While Simon & Schuster quietly went live with its online direct-to-consumer sales effort earlier this month, offering books and audios for sale to consumers from its simonsays.com Web site, Random House has even more quietly been testing its own direct to consumer efforts through randomhouse.com. All of Random's titles are available for sale on the site at full price with customers paying shipping and handling charges. Random spokesperson Stuart Applebaum said the online effort will supplement sales made through its traditional retail customers. All titles bought from the site will be picked and shipped from Random's distribution centers. Many of Random's retail accounts, Applebaum said, have already been informed that Random is moving ahead with the direct sales program. The possibility of an online sales initiative was mentioned late last year by Random chairman Peter Olson. Applebaum said that early sales have been "very satisfactory," but that for the foreseeable future Random "has no plans to alter the parameters of the online sales program."
With RH and S&S joining Penguin in the direct-to-consumer business, HarperCollins is the only major publisher not selling from its Web site. HC spokesperson Lisa Herling had no comment on future plans.
While the major houses have adopted an understated approach to selling online, a number of other publishers actively tout the ability of consumers to buy books directly from their sites. One of the most aggressive players in selling online is Harlequin, which offers a 20% discount on all titles and a free shipping offer; in its newest enhancement, it provides online customers with the chance to buy a title a month before its official release date. Since the site was redesigned early in the summer, sales increased by double digits in both July and August, said Harlequin spokesperson Katherine Orr. Current hot areas are inspiration and traditional romances. Orr maintains that sales through eHarlequin.com do not take away business from retailers. "They're two different customers," Orr said, adding that the site does include information on stores where books can be bought.
Another longtime participant in selling online is HCI Books, publisher of the Chicken Soup titles, which has been selling online for about 10 years. "We started doing it as a way to help our authors sell their books," said Ariana Daner, Internet marketing manager. Like Harlequin, HCI discounts books by 20% and will give extra discounts on some titles around the holidays. Over the past Christmas season, Web sales doubled, Daner said, attributing that to people becoming more comfortable buying online and to strong sales for Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul and Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul. The popularity of the Chicken Soup franchise was a key factor in offering direct sales. The HCI site, Daner notes, is one of the few places where the entire Chicken Soup backlist is available. (Penguin's David Shanks cited a similar reason for Penguin's direct to consumer launch, noting that the Penguin site was the only place where all of Agatha Christie's backlist is available, as well as all 30,000 titles in its backlist.)
HCI's online effort goes beyond its own site. It operates a Partner program in which it offers a 20% commission to other Web sites that send a customer HCI's way.
Kensington Publishing resurrected its online sales effort a month ago, taking advantage of its move to Penguin for fulfillment. After several years of offering titles on its site, Kensington had stopped the practice because fulfillment was too cumbersome, said president Steve Zacharius. But with Penguin processing and fulfilling orders, "things are working great," Zacharius said. "Sales are small, but a sale is a sale." Zacharius doesn't believe sales through kensingtonbooks.com is siphoning business from other accounts, noting that "people who know Amazon will still go to Amazon." To spur sales from its site, Kensington gives a 30% discount on all titles, although customers pay shipping and handling charges.
Zacharius has enough faith in selling online that Kensington is planning to launch a new site next month dedicated to e-book sales. The new site will feature e-book editions of Kensington's gay and lesbian books as well as e-book versions of a new erotica line that the company plans to launch in January.
John Wiley & Sons relaunched wiley.com in July as a single global site. The company originally launched the site in 1995 and added international sites over the years. But, said spokesperson Susan Spilka, Wiley returned to a single main site based on customer feedback. The site now has a detection system that identifies the location of the customer and presents products available in the appropriate regional market only. Wiley's upgrades are aimed at offering "customers a top-notch commerce experience if they elect to buy directly from the site," said Spilka. Wiley offers no discounts on books, but Spilka reports that traffic and sales have steadily increased.
