Kobo is launching a new program in conjunction with the American Booksellers Association to promote the sale of e-books in independent bookstores, reports Publishers Weekly. “eRead Local” will run for 100 days, and provide $5 to participating ABA members for each new customer they deliver, as well as give those customers $5 off their first Kobo e-book order. (ABA members also get commissions on e-books their customers order.) ABA members who manage to deliver 50 or 100 members will enter drawings for free Kobo e-readers for in-store use or an in-store event with a yet-to-be-named bestselling author.

Publishers Weekly notes that the ABA has partnered with e-book sellers for the last several years (Kobo for the last three, and before it Google) but has only attained mediocre results. Nonetheless, participation does not take much extra effort for ABA members, and it allows them to better serve those customers who do want e-books.

It seems to me that this program will only be effective for people who want to reconcile their preference for e-books with a desire to “support my local bookstore” enough to go out and buy their e-books through it. After all, most people who want e-books are already buying them from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Apple without having to leave their homes.

Still, I suppose it’s better than nothing.

You can find your local ABA member by using this search function on the ABA’s web site.

3 COMMENTS

  1. I agree. I have wrestled with how ebooks could support local bookstores and always drawn a blank. Only those who want to go out of their way to support their local bookstore will jump through the added hoops required.

    Local bookstores need a new business model, although I’m not sure what it might be. I saw one I liked when I lived in Seattle. The owner accepted used books as donations and sold most for 25 cents each. That low a price ensured that people were happy to donate for free.

    He told me that he was retired and was running the business simply out of a love for books. The 25 cents per book sold was enough to cover his rent and utilities, which was all that mattered to him. Unfortunately, health issues forced him to shut down a few months later, so the idea was never fully tested.

    Someone else might want to try it, particularly if they can find a busy location with modest rent in a neighborhood where people love books.

  2. I’d really love to find a way for brick and mortar stores to be able to use ebooks as a sales partner — it gives stores added revenue and helps ebook authors gain more awareness and market share.

    I was wondering if Smashwords might be a suitable co-promoter with brick and mortar stores because of their coupon and affiliate commission options.

    As Smashwords, the default affiliate commission is 11% but authors can individually choose to increase the commission up to whatever they want (to encourage others to promote their books).

    1) A simplish wish to do this would be to have stores hand out coupons with their affiliate code (use Goo.gl or another shortener to make it easy to enter). The store gets the 11% commission for everything the customer buys within 48 hours — all for handing out a business card sized coupon.

    They could do a “general coupon” for “Cool Ebook” ideas or coupons for specific authors, books, etc.

    They could also do a free handout for “highlighted reads,” kind of like the old promo booklets Waldenbooks and B. Dalton used to hand out, whether it is a booklet or just a sheet of paper, using the Goo.gl links or sending them to their store’s website, where the link with affiliate code is put.

    The only cost is photocopying/printing the coupons (on bright paper) and the effort to update selected features.

    2) Stores could put links to highlighted books on their website (with their affiliate code built in) and then have new books featured however often they want to update (weekly, monthly, whatever — kind of like their own little BookBub).

    Again, only cost is photocopying a handout to send readers to their store website.

    The only downside to 1-2 is there’s not much immediate feedback, all they know is what they earn when quarterly checks are cut from Smashwords. But the EASY part is ANYONE could do this.

    3) Authors who wanted a promotional push could offer stores coupons with a download code built in — so the store buys the coupons at a deep discount (say $10 for 100 coupons), store can sell these redeemable discount coupons at $1-3 each.

    Customer gets coupon, opens it up to get the Smashwords/Goo.gl address and download code.

    The store gets inventory at a very low cost…but how easy will it be to sell a presumably unknown book/author based on a coupon or flier. You’d probably need shelftalkers and sampling to go with it.

    The author loses the money from the sale of that particular book, BUT (assuming they have a series), they could use this to springboard readers into buying the other books in the series.

    This works for the store in that they have inventory to sell

  3. The biggest problem that any indie bookstore/e-book store partnership is going to have to overcome is that they’re not Amazon. Which means that anyone who is already invested in Amazon won’t be interested, and they can’t match Amazon for all the additional perks and benefits they bestow upon Kindle users.

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