Books on Film

When my wife’s Bibliophile book business started its YouTube video reviews some two years ago, we all questioned whether the effort would be worth the reward. Some 500 videos later, we know the answer and like its library of over 100K unique and individual book reviews, the effort was worth the reward.

Imagine being show an expensive art book by the person who bought the stock, not on ‘sale or return’, but firm and hearing them enthuse about what turned their head. The bonus is that you don’t get a head shot of a person, but get to see inside the book at the pages and the look and feel of the book itself. The real bonus comes with the price!

Many of the 3,500 books Bibliophile stocks are out of print, remaindered, or are on offer at a great price, but the information about them elsewhere is often poor, hard to find and that is probably why Bibliophile can offer them. Bibliophile unlock these gems and ensure their customers can see both inside the covers and understands their value.

So why do we still have the dry jacket and blurb from publishers? Why is the poor source of information, duly copied and offered on to consumers by many online retailers today? In some genres it may work but in many it’s just not good enough today and we have to find new ways to show off the book, describe it and sell it. It is about engagement with customers not throwing scraps over the wall and crossing one’s fingers.

Today music is being increasingly discovered, sampled and enjoyed via YouTube and in due course is becoming two dimensional. So why do we still have the same dour book promotion?

Some publishers are spending more to create promotional videos and glossy advertising of their ‘best sellers’, but surely in the age of the YouTube and the DIY video, it makes more sense to do it for all titles and create ‘more for less’ than merely pamper and spend on the few that would be hits anyway.

Learning From The Best POP-UP Bookshop Experience

Merely handing over the business to the digitally enlightened is not the answer, just as pretending digital will not happen was not the answer. We spend far too much time trying to disintermediate and disrupt and maybe not enough realising time that the present can have a place in the future.

Having spent a week last month, preparing and manning the Bibliophile stand at the Queen’s Coronation Festival at Buckingham Palace, I was encouraged by the power of the physical book. There are only two booksellers with a perstigious Royal Warrant and being the only one selected to be on show in the expansive palace gardens, was a great honour for my wife’s 30 year old business Bibliophile.

The demographic that flooded in over the four days was perfect, forty plus, AB and heavy readers. Many of the 60,000 attendees were drawn to the Bibliophile stand by their love of books, the draw offer for the Taschen wonderful ‘Majesty’ tome, the author signings from Sandi Toksvig and Max Arthur and of course the bargain prices!

Many stated that they had Kindles and Tablets, but that although they may read fiction on them, they still preferred physical books. It’s hard to envisage digital ebooks, as we know them today, replacing many of the works we had on offer. From high end art and architecture to history, war and military and children’s pop up books, the physical book still remains today. It is also hard to see how digital can replace the joy that so many had in meeting Sandi and Max and the reciprocal joy they had in engaging with their fans.

There was Freddie, who as a 9 year old, engaged instantly with the DC Comics and Beano tomes on offer. During the concert break he even came back with his parents to talk to our comic and film expert, Steve, on the Green Lantern and other heroes.

There was Marion who was not content with raiding the shelves once and came back for seconds. She said that it was easy to spent hundreds of pounds on books at 50% off and with free delivery. When she came back again for a third time, she had to admit she was a book addict and long may we continue to feed that lovely and rewarding habit.

Learning that physical and digital can complement each other and that the often neglected short form can be rejuvenated in the digital age, is what books are about. We have to rebalance the market, the organisations and relationships with it, the focus of certain genres, the way we do business but in doing so we must listen and move with the marketplace itself.

Bibliophile Celebrates its 300th

At a time when many predict the death of the physical book and the bookshop and even the public library is under constant threat of closure, Bibliophile Books continues to prosper and go about its business as the UK booklover’s greatest secret. In 2011 it was granted a Royal Warrant by the Duke of Edinburgh in recognition of its quality, service, and excellence. It has been selling to the palace for some 20 years. This year on March 25th, some 34 years after it published its first mail order catalogue, it will achieve a significant milestone and celebrate the publication of its 300th catalogue.

In today’s crazy discount wars Bibliophile is about ‘everyday low pricing’ and reader value. Most titles including well-received biographies are under a fiver, making reading an affordable adventure and a lifeline service to the disabled and housebound and those who miss browsing in their local bookshop which may have closed down in recent years. However, certain titles are rare and collectable and will never be printed again like the magnificent Splendours of Iran (slipcased) published £350 at £200 and JOHN JAMES AUDUBON PORTFOLIO $1400 now £275 containing 48 loose leaf prints and book in giant slipcase.

Today Bibliophile is not just a mail order catalogue. It has just launched its second generation website, has digital newsletters, integrated email communications with customers, an active presence on Facebook, Twitter, Kindle and has created over 200 YouTube unique video book reviews which have attracted over 70,000 hits and really do show what what the book looks like inside the jacket!. They have even published books and now ebooks and plan much more.

Over half a million Bibliophile catalogues a year are distributed to tens of thousands of members all over the UK and as far away as New Zealand. Cheap and cheerful, the founders chose a newsprint tabloid format, pithy quotes humorous anecdotes and succinct in house book reviews to tempt book addicts worldwide to sample the best selection culled from publisher's front and backlists, remainder dealers, plus overstocks from a variety of sources.

Each 40 page catalogue is printed on environmentally sourced 100% recycled paper and
contains some 300 brand new books and over 1,000 titles. Every book review is written in house, reflects the Bibliophile’s unique style and is aimed at reflecting why Bibliophile selected each book and is selling it. The books cover some 30 subject categories and were published in the UK, US and Canada and include war, history, biographies, art, crime, Britain, crafts, literature, fiction, children’s, CDs etc.

300 catalogues has enabled Bibliophile to built a unique digital archive of over 60,000 book reviews which are being added to at the rate of some 3,500 a year. As vast majority of titles are no longer in-print, the Bibliophile review may be now be the only independent blurb available and of course Bibliophile knows the sales of every one.

Bibliophile is very conscious of the environment and this was a further factor in it being granted a Royal Warrant. It minimises waste by ensuring that the fewest possible catalogues are printed the mailing list is routinely pruned and controlled to ensure non-buyers, deceased and gone away addresses are not mailed. The catalogues are then despatched on a 4-7 day service in bulk, never priority as this has an inherent additional environmental impact.

Bibliophile isn't the model for the independent bookshop but does three things very well and which all can learn from; it does what it says on the door 'sells books', it knows its customers and it was built on 'everyday low pricing'.

Visit the web site Bibliophilebooks.com
View the latest catalogue:
PDF
Interactive
Visit their YourTube channel Bibliophilebooks
Previous catalogues

YouTube Quality To Improve With Green Parrot

We found today’s news that Google has bought Irish company Green Parrot Pictures with the objective to improve the quality of the video footage that is uploaded to YouTube very timely and interesting. Youtube has redefined video and film and also enabled everyone to be a potential cameraman, director, news reporter and social observer.

The Dublin-based Green Parrot Pictures specialises in improving image processing to increase sharpness, reducing camera shake and graininess and improving bandwidth efficiency, all while your video is being uploaded to the site. The technology has already been used by several Hollywood film studios and even improved movies such as X-Men and Spiderman.



This last weekend we spent some time filming the first dozen Bibliophile Book Reviews which when edited were posted on YouTube. The intention is to capture Annie’s book buying and editing enthusiasm to promote some of the 300 new titles Bibliophile lists each month. Bibliophile has some 50K unique copyrighted blurbs, so we thought we should capture some video blubs and now Google are potentially make them even better!

to see more bibliophile book review videos

Bibliophile Granted Royal Warrant

Booksellers are often the unsung heroes of the book trade. They are the ones that engage with the consumer, entice them to buy and effectively provide the shop window to sell the books. Today all booksellers face challenging times and therefore it’s good when they get their recognition.

We are very proud that a Royal Warrant of Appointment has been granted to Annie Quigley of Bibliophile Limited into the place and quality of Booksellers to H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh, for whom they have been supplying books for over 20 years. A royal warrant is often referred to as a peerage for the trade and they are not given away freely but have to be earned by years of providing service and quality to the royal household and the purse of the Queen, Duke of Edinburgh or Prince Charles.

Bibliophile now joins the elite group of some 800 other warrant owners and only two other booksellers Hatchards of Piccadilly and G Heywood Hill. It is somewhat fitting that we now have a High Street book retailer, a specialist book dealer and a mail order book club and internet bargain book retailer. This clearly shows that the royal household like many other is eclectic in its taste and needs when it comes to books.

In 1992 on the death of her mentor and Bibliophile owner Bill Smith, Annie was given the unique opportunity to buy the highly acclaimed mail order book club. Some 19 years later she has developed the business into the largest independent book club in the UK with over 80,000 active members who buy from the mail-order catalogue and Internet www.bibliophilebooks.com.

The Bibliophile mail order catalogue is a newspaper, full of personalised book reviews and published 10 times a year. Each month, her team selects, review and introduce over 350 new titles to add to the 3500 stocked inventory. Bibliophile despatch over 3.5 million books a year from their 5 miles of books.

Annie is not only the owner of Bibliophile, but also the buyer, editor and bookseller. Her passion for books came from her parents, Aileen Armitage and Deric Longden, who are both writers. Due to her mother Aileen’s blindness, at a young age Annie out of necessity learnt to proof read and edit. Aileen was voted Woman of the Year in 1988 for having written 34 novels although blind. Annie says: “I was born in a book!”

Annie has also brought public domain out of print titles back into print under the Bibliophile imprint for Print on Demand and has just published Deric Longdens’ Lost for Words and Diana’s Story as Bibliophile’s first ebook publications with many more being planned in the near future.

Read her book review blog at anniesbookreviewsforbibliophiles or on facebook

This Saturday, The Times will have a feature supplement ‘Raconteur’ on Royal Warrant holders and Bibliophile’s great achievement for booksellers.

Bibliophile Offers Thousands Of Collection Points

Sometimes something so simple is created one wonders why it hadn’t happened before.

Today a 30 year old UK mail order and online bookseller/retailer BibliophileBooks.com has joined forces with the recently launched Collect+ to announce a new service to their tens of thousands of their internet customers.

Delivery options can be a deal-breaker for online retailers. Free delivery offers are quite common, yet until now, none offer delivery to specified convenient collection points. This new service will mean no more waiting in all day for that parcel to arrive, or that slip that says you weren’t in and can you come and collect that parcel of books. The new service offers deliver of parcels to local shops and could be a compelling prospect for customers who may have work commitments, cannot accept deliveries at the workplace, live in multi-occupancy buildings or find it risky to leave a parcel with a neighbour or outside their home.

Now parcels can be delivered to any one of thousands of local convenience stores which offer the Collect+ service and pick them up at a time that suits them.

Customers will be able to merely enter their postcode online to find their local Collect+ store and have up to 10 days from the date the parcel arrives at the Collect+ location to pick it up. Stores are open at least 9 hours a day 7 days a week. Customers who provide a mobile phone number or email address when placing their order and will be advised by text or email when the parcel has reached the local store they have nominated for collection. The parcel will be delivered to the store through Yodel (trading name for Home Delivery Network Limited) with whom Bibliophile have had an 8 year relationship.

The new Collect+ joint venture between Yodel and PayPoint PLCgives access to 3,500 selected outlets from the UK PayPoint network to ensure that over 90% of the UK population are within 2 miles of a participating store in urban areas. In terms of Bibliophile’s environmental policy, they celebrate that this service will result in far fewer wasted delivery journeys to their tens of thousands of customers throughout the UK.

Bookselling in the Digital Age: Part 1

This is the first excerpt of the presentation given to the Swanwick Writers Summer School, 11th August,2009. By my wife Annie Quigley, owner of Biblophile Books. ‘Bookselling In A Digital Age.’

…One friend of mine is the professional sci fi writer, speaker and futurologist Ray Hammond.Ray is hired by large corporations to predict technological advances and is now a very well paid and respected consultant. He says: “A book in print is dead. It has to be alive electronically, or it’s dead.”

Ray may talk about the future but lives in the present. He said to me last week at a signing of his books at Bibliophile, “I am thrilled Bibliophile is recycling two of my books and having me here to sign them today. In this way it brings pleasure to readers who may otherwise not find them or could afford them at full price. “

These thoughts demonstrate today’s dilemma for writers. We are at a time of change and the reality is that both digital and physical books will live side by side for many years. Remember, books have to be alive electronically, or they’re dead.

How much will a digital book cost?

Some publishers predict the same price as a paperback. If like me you have an iPhone and use Ereader software like Stanza, you expect to pay a very small sum if anything for an E book.

Ray Hammond makes a living out of predicting future technologies and he say that he expects his books in digital form will be made available for free. In this case, how then are we all make money if it’s free? What Ray is describing is the conflict between extreme views but lets get real, change will not be overnight. I believe the glass is half full, not half empty, and that there are many opportunities for authors in today’s digital world and perhaps being less reliant on publishers is one of those realities.


Self publishing will be huge – and I don’t mean vanity publishing. You will need an understanding of copyright and marketing.

Will the digital revolution impact bookselling? - yes
.
I spoke at an International booksellers conference in South Africa three years ago on this topic and re reading that speech I had said: “I want to sell e-books and audio downloads in the future and therefore have to look for reliable suppliers and select titles at the right price. As soon as I can, I will offer them for sale them alongside physical books.” As I said, that was three years ago and in the meantime, publishers have been slow to announce and commit to a digital publishing programme, particularly in this recession.

We have to recognise digitisation is only just evolving. America’s largest booksellers Barnes & Noble is only just setting up digital store; Waterstones set up their ebook website 12 months ago and Borders UK and Blackwells have only just gone live on ebooks. Wholesaler Gardners can now supply any bookseller with some 100000 new ebooks, so any bookshop can join this scheme.

So we are the start of a journey and there are many conflicts to resolve. The one thing we can be certain of is that the future of bookselling will be quite different from today and I want to be part of it. Like myself, many other booksellers don’t want to lie down and give away our traditional hand selling market to the likes of Amazon, Google, Apple or even Tesco’s, Sainsbury’s and Asda. We want to sell physical and digital – we want to sell books.

Supermarkets today claim 20% of UK book sales, and Amazon another 20%. This was unheard of just 5 years ago. If another 40% of titles are deep discounted by publishers, how are authors going to make money? What percentage is left after the publishers’ costs for you to take as a slice of the pie? You may sell thousands of copies of books into a supermarket, but at what cost?

Here is a little of my life in bookselling.

Publishers send me reps to showcase their titles and in truth, for every 100 books I am shown, I select just one. The criteria I use varies, but I have to make sure its right for my members, be confident I can market it and sell it. I could easily be buying 100 different titles at a time and a minimum of 100 copies of each and if I do my job well, we can oversell and rush back for more stocks. After 25 years of bookselling, I cannot claim to know each of our 100,000 members but they certainly know me and share a discerning taste in literature on which they can rely.

My oldest customer Mr Martin Stern, asked his daughters to arrange to bring him to visit Bibliophile for his special 90th birthday treat. Here we are pouring over his favourite S J Perelman tome!

If I can be brutal here, I recognise that some books fail because the publisher’s blurb was poor or the jacket didn’t represent or sell the content. I endeavour to ensure that every Bibliophile review sells the book. Bookselling is certainly not just down to price!

I am often asked two questions, “What makes a book sell and what are your bestsellers”?

In brief, it is beautifully made art books, conspiracy theories, crime fiction and Signed books which I love to sell and collect, so I regularly organise author visits. By genre, it is predominantly non-fiction - art, history, religion, war, humour and erotica. Not necessarily in that order!

Bibliophile has a vast reservoir of independent book reviews going back 30 years for something like 60,000 titles. With valuable sales figures for each, we can consider re publishing from this rich backlist and knowledge...