Contact:
Jago Productions Inc.
6019 Via Venetia South
Delray Beach, FL 33484
(561) 638-7138
Fax (561) 828-9223
E-Mail: info@genrefiction.com
Booksellers, both independents and chains, have utilized a variety of marketing techniques to sell books. Using displays, events, food, and coffee, booksellers have been largely successful in luring consumers into their stores. However, they have not been able to turn many of these "browsers" into "buyers." Many people wander around a bookstore looking for something they would be interested in reading, and come out empty-handed. Browsing is particularly difficult when one is looking for a book in fiction. "General fiction" sales account for 54% of retail book sales, but "general fiction" does not reflect the wealth of genres and sub-genres that make up this category. Most people have preferred subjects or genres that they enjoy reading about, but have no quick way to distinguish which hardcover, trade or mass market paperback books they might enjoy when simply glancing at the displays. Our recently developed YOUR FAVORITE GENRETM Genre Fiction ID System will simplify the browsing process by giving the consumer instant recognition of a novel's genre and sub-genre(s) without ever having to first pick the book up off the shelf.
The book market continues to improve in terms of total dollar sales, but this is attributable to increased book prices rather than increased unit sales. According to the Association of American Publishers, total domestic book sales in 2001 increased a mere 0.1 percent over the previous year, with overall trade sales dropping 2.6 percent. Additionally, according to the 2000 Ipsos-NPD "Book Trends" study, web-based booksellers are the only retailers seeing any growth in terms of sales.
Large chain bookstores are carrying out increased and improved market research in order to become more responsive to consumers' desires and to compete with such web-based retailers as Amazon.com. Most of the efforts of booksellers in the past 20 years have been geared towards keeping consumers in the store with book signings, lectures, music, food and coffee. However, according to Nora Rawlinson in a January 2000 Publishers Weekly article, bookstores have made few innovations in how they sell the books themselves. She writes, "whenever I walk into a bookstore, I play a game to see if the store itself, in the way it is organized, will sell me a book I wasn't already looking for. Most of the time, I find myself aimlessly wandering the aisles."
In a recent Publishers Weekly interview, Borders Group CEO and Chairman Greg Josefowicz stated that the majority of consumers do not come in with a specific purchase in mind, although they often intend to browse certain categories. Former Waldenbooks head, Harry Hoffman, was quoted in a 1983 Publishers Weekly interview as saying "each year, 250 million people visit our stores and 70 percent of them walk out without buying anything. If just 5% of the browsers were converted to buyers, we could add $50 million a year to sales." Although bookstores have improved their means of getting consumers into the stores and keeping them there, they have done little to turn "browsers" into "buyers."
Booksellers polled by Publishers Weekly and Book-Expo America agreed that the book jacket, particularly the plot summary, was the single most important determinant of whether or not a book sold. However, booksellers are still faced with the problem of getting readers to pick up a particular book to read the summary. With the exception of some special interest genres such as science fiction, mystery and romance, works of fiction are generally displayed together or stacked in alphabetical order by author and are not categorized by genre. This makes it difficult for a consumer to find a book in a preferred genre unless he or she is already aware of the author or takes each book off the shelf to look at and read the cover or jacket. It is unlikely that fiction by lesser-known authors will be purchased, because the consumer has no way to determine that the author writes in the consumer's preferred genre simply by glancing at the book's spine or cover.
In addition to the six large and 300 medium-sized publishers, there are 53,000 small presses in the United States. In 1998 alone, nine thousand new publishers went into business, reflecting the growing significance of the small publisher as a force in the publishing industry. That year, 78 percent of books published in the United States came from small presses. However, this trend has not significantly changed how booksellers market books, leaving small presses - whose authors are often less well-known - out in the cold. By continuing with the status quo, many "good reads" in desirable genres go begging for sales because the consumers, simply browsing the displays, have no easy way to know what they are missing.
If consumers had instant identification of a novel's genre without having to first pick each book up off the shelf and read the plot summary, they would more easily find the type of book they would like to read, thus turning "browsers" into "buyers." Our System will allow consumers to identify a book within their favorite genre without having to first pick up and read the book's plot summary.
Our YOUR FAVORITE GENRETM Genre Fiction ID System consists of three concentric color-coded circular bands (using copywrited combinations of nine specific colors developed in cooperation with the Pantone Consulting Group of Pantone, Inc.) to reflect a novel's genre and sub-genre(s). The YOUR FAVORITE GENRETM Genre Fiction ID, about the size of a dime, if printed on or affixed by label to the spine of the novel and/or to the cover, will allow the genre to be immediately identified at a distance without having to first pick the book up off the shelf. This will empower the consumer to more easily find books in his preferred genre without knowing a specific author or title, thereby making it more likely that he will come out of the store with something that he had not specifically planned to buy. The web-based retailers are successful for a variety of reasons, one being the fact that consumers can search by genre and sub-genre to find only the books that match their criteria. If bricks and mortar booksellers want to remain competitive, they must adopt a system whereby in-store consumers also have quick and easy access to visually "search and identify" the type of novels they enjoy.
The YOUR FAVORITE GENRETM Genre Fiction ID System, which we wish to license at NO COST to book publishers of fiction for future printings, is also being made available by license at NO COST to both the retail bookselling industry as well as to libraries for use as labels on existing inventory. By making it quick and easy for consumers to identify those books within the genre they prefer, additional sales from the existing in-store traffic and fewer unsold and returned books for publishers and booksellers should be the result
