Parties On!
By Claire Kirch -- Publishers Weekly, 5/8/2007 1:28:00 PM
Independent booksellers said Amazon.com's announcement this morning that it was further discounting the price for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, to $17.99, won't influence the size of their orders or their plans to mark the book's July 21 release. The strategy for indies, most of which can't afford to come close to Amazon's price, is to fight discounting with fun.
"Amazon cannot throw the party of a lifetime," said Valerie Koehler, owner of Houston's Blue Willow Books. "We're going to, and we're going to have a lot of fun." Koehler estimated that, as in past years, this year's event at her store will draw 350 attendees, most of whom have pre-ordered Harry Potter 7 at full-price.
"I may order from Amazon.com," Colette Morgan, buyer at Minneapolis's Wild Rumpus, said. "They're giving a better discount than I'm getting from Scholastic." Morgan said Wild Rumpus is selling Harry Potter at full price, and that while they indeed are holding a Potter event on July 21 - an early breakfast at the store - it's a party celebrating Beatrix Potter, rather than one celebrating the latest and last Harry Potter release. "We march to a different drummer," she said.
"If anyone wants to pick up any special orders of any other books they can, during our Victorian breakfast for Beatrix Potter," Morgan said, adding that there also will be a petting zoo set up at the store that morning. "We tell people that they can get Harry Potter at their gas station, at their beauty parlor. But if they buy it here, they're paying full-price, and we'll try to live up to their show of support," Morgan said.
Liz Murphy, the owner of the Learned Owl in Hudson, Ohio, said her store has pre-sold more Potter titles than last time. She's advertising that 10% of the book's sale price is going to the reading program, First Book Akron, Ohio. According to Murphy, she's expecting between 10,000-15,000 attendees at this year's party, held in the Hudson town square in front of the store. "I got a publicist, I got an event coordinator this time," she said, describing attendees as traveling to Hudson from all over Ohio for the festivities, and even a few revelers flying out from Paris to attend her event. "People are planning their summers around this party," she said.
"I can't imagine anything Amazon does is going to change anything," Sarah Todd, a manager at Haverford, Penn.'s Children's Book World, declared. "We have a core group of customers who want to share the end of Harry Potter with us that night," and receive a 5% discount on their books at the same time. "I feel bad for people getting their books at Amazon or at Target," she added, "They're getting it alone, because they want a bargain. How sad. Don't you want to remember where you were when you first held the last Harry Potter book in your hands?"
Marnie Johnson, St. Paul, Minn.'s Red Balloon Bookstore co-manager, said the store is also going ahead with its party. "People enjoy having an on-site event in a real community of fellow Harry Potter fans instead of just ordering a book over the Internet, and receiving a box in the mail," she maintained. But, despite what she said are solid pre-orders at Red Balloon, Johnson was the only bookseller who expressed concerns. "I'm disappointed that it's ending up being this cut-throat discounting competition," she said, "It makes me reluctant to even talk to you in specifics, I don't want the chains or Amazon to know what we're planning."
