Why don’t bookstores routinely post listings of award winners — Hugos and Nebulas for science fiction, Edgars for detective stories, and so on? You’d think that this would help sell books, since they give potential buyers something they could try, with some likelihood that the book would indeed be good. True, some subsequent editions of a book indicate that the book won an award, and many books by award-winning authors note this; but to see that, one has to have come across the book in the first place. A list would help readers who don’t even know which books to look at.
I hear a few bookstores do post such lists, at least for some categories, but why isn’t this standard operating procedure in the trade? Just take a list and stick it to the proper bookshelf. You don’t have to mark the places where each winner sits on the bookshelf, which will require you to move each marker when the shelves are rearranged. Simply put up the lists and then update them each year (and if you forget one year, it’s no disaster).
Even amazon, which once had the lists easily available (I discovered Lois McMaster Bujold, one of my favorite SF writers, through an amazon link to the Hugo winners) no longer seems to provide them. [UPDATE: Reader Bill Harshaw points out that the lists are available, if one clicks on Books and then clicks on “Award Winners” under “Around Our Bookstore.” But it’s not easy to notice, and an ordinary search for something like “Hugo Award Winners” doesn’t produce it; wouldn’t it have been sensible for amazon to have its search engine yield the list as well as books that somehow match that search?]
I just don’t see why bookstores are missing what strikes me as a great sales-boosting tool.
UPDATE: Reader Ben Skott writes:
I worked at Barnes and Noble for two years, during which time I rose to being in charge of our fiction and sci-fi sections. They thought my love of reading, my nearly encyclopedic knowledge (at that time) of who wrote what books, and my scary ability to convince people to buy books they’d never heard of on my recomendation would make me a good section runner.
Anyway, I started putting up the Hugo and Nebula lists in sci-fi, along with an, “If you like X, try Y” list that I made up. Sales of books on those lists went up almost immediately, to the point where I was actually having to up our standard order of Ender’s Game (whcih is crazy considering we already carried tons due to it being required reading in local high schools).
I wanted to do something similar with general fiction, at least posting Pullitzer and Nobel winners, but they wouldn’t let me. Almost everything in that store is dictated from above. Sci-fi was thought by my manager to be small enough that I could put a personal touch on it. General fiction, on the other hand, was too big and important. He wouldn’t stray an inch from the conformed standards. All of which serves to not at all answer your question. I don’t know why Barnes and Noble corporate won’t post such lists, but in my experience they do their best to not help themselves sell books.
Another reader points out that “there are a LOT of marketing considerations that go on in the big chains — to the extent that nearly every space is spoken for. A publisher will pay rather big money to have, for instance, an endcap for one month; what that entails is contractually mandated, includes what books shall be presented, what text can be used to advertised, agreements as to competing advertising, etc., etc.” Still, my experience has been that there are some empty places where a list can be posted.
Comments are closed.