Caron’s main work at Waterstones is in anticipating and
recognising trends in which books are going to “fly off the shelves”.
There are few hard rules and last year’s best sellers are
not necessarily going to repeat at Christmas this year.
Rather than presenting from a prepared script, Caron felt
that a better approach would be to respond to the Erskine Writers Group’s
questions.
As well as crime and romance fiction, books on cooking,
biographies of the famous and local interest books, all continue to be popular.
There is declining demand for Westerns, whilst Sci Fi is ever
more popular partly due to films and TV of that genre.
Books by known successful authors
are usually a safe bet, but there are often books which “appear out of
nowhere.” The subject matter of these and author may not be obvious winners,
but the public decide to buy them. The Robin biography and The Darkest Dawn: the story of the Iolaire tragedy,
were quoted as examples.
Young adults continue to enjoy David Walliams’ books, and
variations of the ‘Broons’ are still popular.
In deciding which books to stock, Caron is guided initially
by Head Office and by local managers, but also is able to provide input into
which books can be successful stocked in local branches. For instance Edinburgh and Glasgow
sales may not run parallel. Waterstones have to be agile in responding to short
term phenomena, particularly at Christmas time.
We learnt that eBooks have stopped increasing their share of
the book market and may be in slight decline. Audio books continue to be
popular, partly because they taken over a lot of the previous demand for large
print books.
Caron recommended that potential authors obtain advice from
Indie Authors groups and should take a realistic attitude in the financial and
commercial aspects of publishing. When an author’s book is published, he or she
must be prepared to engage in the promotional aspects. They must push their
publisher to do more and also push themselves to do more, for instance, in
terms of public readings and advance information sheets. They must get involved
in the active use of social media.
The Group appreciated Caron’s marathon effort in responding
to a diverse stream of questions.
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Next week:- Bring modernised characters and setting of any Christmas Carol or Song.
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