Marketing Children’s Books to Adults at MPBA

This story originally appeared in Children's Bookshelf on September 28, 2006 Sign up now!

by Claire Kirch, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 9/28/2006

(L. to r.) Booksellers Tamra Doré, Anne Holman and
Valerie Koehler at the panel in Denver.

Jumpstarting children’s book sales was on the minds of the 50 booksellers who attended the two-hour panel discussion at MPBA in Denver last week, titled “Who’s Buying That Children’s Book? Marketing to Parents, Grandparents, and Other Adults.” Moderator Valerie Koehler, owner of Houston’s Blue Willow Bookshop, flanked by Anne Holman, a bookseller at The King’s English in Salt Lake City and Tamra Doré, owner of Katy Budget Books in Houston, led a freewheeling brainstorming session on how to increase sales by drawing adults into children’s stores.

“This is one category we have over the chains,” Koehler told booksellers. “People come in looking for advice—they want to be led. The only way stores can stay in business is to have a small, knowledgeable staff who can help customers.”

She recommended that, first and foremost, booksellers must always have their core backlist in stock. “If you don’t have that core list in stock always, you are going to lose that sale,” she said.

Secondly, booksellers must train their staff about children and reading. She recommended two titles as essential reading for any bookseller serious about selling children’s books: From Cover to Cover: Evaluating Children’s Books by Kathleen T. Horning and Stacy Innerst (HarperTrophy) and How to Get Your Child to Love Reading by Esmé Raji Codell (Algonquin).

The panel then brainstormed about effective store staffing and book placement, as well as optimal store set-up. Holman recommended hiring grandmotherly types or retired schoolteachers, who can relate to parents and grandparents. Doré urged booksellers to increase signage in their children’s section, to help staff and patrons who might not know how to find the books for their particular age group. And Koehler declared that children’s titles had to be clearly separated from YA titles, with “someone close to that age [teen] placed in charge of that section.”

Other tips included little touches that may not cost much, but that reap great rewards in terms of customer appreciation—such as scheduling regular story times to placing store bookmarks in books.Koehler described serving breakfast to young patrons on the day that Eldest by Christopher Paolini went on sale; as a result, she sold all her stock that morning.

“Think outside the box,” Koehler urged the audience. “Your customers have to feel that ‘we are here to make this a shopping experience for you.’ It’s not just what the patron is buying, it’s the entire experience. Otherwise, they can go to Kroger. We are the ones who can make the experience of buying a book for a child a wonderful experience.”

Margaret Neville, an audience member, and a bookseller at The King’s English, was even blunter. “If we don’t sell books to grandparents and parents,” she declared, “we’re not going to have anyone to sell to in the next 20 years. If grandparents buy books for their grandchildren, then these kids will grow up and buy books for the children in their lives.”

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