When we bring a new book proposal into the publishing house where I work, we often spend a lot of time talking about what the right shelf for a book is. It’s not always an easy thing. For instance, back in “the day”, circa 1995 or so, most books on the Internet, regardless of topic, went on a “General Computing” shelf. So you had your how to hook up your computer to the Internet books sitting along side your Internet business, Internet marketing, Internet job search, and online dating books. Over the years, these books have migrated to more topic specific shelves in other areas of the store. Still, in the new era of social media, we’re often faced with a quandary when it comes to these titles. Is a book on social media marketing best shelved in technology or in business? We tend to make the decisions based on a number of factors:
* How techy exactly is the book? Does it require basic knowledge (setting up a WordPress blog, opening a twitter account) or does it expect you to understand more intricate procedures (hosting your own blog, creating widgets)? Techier books tend to go in the Technology section, while books without many screenshots and procedures go into Business. It sometimes breaks out to theory books vs. practice, but it’s not always that cut and dry.
* Where is the target customer going to be most likely to find the book? The answer is rarely “at the front of the store”. Even if we did get a front table or cash wrap placement for a title, a rare thing indeed for most tech and business books, that isn’t a category for shelving and every book needs one. If the customer is more likely looking for similar books in tech rather than business, that’s our shelf.
* Where have other books we’ve done that are like this book gone, and how well have they sold? A big consideration, results in the field do often sway our thinking, but the shelf is not static, and prior results are no guarantee of future performance.
There are more considerations, but those are by far the most frequently referred to. Now, I’m not a retailer, but I would love to see our bigger bricks and mortar chains come up with a section for social media books. One where we could find “Naked Conversations” next to “WordPress For Dummies“, one shelf over from “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” and stuff like that. Me, Ellen, as a customer is reading all types of books like this. I’d love to find them on one hot, juicy social media shelf. Not tech strictly, or business strictly, but my stuff. This kind of stuff. Not having to go all over the store to find it, but having one special place where it all resided.
The issue is irrelevant on Amazon, BN.com and other online retailers. It’s in a physical store where books can only be shelved in one place where this really matters. So I ask you, dear readers, what would you call the shelf where you can find all these books? Social media, social networking, digital lifestyles, the cool books that everyone should be reading? I’d love to make the pitch to some bricks and mortar retailers to create such a shelf, with the right name, of course. The right name will give the signal to the customer that this is where they can find these books, but be in some senses lowest common demominator so as not to confuse or worse, scare away any prospective book buyers. I think social media is great, but does everyone book buyer know what the prospect of a shelf with that header means? Is Digital Lifestyles too 1999?
So, feel free to comment away! Vote early and often.
