Especially on facebook. Its harder to find stuff. They have hashtags now which i dont think people really use because they didnt do for so you dont search for things on facebook. You usually find it through french sharing. The more people who are on it sharing your content the more people who will see it. Its a domino effect so i think he has worked well. We do giveaways where people could sign up for letters as well as follow us on social media. When we did a good way of mens book we went on twitter and he retreated agreed tweeted a tweet that we put on. He has millions of followers and its crazy how many tweets he has and how many followers he has. Thats one instance of a author helping a small outlook outlet like us and seeing him so of old wood involved was really great. Who is a good story about something that was an effective . [laughter] well, you know, one of the things that i do think is ineffective is when you do something and people dont understand what its all about, what the purpose is. And by found that with friday reads when i was running it as a Marketing Business. And people did not understand. We found out with friday reads in the Marketing Business and people did not understand. They thought they were being taken advantage of and that they were tweeting out of the goodness of their hearts and this was being mined and sent to publishers. You didnt tell me and i got some bad press for that. Well guess what, now there is a book finder does that automatically that collects everyones tweets in collects everyones tweets and they suppose that it doesnt matter whether you told them anything or not. They are out there and they are at Silicon Valley and they do it a lot better than i did. Its really interesting the shift in people thinking well i dont want to do this and have someone use it to make money to everyone going on line and thinking oh while someone is using it to make money. Thats another shift that has gone on in the past two or three years i think. People now just assume when they go on line their data is being mined. So there you go. Its working for someone else now. I want to get to some audience questions and i have a minisurvey want to do with you guys. The last question before you go to the audience im just curious we are talking about connecting authors and readers so i am assuming we are heres a reader. I was wondering if you have tips how readers empower themselves. They can be simple. What are tips that empower readers to find the next book or author that they want to read . I can give you the oldschool answer which is hand selling books at the bookstore. We do have customers a common to so trust the opinions of certain booksellers that they ask for them by name and will just stack up whatever books they recommend. I think there really is still power in the oldfashioned way of selling books. Its a good point in the sense that everyone on the panel does it. Whether taryn is hand selling a book to a producer or the twoday short katie is selling it to an individual person on twitter it is about that. Someone mentioned earlier i dont remember who it was now but sometimes the free stuff is the best stuff to sell your book. People know advertising is advertising but hand selling is one of the Key Takeaways i would say. People have to know about the book. Publicist oak cellar social media. It does begin with the publicist because the way the books get into the store and get into our offense program is to the publicist and their hand selling the books to us and we get excited about them. That is really where it all begins i think. I would say definitely find something that gives you that experience that you talked about. If you are not near an independent bookstore you can get to know one on line to get to know a store that knows your tastes. Maybe that means following a particular publication or a book blogger who really appreciates the kinds of books that you love and reach out. Thats the beauty of social media and everything on line. You love cozy mysteries. You follow a blogger who writes really well about them you can email the blogger and say i need more recommendations and she might either give you a list or send you on to another blogger etc. Etc. Putting stuff up on the washingtonian site over time. They want to put up my top 10 books each month and i say email us or put a comment in there something that you dont see or that you would like to see her that you would like to add. There are lots of ways to make your voice heard as a reader right now. I would agree with not being afraid to use social media for that kind of thing. You can follow certain authors and many will know when they have the next book coming out. There are a lot of niche publications that would write about mystery or romance novels or any specific thing. You could read the independent on line so thats always a good way. Im a journalist and a newspaper person so i says to say still support the Washington Post and the washingtonian in the New York Times and read their book sections. Absolutely. I love the book industry but one of the things i dont like about it is we do very Little Market research. Im going to do Market Research by show of hands. How many people out of the audience by 10 books or more a year . [applause] i would say 60 to 75 of people. How many by more than five . We also have a very literate crowd out here. I put them on the spot im going to put you on the shot spot. One of four choices what is the main reason you buy a book. We will come back and do the survey. Personal recommendation is one oldschool interviews on line social media or the fourth choice is other by show of hands you can only pick one do you buy, are you most likely to buy a book because of wordofmouth . Interesting. A small number of people. Reviews and interviews . Really . On line social media . We still have jobs. Something else i havent mentioned. The library. A library, okay. Its nice for us to know. You sit in your home or wherever you are and you think you know whats going on out there so its how you are learning about the books. We would love to take questions if anyone in the audience has questions and poorer folks at home please talk on the microphone. Yes sir by her way. And we talk about amazon reviews for a moment . I pay a lot of attention to them. Ive written a couple hundred myself. They can be very positive than they can be very negative and very useful and they can be from brilliant to idiotic. I get a lot of value out of them. With one of you like to comment or all of you about how they play into your scheme or whether you love them or hate them . I will expand a little bit. Hes talking about amazon reviews and how they affect peoples buying habits. Every product is being reviewed on line. How is that affecting your lives and what do you think about them as a consumer . I think if they are honest and they are bubbling up organically, then it is useful for a reader because you get a cumulative mass and there are certain opinions expressed is useful but i think a lot of times the downside of that is as you have said there has been a lot of crazy ranting people out there. You have people to go on amazon and give no stars because the book to too long to arrive. Its not very well filtered and at the other end of it you have people who are very good at promoting their own books they can also gather enough force. I think at some level they are useful but i think you really need to know what you are looking at when you are using that as a gauge of whether or not this is the book youd be interested in. The problem is for books and my husband is a big on line review fan. He loves yelp and wants to use it for everything now. I keep telling him and this is really important for books is that theres a difference between someone recommending something and someone reviewing something. This is one of my bugbears is a book reviewer. A proper review will tell you about something fully. It isnt necessarily saying just i love it or hated it. Its actually telling you something about the book thats meaningful and theres a take away in it. Amazon, i wish they would call them amazon recommendations. That would be so much more accurate. I am sure sir that yours are really wellwritten and there are people who write. You take the time to rivered views on amazon but those are few and far between. I would agree with everything you just said. So the general feeling is you take it with a grain of salt like everything. If you want to buy a book you dont necessarily not buy it because theres a bad review. Its one piece. Its one arrow in your quiver of reasons to or not to buy a book. And clearly it has a lot of power. When i go on yelp and see a lot of stars i filtered out differently because thats not the business im in but when i see it on amazon my more skeptical. But for other people i think it does have a lot of power. I think you need to have some reviews up there because everything is reviewed on line. I would never buy a product, if im choosing between two and one has zero reviews, whats wrong with this . I had an agent asked me recently why doesnt my authors book have any review on amazon . Do you really not know how this works . What you write a review. So its really strange. Hi. With the increasing importance of writers selfpromotion how important is it to align yourself with a large wellknown Publishing House or a specialty if you are writing childrens books or hope to write childrens books should you be looking to that . Im just wondering whats important to them. Well i mean to think that a large publisher can do for you is get your book into bookstores and get it out to all of the media and distribute it everywhere that you wanted to be distributed. That doesnt necessarily mean that it will ultimately be more successful than the selfpublished Small Press Book that an author knows how to do if the author can do the same thing for him or herself. You have a running start if you have a major publisher who can at least get it out there into the world for you. Again the social media and with the stigma no longer attached to selfpublishing i think the way it had been back in the days that one was called vanity press now its more just entrepreneurial publishing. Certainly i have seen cases of selfpublished authors who have done very well and you know there are a lot of reasons to want to have the freedom to do what you want to do with your book and not be reliant on the system. I actually think a lot of authors who decide they want to go to selfpublishing dont realize how much is done at a major Publishing House and how much that all can cost. What i am encouraged by seeing now is something i blogged a little bit about and a friend who is a publicist is calling kraft publishing which is basically small press is springing up around an author but they have all the things that are necessary to make a book a really good book. Editing, copyediting, cover design, marketing, publicity and all that sort of thing is being done on the microbrew level and so the term kraft publishing. I think that has a lot of potential to get away from the vanity aspect of selfpublishing and to be more about people, more about the entrepreneur in aspect. If you think what you have written is such prose that it deserves to be out there with no filter you probably arent meant to be an author because authors really do want to have other peoples eyes on our work desperately because we know that there are things that can be changed and made better. I think thats a really Important Message to get across too. Does anyone else have any other questions out there . Do any of you on the panel have additional thoughts are less towards . Publicist on line media gurus . My daughter just graduated from college a week ago and shes going to intern for my literary agent in d. C. Someone on line said you really are a bad mother. Getting her into publishing and i thought well you know we cant help it. We love what we do and as chris said earlier when i interviewed him you dont go into publishing to get rich. You go in it for love and that is why we are all here. And i would say feel free to volunteer. Its a lot of fun and its something i do because i love it and independent as i was looking for volunteers but there are sites all over the internet who want people who will help promote in all of that. If youre ever interested and want to do it on the side thats something you should think about. Very well said. We have established that the death of the book is greatly exaggerated today. I want to thank the panel since i think we have learned a lot about how they work you want to thank the audience because we have learned from you as well. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] theres a risk in the bohemian lifestyle and i decided to take it of course. Whether its an illusion or not, i dont think it is its helped my concentration. It stopped me from being bored and stop other people from being bored to some extent. You would want the evening to go on longer to prolong the conversation and enhance the moment. If i was asked what i do it again, the answer is probably yes. I would have quit earlier possibly but to get away with the whole thing. Easy for me to say but its probably not nice for my children to hear. Sounds irresponsible if i say yeah i do all that again to you. It would be hypocritical to say i would never touch the stuff that i knew. Because i did know. Everyone knows. The soviet system in Eastern Europe contain the seeds of its own destruction. Many of the problems we saw at the end began at the very beginning. I spoke already about the attempts to control all institutions and control all parts of the economy and political life and social life. One of the problems is when you do that when you try to control everything then you create opposition and potential dissidents everywhere. If you tell all artists they have to pay the same one and one artist says no i dont want to paint that way, i want to pick another way youve just made them into a political dissident. Of you want to subsidize housing in this country and we want to talk about it and the populace agrees that something we should subsidize them put it on the Balance Sheet and make it clear and make it evident that make everybody aware of how much its costing. But when you deliver it through these thirdparty Enterprises Fannie mae and freddie mac, when he delivered a subsidy for a Public Company with private shareholders and executives who can extract a lot of that subsidy for themselves, that is not a very good way of subsidizing homeownership. Next members of the book industry discuss the future of brickandmortar retailers. This panel is part of this years Bookexpo America in new york city. Its about 45 minutes. [inaudible conversations] ive i have been told we need to silence our cell phones so first of all thank you all for joining us today. This is the most exciting bea that we have had. I think its a remarkable time in our industry and i am so excited to have you join us at the future of bricks and mortar retailers. This year at retails big show rick caruso who is the founder of Caruso Affiliated said we are part of the rebirth of brickandmortar retail. We are living in a moment of great change surrounded by exciting technology. Its easy to get distracted by the relentless conversation and around the internet versus brickandmortar but now more than ever what we need to do is to focus on what has always been and will always be essential to the customer, creating an experience that is magical and memorable great for those of us who love books, bookstores or booksellers have always been magical and memorable. Today we are going to talk to some great booksellers about creating Great Customer experiences and the future rick and mortar retailing. Whether you are retail or an author or publisher there are new ways to comment the business and we hope to share some of those with you today. Let me introduce the panel. We are going to start from my immediate left. On my immediate left is a person and many of you will know, oren teicher the chief executive officer of the American Booksellers Association and the trade association for independent booksellers and he has been working working on that half of independent bookstores for more than 20 years. Directly to his leftist Michael Tamblyn the president of the global e. Reading and Device Companies that powers retail for National National bookstore chains and independents around the world. Before joining he was founder and ceo of buk canada. Directly to his left you will see john ingram. John is the chairman and ceo of Ingram Content Group the Worlds Largest distributor of physical and digital content. John also serves as the chairman of Ingram Industries board of directors and next to him you will see joyce meskis who is the owner and has been the owner and president of Tattered Cover bookstore is one of the great bookstores in america wanted donations nationally recognized independent bookstores since 1974. She has long been active in the american booksellers associati association. And then directly to her left you will see Mike Hesselbach who is the evp and cmo for reader link which provides Category Management for over 40,000 mass drug grocery club and specialty doors across the u. S. Mike has been with leaving Home Entertainment for 19 years and before that was with American Greetings for 15 years. I have to tell you the thing that stood out talking to mike on the phone this week was his comment that he is a real passion for retail. I think all of these people have a real passion for retail and a passion for books retail specifically and what is the book and im excited incredibly excited to talk to them. We are going to start right away and we are going to talk about the instore experience. And i think all of us know that ecommerce and mobile devices have made significant strides in the past few years but they can never really replace the instore personal experience. One of the questions i asked the panelists and i put a long list of questions. We had to winnow them down there were so many. I asked what are some really great examples of what you are doing and what you are seeing other people do with respect to enhancing the instore Shopping Experience . We are going to start directly to my left with oren so we will go right down this aisle. Thanks and good afternoon. I think the first thing and the most important thing i can say about independent retail in the Book Business that not only are we still here, there are more of us here and the resurgence in bookselling is real. As some of you may have seen we will announce tomorrow at the epa town hall meeting for the First Time Since 2005 the American Booksellers Association members operate in more than 2000 locations across the country. And you know we know there is a popular narrative about their offense and attaches the word beleaguered to independent stores. The facts are quite contrary. We are actually experiencing a resurgence in these stores because they are creating an experience that consumers are responding to our absolutely alive and well and making a real difference in creating an experience for consumers that are fun and exciting and compelling. I will probably take a much more statistical approach to this and almost all of these. While i also come out as independent bookselling and chain physical bookselling is well spending a lot of my time working with ebooks being sold through and in the context of bricks and mortar stores. So we spend a lot of time looking at the differences between the two. How are brickandmortar stores are selling Different Things than what ebook buyers by. Then to talk about your question in real pointed details like what is the difference where do we see that split taking place . Bad idea of the true browsing experience, the lateral and random walk through a store that so many of us do to find the books that we love still remains almost entirely a physical Retail Experience and we see it in the data. We see if people know what they want to buy they are good at buying digital but if they dont know what they want and we dont see the same kind of sales at usc in see in the store because there is a depth same casting your eye across the table and shells and finding that random accidental treasure. You try to dream about things that will replicate that we are nowhere near there. Its fundamentally a physical store experience. John what are some good great examples you are seeing . Thank you. It makes me want to jump to some of the things we talked about dominique. To me its really about Engaging Community and about innovation. Those are the key things. The days of just doing what you used to do and that being good enough doesnt work anymore. We probably will get into that a little later. Do you want to get into it now . We will do that a little later but some of the things you all are doing because you are still here i think are some of the key things that we will let joyce to something specific. There certainly is a renaissance of spirit and the independent community and as i look in the audience and see some of my fellow brother and sister colleagues, it is certainly the case that everyone is working as hard as they possibly can to engage the customer. Perience with respect to people using the devices in the increased incremental sales we were seeing one year ago. We have really see that level out at this point. For what they know and love. As i think about what we can do to bring them back it is hard to give us a computer screen to pour a glass of wine. [laughter] when you come to the happy hour at the Tattered Cover. It is hard during book a and lovers day to extend the rows into the hand of the customer who wants to give Something Special to above one. This hired to have your child is engaged on Family Friendly friday nights to hear authors read and those events that are impossible to create with us a digital device. The foot customer wants to feel appreciated more love than to give bin in for a nation, there is no question about it. About it. There is also to gauge the community in the world of books. The media certainly even on both defense and then to continue on. I know you have worked very hard with the section that has more of an experience. People who come into your stores come there to buy books and looked at books. Most of that come into our retail outlets for coming to buy them day stumble upon them but theyre there to buy Grocery Store their prescriptions filled. And then to figure out how to ring gauge them as quickly as possible as they enter the store so we try to create exciting displays, so well least have an opportunity to get a status mind and we work with random house to look at events like princess the events but the truth is we have to make it look little different to catch the consumer side. We dont have the privilege to have anyone in that store. So we utilize all these types of things like cross promotions with which ago lego in the toy aisle then try to leverage that into books. I will go little deeper to the community aspect. We have all done a tremendous amount of court in our community. I was staggered honestly so how do you see the stores work better . Any of you here in the audience knows these things very well and better than i do. But as i was talking touche dominique i was gathering of media into our world using it to the extent possible looking for stories all the time. Whether a smalltown community are large down. And public radio as far as were concerned is our top pinterest to connect with the community. We also have done this for a number of years in colorado were very concerned about ecological matters and things geographic. In so that brings people overtime tuesday offers that we feature. And in terms of promotion at large. But mostly regional. The writer is respond to readers. But we sell out the tickets with wonder entered 25 top we can accommodations that will come in to spend saturdays with us. And we sell out in minutes. And with happy hour we have very impressive book selection autograph book club. In the icc that the back of their room and to talk about the incredible summer kids program. In that is remarkable and it is wonderful. And that book came up came out but i again the of relationships with book reviews sands local papers and the neighborhood beats them public radio with the radio stations that featured of lockups promotional titles. As far as authors go, some we have had at our store but for what has been done out there in terms too polluted for their own web site. And other cultural institutions and writers groups to cut into two educationally events as well as page says stage to deal with the of local group that puts on plays. Of libraries and local colleges im looking to the audience and i see they have done an Amazing Things with their collaboration. Certainly the schools telling them how book gets published in the other side types of tumors. En total how much does this run in one year . Between friday and 600. Get that number. When she told me that i was stunned. That is pretty remarkable. Your comment about the connection into communities it is unnecessary to remind dash a group of largely independent of both sellers that the local movement has changed everything. Not just bookstores but there are literally millions millions of consumers making decisions to spend there dollars in a local independent business because it is locally independent. There are booksellers in this room who will be at the forefront of creating there first local shop efforts in their community but this has mushroomed across the country and many are familiar with the promotion of American Express in conjunction with Small Business saturday. With that single day on one day, 5. 7 billion was spent in independent businesses across the united states. I like to joke bookstores got some of its. [laughter] not all of it. But it is no longer just the imagination of the few people. The interconnection between local businesses to build community and Work Together to do cross market and to come up with ways that they can get a better response response, but we know said data shows if you shop one independent business you are more likely to shop at another. So those partnerships pay off to make an incredible difference and it is why our members are doing better. And john you have comments . Yes. I think to put it to one word would be relevant. How to be relevant to your community. Not just reading camps but tapping into local Technology Culture to tap into the restaurant scene those are clever and there are a lot of examples across the country of the independents tap begin trying to be relevant in their community. For instance, we are a bookstore in maplewood new jersey all about special needs and too deeply service that particular need for code not only with the great selection of books but Education Opportunities coming employment opportunities. This is how we have to think it is broader than just the mandate to sell books. The books center has made friday mornings of place to be for the for preschoolers. It is where every friday morning and new pitcher book is read to a growing audience then they do activities after words you can go on and on with that. But to take that back is how to be relevant and connected i will now move to a slightly different area. So the data as suggest the shift between physical formats have change. And i asked mike to the us so how has that merchandising mix changed and how does it change in the future . Had resold the things we used to sell and what does that mean going for word . We are little different because he already competes with thousands of different categories within our department we had to become more curated we dont have the space we had five years ago is specially around 2009 or 2010 in books were starting to get traction and of retailers are looking at books to figure out of this is a category they want to be and so we had to be more relative so we have gone after more hardcover and trade paper going back to the relevance it is what our consumers recognize when theyre walking into our stores. Movie tieins we really go after those very hard. When we get the placement within the retailers the more than double the of market share and that is the good thing because we can garner that type of market share. One of the obvious is massmarket. We have cut back with the selection and probably has been the hardest hit for us in died in see that happening when refer started to talk about ebook sets out the of lowprice point but that was the hardest hit and we perpetuated a little bit of that because as we look at that space, it was the loser so we probably made that bigger than it should be but it has plateaued and we give it the right promotion but the obvious winner in our market was kids. We have much bigger kids departments we probably do 66 percent more Business Today than five years ago with his childrens books because that is, mom and a soccer bombs as we call them that have families and young kids in there is always another new generation of children coming behind them to buy those books. That israel we help the retailers to win. That is where we see it going. I dont think that will change. We have kept it is stable with a nice selection were not deep been major authors. We will put more focus on young adults and children and continue down that path of. Does anybody else want to talk about merchandising and its effect . Our abacus numbers show that if you get to somewhere in that 15 or 20 of the inventory mix you have a profitable plan. A store that is selling that is still a bookstore ended is important for it to be because that is what your customers are expecting so within the 58 or 20 range they do well and clearly still continue to slow canfield like a bookstore. But the overall thing about independent bookstores is you are all different. The mix of product is different. What may work in joyces store is not necessarily going to work on the west side of manhattan. It is hard to generalize about what works in one place will necessarily work somewhere else. More often than not but it means less likely to work somewhere else and that is the charm that they are all different. One of the things joyce said to me that i thought was interesting she