyre you can order a become from your local indy and get it delivered in a couple of days as if it was prime. Thats what i want to do, dennis. I want to start a Million Dollar ad campaign that is like, welcome to the upsidedown world where you can get books from your local independent fast he than you can from amazon. Ive been saying this because i heard a certain muckedy muck in the big publishing world say prime aint prime anymore and i think that to some degree thats true and you have to think a certain percentage of that is permanent. Also been again and again ive seen indiz reporting that theyre selling a ton of backlift when it got hard to get frontlift, people were handselling was working in a online environment for them. Thats exactly what i took were seeing. Any statistic ive seen backlift sales are through the roof. Front list i u. S. Way down. Publish erred have been trying to get back to where it used to be, 50 of your business, and just wasnt working. You were all having trouble selling texas. Its all reversed now. Its very interesting. Were lucky dennis that we have things like book shop and engrams direct to home in place during this time. Book shops have good timing there, dont they . Amazing. Now its there and its great and its working. Well, i dont know if you can really predict what book sellers are going to keep from this moment or not, but can you tell me what youre hearing but what they are selling . Know for a while all kids books, ya books because everybody was having to homecool and that has slowed down. What kinds of stories are you hear about what booksellers moving right now . Well, publicly bob . I would just thinking we can all sort of drove it out there, it would be being i think to me to see how nothing was selling more publicly than i saw more pictures in social media of book seller with stacks of jigsaw puzzles. Im not sure i can predict the post quarantine people will retain that. I think we have something deafblind maybe going to be running tomorrows issue about a store theyre reopening and they said well stop selling puzzles and had a huge display of puzzles they just want in get rid of so they can get books back. In. Sort of like the coloring book craze. Right. Are you get anything reports of sock sales . I can tell youve i saw something recently that talked about the indy commerce platform, talking about number of antiracism books peaking over the weekend and when you talked but how does the shelf innovate, what have we changed . John, didnt we just change that editorial that appeared today . Wasnt . Yeah, it was interesting. We had before the george floyd murder, we had a lead editorial for the shelf awareness for readers written it and was going to going to run in i think next week, and then suddenly we with everything that happened in the past week, we just realized, this he moment is now. So we moved things around and we talk but antiracism books you can read. Yeah. We also highlight backlift tights and white fragility has been its back list stuff. Able to pivot very quickly. Because shelf for readers getting out to half a million independent book store customer. We had regular messaging how everyone can support their local book store, which we think is a really important lesson to be driving home to everybody that reads it. I know for the political bookses that Melville House publishes it is this indies that drive them. Our handselling because theyre often difficult books even if theyre timely, but i think right now we can see them really turn on a dime that seems we published in 2016 a book called antipot. Just a history of what it is. Its exploded yesterday. Just exploded. And the author was on every Television Show and that is a fouryearold book now. And i really feel like things are reversing. The industry that wasnt the publisher going out and getting publicity. That was something happening that book sellers said, oh, ive got the title for that. And book sellers were good depths of memory for backlift. Well, backlist. I guess the last area for you guys i want to talk but is just the shelf of the future. This thing is going to have a very slow demise until they come up with the cure. Maybe even then it will be slow. So, you are doing Different Things now. Some are working, going to keep them. What do you see is what is the question how has your ol changed and how will it go forward . I think editorially, bob and i have both touch on the changes that we have immediate in the past three months and i think some of that is going to last. Weve done regular daily surveys of book sellers and what theyre doing, what the issues are like, and i can see we havent its not that we didnt do surveys before but this is like rolling almost like rolling surveys and i can see doing that for a long time. Not just about pandemic relate things just in jeff adds a certain depth to the Editorial Coverage we have and that i really like. I think in a similar vein, we have traditionally covered individual stores am store is opening or moving or one of the thing i think has been really good, one of the in a very bad time is looking at an issue or a thing through with the perspective of self stores in the same article. Eight different stores, how are they reopening the past monday . How do each of them handle that . Thats a little different than the way we used to do that i. The. And now you are also getting stories no doubt ive already seen a few from war zones basically. Poock stores being looted or burn down or the opposite, trying to help protests in moon palace in minneapolis was a way station for people that needed some help or food or whatever. I think also, bob mentioned earlier, the expansion of International Coverage and i can see that continuing, too, and about all kinds of things beyond just pandemic related things. I know i feel look i read about north dakota about new zealand more. Tomorrow youll see uruguay and russian and somewhere else. I forgot. Also had something to do with the fact that we all love to travel and none of us can do it. Ill throw a question another you to conclude. Aright in guessing your subscribers probably up. Theyre up a bit considering what is going on. We call we say that up a bit is up a lot. So whats really interesting is the openly increase, the clicks increase, the stickiness of the product, i have never seen more thank you notes all the time as well as from john, people writing to john saying, god, you just keeping together, help us learn everything. So i dont see any softness in the product. Its interesting, right, because Media Companies i dont know itch your barista and or laid off are you going to read barista daily every day . I dont in the but everybody in the book industry, its their vocation, they love this industry. We can make a lot of money representing pharma but we dont do that because we love what we do here we read the shelf because we love what we do, and i dont see any softness in the numbers on that. Thats a good place to end the discussion on an upnote. I want to thank you guys for talking to me and i want to thank you for doing what you are doing for our brothers and sisters in the book stores. Thank you. Thank you, dennis. So much fun. Tonight on booktv in primetime, author and political commentator offer his thought odd then differences between 20 until century socialism and socialism today and argues it must be stop. dr. Emanuel from the Obama Administration weighs in on which countries have the bess healthcare and economics professor discusses why improvements in our economy are accompanied in. I crises in stress, anxiety and anger. Find more information on your program guide, or online at booktv. Org. Joining news on booktv is whittaker the acting attorney general from february 18 to february 2019 and the author of this new poock, above the law, the inside story of how the Justice Department tried to subvert president trump. Before we begin with the book, explain how you became the acting attorney general. So us. A great first question. Was chief of staff to attorney general Jeff Sessions in october
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