Got Propaganda?
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (AUGUST 2002)
While
much of the literary world mopes about sluggish trade
book sales and a flat-lined readership, an industry
group in Holland has jettisoned their melancholy and
mounted a frontal assault on blasé book buying. Aggressively
luring readers and making bestsellers in the bargain,
this Dutch treat just might be a model for other nations
in need of a literacy wake-up call.
Affectionately known as the Collective Propaganda
for the Dutch Book (CPNB), and armed with an array
of book events and publicity-sparking pitches, the Amsterdam-based
group has helped hike sales of Dutch literature more
than 40% over the last decade, to around $400 million
— with the number of copies sold marching upward as
well. That’s not bad for a nation of 16 million people.
And it’s due in part to CPNB’s approach to riveting
Holland’s attention on books. “The program is successful
because there is no competition with other diversions,”
CPNB Director Henk Kraima says about his eyeball-grabbing
events. “It is the best way to fight the music and film
industries.”
On the front lines of Kraima’s strategic campaign is
a 10-day blowout called Book Week. Held every March,
Book Week is chockablock with media magnets such as
the Book Ball, a gala affair packed with authors, publishers,
booksellers, and assorted debutantes that has become
one of the nation’s best-known annual events. One year,
sponsors were put out because they were only able to
cram eight TV camera crews into the bash. (“The arrival
of the authors has turned into an event comparable with
the entry of gladiators into an arena,” according to
Kraima, who is clearly tickled with the spectacle.)
But Book Week’s stealth ingredient is a short novel
commissioned from major authors such as Salman Rushdie,
Cees Noteboom, and Anna Enquist. Each
year a new novel, running to about 100 pages, is offered
exclusively as a free gift to customers who spend at
least €11.11 — around $11 — on a general book. In recent
years print runs for these “gift books” have soared
to 750,000 copies, each one of them guaranteeing the
sale of a regular trade book — and ensuring that 750,000
customers have come through booksellers’ doors. (Retailers
place orders for the gift book, which is sold to them
at a nominal cost, and then the print run is determined.)
Gift book authors dominate the nation’s bestseller list,
and the Dutch boost can turn into major play elsewhere.
Noteboom’s 1992 short novel The Following Story,
for example, first appeared as a gift book and was subsequently
translated into more than 15 languages, hitting the
top ten in Germany. Moreover, each year highlights a
different category or theme (this year’s was “Love in
Literature,” while others have been “Latin America,”
“Family Ties,” and “The Classical Age”), which helps
publishers brush off their backlists and roll out special
reprints or promotional campaigns.
Beyond Book Week, other CPNB programs target children’s
books, travel writing, and the teen market (see www.cpnb.nl
for more details). Then there’s Thriller Month, every
June, for which CPNB has published a promotional newspaper
with a print run of over a million copies, funded by
ads from publishers. As with Book Week, a special short
story is commissioned from name authors (Stephen
King, Elizabeth George, and Robin Cook
have all offered their wares) and given away with
a purchase. Thrillers now account for about 18% of Dutch
trade book sales.
Propaganda doesn’t come for free, of course, as the
architects of the AAP’s consumer campaign, Get
Caught Reading, are well aware. With a staff of
20, the CPNB collects a yearly contribution of about
$370,000 each from booksellers, publishers, and libraries.
(Each of these three groups also selects three of the
nine CPNB board members.) On top of that, revenues from
the sale of promotional materials and ads in CPNB publications
rack up another $5 million each year — each campaign
must generate its own revenue via point-of-sale materials
— supporting an annual operating budget of up to $6
million. With this cash in hand, and a gladiatorial
swagger or two, the group has apparently pushed reading
into the heady upper precincts of Dutch glitterati.
“Other branches of industry,” as the CPNB boasts, “look
on the book trade with envy.”
©2002
Publishing Trends
