Choose Your Book Battles: Strategies for...

Choose Your Book Battles

Strategies for Independent Bookstores

Fight Your Book War with Perfect Economy

Part 10 of the 36-part “Book Wars” series of articles

by David A. Rozansky, Publisher, Flying Pen Press

May 15, 2009

(Note: This is the 10th article in the “Book Wars” series of articles, a series of articles where the author interprets the strategies taught in The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene, and applies them to the business of the independent bookseller, in the arena of the difficult book trade. The first article in this series can be read at http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977657920.)

This series of articles discusses how war strategies can be applied to the book trade for the benefit of the independent bookseller. In previous articles, I have discussed the first set of strategies from Robert Greene’s The 33 Strategies of War. That set of strategies was focused on organizational and internal strategies. In this article, we look at the first of the defensive strategies in Greene’s book, that of choosing battles with perfect economy in mind.

Let’s face it, you can’t win every battle, nor should you try. Many a small business has been bankrupt by overreaching their abilities, or by fighting an uphill battle they cannot afford.

Consider the cost of any battle, any head-to-head marketing campaign. Most people who practice good marketing know they need to look at “return on investment” and other measures of efficiency and profitability.

But when such a campaign chances upon a battle with a competitor, the costs become ever more important. A battle with a competitor can have many hidden costs that are not normally considered in standard marketing analyses. There can be a loss of public goodwill, time can be exhausted easily, and personal stress is a real concern.

The clear advantages that large competitors have are in cash reserves and purchasing power. They can win a price war most all of the time. And this tends to be the battlefield where they like to wage their book wars. But there are other battlefields where the advantage is to the smaller, more maneuverable small business.

Consider the risk of losing against the cost of the battle. For instance, hanging a poster in a window may draw in a lot of customers for a particular title on the release date, drawing customers away from the competition. Or it may not. But the cost of the poster is generally negligible, and it can’t hurt to try.

On the other hand moving the store to a new location on the marginal chance that it could steal customers from the competition is an extreme gamble and should be avoided.

Had we another hand, we could say that if the move to a new storefront were absolutely assured of stealing business away from the competition, then it is a good bet, and should be recommended.

And so the odds of success and the resultant costs of the risk have to be part of the equation.

At times, the battle cannot be avoided. When the competition is stealing your customers, you have to react, no matter the costs or chances of success. In such cases, it is important to try to get the competition to fight on your own terms.

One example of this is the battle between Amazon and independent booksellers in New Yor. The independents joined together and charged that Amazon was wrongly avoiding New York sales taxes. This price war that Amazon started is now being fought in the courthouse. It is a brilliant move. The independent booksellers are getting New York to pay for this battle, and even if Amazon wins and can prove it has no obligation to collect New York sales taxes, Amazon will have spent considerable money defending itself. And if it loses, it is open to lawsuits all over the country, amounting to millions and millions of dollars. And the independent booksellers don’t have to pay any legal costs.

It is important not to get dragged into a never-ending fight with the competition, as the costs can spiral out of control.

And it is also important not to get seduced by big, glittery prizes. I experience this at trade shows all the time. My staff and authors think that we need to go all out to show ourselves at Book Expo America. I fell for it the first year, and in the end, spent thousands and never received a single order for our books. The reason was that we were a new, small press, in a battlefield of multi-national conglomerate publishing giants.

Had I taken the time to weigh the costs against the chances of success—rather than just the results if success were achieved—I would have saved a lot of money and been able to use that money in other marketing methods, and our company would be farther along than it is.

I now know better, and I choose our marketing methods accordingly. The prize was big, but reeling it in with my tiny fishing pole was obviously near impossible. However, by concentrating on developing our markets slowly and steadily, Flying Pen Press is growing, and more booksellers are sending in orders every day. I compete where my competition can’t afford to follow.

In competitive marketing, try to make the battle cheap for you and expensive for the competition. Your relationship with the community is often a big help here, as is your local government.

Don’t make the mistake of hoarding money, however. Being cheap is not being economical. If a particular battle is going to cost a lot, but you are likely to succeed and the rewards are great, it is an economical fight, and you should fight it.

If you find that you misjudged the costs, and you are embroiled in a battle that has ever-increasing costs without much hope for an early resolution, you should retreat from that campaign immediately and call it a loss. Look to a different marketing campaign, one that has little risk and greater reward.

This is just one article in David A. Rozansky’s column, Readers, Writers & Royalties, a blog column about the book trade, from writing and publishing, to selling and reading. This series of articles—“Book Wars”—is an interpretation of the strategies listed in Robert Greene’s The 33 Strategies of War, as they apply to the independent bookseller. As this series continues, Mr. Rozansky continues his discussion of defensive strategies with a look at the “Counterattack.”

Readers may find archived articles or subscribe to Readers, Writers & Royalties at www.ReadWriteRoyalty.Gather.com. Subscribe to all of Mr. Rozansky’s articles at www.FlyingPenPress.Gather.com.

David A. Rozansky is the publisher of Flying Pen Press. He has been in publishing since 1987, and has more than one million published words under his byline. Flying Pen Press is at http://www.FlyingPenPress.com. He is available for speaking on the subject of writing magazine articles, public relations, marketing and book-length material.

The book mentioned in this article is The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene (Penguin Books, 2007, ISBN 978-0-14-311278-5, trade ppb, $18.00).