How to increase sales of what’s new and novel among fiction fans in today’s competitive retail landscape

With today’s retail landscape increasingly dominated by big box stores and online sellers, Christian retail stores find themselves with a significant challenge. How can Christian retailers compete on price, selection and convenience? Is there a viable path to becoming a supplier of choice for book buyers, particularly for the high-volume fiction buyer?

In the past 17 years, I have had the great privilege of driving over 50,000 miles to more than 1,000 author events. I have met some of the most clever and innovative Christian store owners and managers in the country and have learned a great deal about what makes a store really stand out among the competition.

As uncomfortable as it is to admit, customers really do have a choice as to where they will shop, and we have to give them a compelling reason to buy in our stores. The areas that Christian stores compete well in are relationship and experience.

THE CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP

Many years ago I visited the Gospel Supply House in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The owner, Richard Thomas, always stayed within view of the front door of the store, and greeted by name what seemed like over half of the customers coming in to shop. Personally I would find a reason to come in and support any store where I was greeted by name when I entered!

Thomas was the all-time champ in that category, but Joe Hackman from Hackman’s in Whitehall, Pennsylvania, is also a standout. He has a stand-up desk so he can work on the sales floor, greeting and interacting with his customers. The big box and Internet stores can never compete with this kind of human interaction and customer care.

Another way retailers can relate with customers is through a prayer ministry. When recently visiting His Way Christian Books in Ellicott City, Maryland, we marveled at the prayer room and “Wailing Wall” in the back corner of the store. They had mounted a piece of slat wall where customers could insert prayer requests they had written down, and the board was completely stuffed with all of these requests. What a great way to communicate that our customers are real people with real needs! I often see prayer request boxes and small prayer rooms in Christian stores, communicating that someone cares about me as a person in those stores.

Book readers love to talk about what they are reading! Just ask me what I’m excited about, and I’ll tell you all about Look and Live from Matt Papa, or in fiction, A Cast of Stones by Patrick W. Carr and The Lost Heiress by Roseanna M. White. Instead of rushing to make a sale, start by asking customers what they are reading now. You will learn about their preferences, and they will learn that you care about them.

When hiring at Bethany House, we always ask interviewees about what they are reading because we want to hire people who love books. Talk about books and reading should fill the day at a bookstore.

Another great way to play up the relational angle at a bookstore is to get fiction readers connected with a reading group. You can do sign-ups in the store and start your own group or get involved by supporting existing groups.

There are resources available from publishers to support such reading groups. Coordinators can sign up for ours at bethanyhouse.com/anopenbook, where they can get discussion questions, recipes, coordinator resources, book recommendations and exclusive author interviews.

THE STORE EXPERIENCE

I like to spend money in Christian bookstores, and the stores that get my money tell me one or all of three things: what’s new, what’s hot (or best-selling) and what’s on sale. LifeWay Christian Stores is an excellent retailer in this regard. They tell me all three of those things—and personally greet me within 30 feet of the front door.

The fiction buyer can be one of the best customers in your store, as they are limited only by their time and budget in terms of how many books they will buy. These high-volume customers want to know what just came out for two reasons: to help them find what they have not yet read and also for gifts. A new book is a safer bet as a gift than one that has been out for a while. It is important to devote a special, consistent and highly visible spot for new releases. Christian Supply in Spartanburg, South Carolina, does this well, with a large, attention-getting display, but in smaller stores, it can also be done with a top shelf display with bright, clear signage.

This customer is also the most likely to be interested in new authors, fresh new voices that they want to be the first to know about. In the fiction section, it is wise to have some sort of a feature, whether top shelf or an endcap that focuses on new voices along with a short excerpt or reviews that will help the customer feel comfortable making the purchase. If you have a recommendation from an employee who has read the book, that is even better!

It is also valuable to know what the general trends are—what areas are growing and who the emerging or lead authors are in those growth categories so they can be featured on an endcap. This is fairly easy to do just by keeping tabs on the CBA best-seller list with a critical eye to observe which authors are making the list and what categories they represent. Being conversant in what is trending makes you an important resource for the frequent buyer, providing information they are not likely to easily find anywhere else. For instance, did you know that one of the hottest trends in CBA fiction is romantic suspense and that right now most of the books in that category are being sold by CBA retailers? The best-selling authors to know in this category are Dee Henderson, Terri Blackstock, Irene Hannon, Dani Pettrey and Lynette Eason. Other current growth areas are Middle East/Israel stories (Joel C. Rosenberg) and meaningful contemporary romance (Denise Hunter, Rachel Hauck, Susan May Warren and Lisa Wingate). A small category that is growing in interest is fantasy.

In our increasingly connected world, customers also want to know what others are buying and what they think of the books. A display of what the top sellers are in fiction can be a big help to less sophisticated readers who are looking for a safe bet, a book that many others have found to be a good read. For key titles, you can also help this customer by locating informative reviews, printing them and putting them on the shelves in shelf-talker form. Customers are often afraid of wasting money on a book they won’t like, so giving them assurance that others have enjoyed the book will create the confidence to buy. Of course, personal recommendations on what staff members have read or heard from customers is very helpful as well.

Another important customer is the bargain buyer. This can be a shopper who is just looking for a good price on the newest book and some confirmation that they are getting a good deal even at a small independent store or the customer who isn’t going to pay more than $5 for a book no matter what. At this point, it is clever to create “entry points” where an older book by an author is offered at a value price to create an inexpensive way to sample an author’s writing. Maybe high-volume print buyers go into the e-book world to download free or inexpensive books to sample new writers, and this function can be duplicated in physical stores with bargain purchases, whether they are publisher-sponsored $5 specials or books that were publisher returns or overstocks. It can be a smart strategy to offer these books alongside a new release from the same author. The avid reader already has the bargain book, so you don’t lose the sale to them on the new title, but you create an entry point for readers who are intrigued but might not want to take a chance on a full-price book from an author they don’t know.

We don’t serve just one customer with one set of needs. We serve sophisticated high-volume buyers; nervous occasional buyers who need a lot of help; buyers who want to connect with the employees and the store; and buyers who need a significant price incentive to purchase. To be effective, we need to have an approach that meets the needs of each of these groups. If a store just puts books on the shelves and hopes someone buys them, they’re not giving a consumer a compelling reason to buy from them and will find their customers drifting off to big box stores or to the Internet to make their purchases. The Christian retail store has to add value to the transaction in order to be a player. Too many stores have not thought through how they can make a compelling competitive statement with what they are offering to their customers in the shopping experience.

Can the Christian bookstore compete in today’s retail landscape? Absolutely! The store owner that thinks through, from the shopper’s perspective, what makes shoppers want to come to your store and helps them locate the right items for their needs will win a loyal customer base. Rather than just thinking about assortment or price, the store that focuses on its relationship with the customer and the in-store experience will find that they have fresh, compelling reasons for the consumer to shop at their store rather than with the competition.

Steve Oates has been vice president of marketing for 15 years at Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

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