How Do You Sell Books in Luton?

Imagine a city that “is like the hole in Swiss cheese.” There is no retail main street. There are no dedicated media outlets, no independent bookstores, no arts festivals, no publishers—all the things publishers rely on to sell books today. That, in a nutshell, is Luton, a city of 250,000 right outside London. At the recent Marketing & Publicity conference hosted by UK’s The Bookseller, Luton was held up as an example of the challenge that all publishers face in the future: How do you reach and sell to the people who live in the Lutons of the world, which have traditionally been ignored by marketers and publicists?

Jared Shurin, the strategy director at advertising firm M&C Saatchi, spoke about big-picture trends in consumer attitudes and demographics that affect books and publishers just as much as any other consumer business. We now live in a much younger, more diverse society, and many of today’s institutions and establishments were created at a different time for a different mix of people. “How will we adapt to new audiences in new ways, in this new environment?” Shurin asked. He pointed to two big trends that he believes require adaptation from publishers.

The first trend: a crisis in trust. Shurin said our faith in the institutions of society has been eroding for almost two decades and remains in active decline. This includes government, media, business, individuals, politicians, journalists, CEOs, activists—even institutions that have typically enjoyed high trust in the past, like the BBC in the UK. “The British people’s trust in the British people is at an all-time low” as well, he said, and of course the same story is playing out in the US. This is partly due to our age of transparency. “We know more about these institutions and people than ever before,” Shurin said, but also we “don’t trust people that we don’t agree with or who don’t share our values.”

The good news: Trust isn’t really a blanket concept. No one trusts everyone to do everything. Trust, Shurin argues, is contextual. So what do publishers or authors want to be trusted for? Do they provide escape? Expertise? Good value? Once that’s figured out, “You have to have the actions to underpin the words. How do you behave in every space and in every channel?” Fortunately, Shurin said, books are highly trusted today and inherently authoritative. They convey permanency in a way that few other categories do.

The second trend: We’re online a lot. This won’t come as a revelation to anyone, but Shurin tried to shake people out of their complacency by emphasizing that online gaming is now bigger than soccer in Britain, advertising spend is now higher online than offline, and the biggest media platforms (swallowing all the ad spend) are all from big tech. “These channels do sell books. They work. It’s where we should be,” Shurin said. But he posed a question that he didn’t have an answer to: “Why are there always new spaces that are being carved out for people to talk to other people about books they love? Why do these always exist, and why do they always take us by surprise? Why are there always these groups of young people who want to talk about books but don’t want to do it through existing channels?” Or: Why do we keep getting caught off-guard by things like TikTok? (Nielsen UK reports that 43 percent of people between 20 and 24 years old are using TikTok.)

Shurin’s talk opened up the conference, nicely setting up the other sessions as a kind of multi-faceted response to the questions he posed. A couple key takeaways we heard after Shurin:

• More than 60 percent of consumers trust recommendations that come from influencers. Sarah Penny of The Influencer Group says influencers have demonstrated their ability to affect book sales. While previous influencer marketing was geared toward building awareness, today these influencers (whether on TikTok or elsewhere) are playing a bigger role in sales strategies. Rather than investing in one-off sponsored posts, which are now seen as largely ineffective, businesses are looking to influencers to create content, change perceptions, provide authority and information, and drive sales. Penny said, “The Creator Economy will mean brands need to work harder to secure chosen influencers for partnerships,” Penny said. Other revenue streams from platforms like Patreon or TikTok mean influencers “can be more selective about the brands they work with, to protect their brand. Brands will need to work harder to appeal to the right talent for campaigns.”
• Nielsen UK’s latest figures indicate that younger women (ages 25–34) account for more print purchasing than any other demographic group. Slightly older people (ages 45–54) account for more ebook purchasing. Males between the ages of 25 and 34 overindex on audiobook purchases in 2019, but now females between the ages of 25 and 34 are matching them in 2021.

Bottom line: When several publishers gathered on a panel to talk about the importance of branding, the conversation morphed quickly into a discussion of communities. Publishers and authors who do well in establishing their names and reputations—in earning trust—are part of an authentic and meaningful community conversation around books.