Some ideas about book fairs
image credit: Old Shoe Woman via Flickr
This morning, an article from The Associated Press crossed my computer monitor: Forget stores, Book fairs are enjoying profits.
Book fairs are a lot of work
I know that many independent bookstores do book fairs, using various models. And I know that other stores would like to do them, but can’t justify the labor and payroll expense. It’s a time consuming process, and hard to get right without a lot of practice. And then there are the margins, which are greatly reduced by the time you give the school their 20% or 25% of sales.
Use book fairs to build your customer base
It strikes me that a book fair can be a powerful way to reach into your community and begin a dialogue with people who may not (yet) be your customers. We tend to think of book fairs as “one off” events. It happens once a year. But a savvy bookseller using tools like email newsletters and blogs can extend the book fair beyond the walls of the school and beyond the 3 days of the fair.
Think about it: by hiring you for their book fair, the PTA or school is implying a level of trust in your store. Parents will hear your store name, and begin to have at least a small level of awareness of your business. That’s a powerful beginning. But let’s take it further. Through the book fair, you have a very targeted group handed to you: parents who buy books for their children. By creating content for this group, you can show your expertise in the category and offer an important service to those parents, while allowing them to learn more about you and your business, hopefully turning them into customers.\
A few ideas
I know that each school has its own rules about what kinds of messages are and are not permitted to be sent home, so this is not an every-size fits all scenario. Still, I want to see if we can figure out together how we can make book fairs an even more powerful tool. Some ideas off the top of my head – hopefully these will give you other ideas:
1. Start a mailing list of parents based on the book fair. Can you devise a coupon that will give a $1 extra donation to the school if it is redeemed? That coupon can have a place for someone to sign up for your mailing list if they choose. Make sure you tell them that the mailing list is for recommended children’s books, and tell them how often they can expect to receive it.
2. Before the book fair, set up a web site highlighting several of the books that will be at the fair. You can do this using a blog platform, with a book a day, or get more elaborate by using a more powerful platform like WordPress.( It might seem like a lot of work for one fair, but remember, once you figure everything out, you can use it for every book fair that you do, with a few minor tweaks to customize.) Invite the parents to take a look at the books with their child at home, to draw a preliminary shopping list or just to get the child excited about the bookfair. Have a place for sign up to your special parent/child themed newsletter.
3. If you have the technological resources, allow the parent and child to “preorder” books to be waiting for pickup at the school. Of course you want to encourage that the parents send their child in with a few dollars extra so that the child can have the joy of picking out at least one book on his own during the fair.
4. Even if you don’t bother with the preview of the fair, do consider a special children’s themed blog. If you have reach into a community such as the one through a book fair, a specialized blog is a powerful tool to communicate with that group. Promote the blog on your bookfair materials — both before the fair and on the sales receipt or other materials you send home. Parents are always looking for good book recommendations — give them a place to find them.
5. Remember that parents like to connect to other parents. Can you facilitate a community of parents interested in books? A thought that comes to mind is to set up a group on Good Reads or similar site to encourage parents and children to post reviews of the books that they bought at the book fair or books that they read together. You can make this group private and by invitation only so that you can assure parents of the safety and security.
6. Start an in-store parent/child book group, and use the book fair to spread the word.
7. Often a book fair will have an evening where parents can come in and shop with their children. At my kids’ school, it is done in conjunction with parent teacher conferences or a school dance. If this is the case for your school, do try to have someone from your staff attend. I know that much of the appeal of bookfairs is that you don’t have to provide personnel to staff it, but if you can use this opportunity to meet potential customers in person, tell them about your store and demonstrate your expertise, it can be a valuable use of your time.
The theme is this: try to extend the book fair into a long-term relationship. What other ways can you think of to do this? If you’ve done book fairs, I’d love to hear about your experiences and if you think this is possible. What am I missing?
