Amazon.com is in a battle with large publisher Hachette. While there is no new agreement, Amazon is downgrading the display and marketing of Hachette titles. Even making it hard to find some Hachette title and they took away the “Preorder” button.
Third Place Books is an independent bookstore in a neighborhood mall in Lake Forest Park and a location in Seattle’s Ravenna neighborhood. Many book sellers are putting an anti-Amazon banner - “I didn’t buy it on Amazon” - on their web pages. But Third Place partner Robert Sindelar looked at this as an opportunity..
Sindelar says “our goal is to connect people to books. The notion that a retailer would obstruct readers from getting to certain books they want completely violates our ethics as retailers. I wondered how we could get that message across to customers."
So Sindelar found a forth-coming hot title and did some creative marketing. How about Little Brown’s “The Silkworm” from Robert Galbraith aka J K Rowling to be released last Thursday! Ordinarily they would get no preorders for a book like that. They featured and discounted it. They even did home delivery of the book! They sold 60 on the first day, when typically they would sell about five.
The Seattle Times reprinted the article by James B Steward, but I can’t find it on their web site. The article goes into considerable detail on the publishing battle.
(Third Place Books is our neighborhood treasure. It is within walking distance and I am in there several times a week. It has a common area with Honey Bear Bakery and free live music on Friday and Saturday nights!)
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