Museum Hoots
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (MAY 2004)
The
book business, like any other, is in a perpetual search
for new retail outlets, and nowadays just about everyone
explores so-called specialty or non-traditional outlets.
The Museum Store Association show (this year
in Portland, Ore.) used to be a yearly Mecca for trade
and academic art and illustrated book publishers. This
particular sales channel has experienced exponential
growth (in all categories, including books) and has
gone so mainstream, that art publishing exhibitors have
declined as they now have reps regularly calling on
them. You won’t find DAP, who represents MOMA
and MFA, nor Abrams, nor Yale,
who represents the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art.
This has opened up a big niche for the likes of Barron’s,
where Sales Director Alex Holtz says they do
great business with their children’s educational titles.
Although, Sales Rep Mike Campbell says it’s really
not the best place to take orders unless you’re a tightly
focused publisher of subjects like the Civil War, Railroads,
etc. Others disagree, at least on the order taking.
Single-topic museums work hard to ferret like publishers
at the event — and place an order too. Workman’s
Heather Carroll says the MSA meeting is one of
publishing’s “best kept secrets.” Exhibiting for the
third year, she sells to a broad range of museums, most
of whom order the hugely successful Fandex series. They
write substantial orders here — almost as many as at
Toy Fair, she asserts. The publishers’ presence,
with samples, allows buyers to “stretch their mission”
and pick up titles that they’d skip in a catalogue.
And buyers “share their secrets,” which results in increased
sales across the board. Scholastic’s Meaghan
Hilton has pretty much the same experience. They
have been exhibiting at MSA for over 10 years and sales
are on the increase — including orders written in situ.
Its series such as Dear America, Scholastic’s Q&A
and The Magic School Bus titles, do best, ranging across
all ages.
The trade show, with its selling and merchandising seminars,
usually surpasses the retail expo. However, the Met’s
Valerie Troyansky thinks that interest in the
panels has been waning in recent years, as indicated
by the fact that smaller museums, such as the Dayton
Museum of Art and the Cincinnati Museum Centre,
did not send store reps. Sean Halpert, senior
book buyer for Boston’s MFA, hasn’t attend since
the museum gave up its direct mail catalogue, despite
declaring that museum stores have a huge opportunity
to fill the gap left by traditional book stores that
rarely carry big-ticket art books anymore. Boston’s
MFA has a huge market for cutting-edge and less mainstream
art and photography titles, with visitors and students
attending the multiple art schools nearby. They are
“the very model for a museum bookstore,” asserts DAP
President Sharon Gallagher.
While the for-profit book trade has figured out how
to lure some money from museums, the Museum Publishers
Association is still grappling with their own non-profit,
educational-but-somehow-we-have-to-carry-our-own-weight
conundrum. This year’s MPA biennial seminar was also
on the West Coast, in Pasadena, Calif., and although
the subjects were practical (Digital Imaging, Legal
Issues, Tapping Your Collections, Ephemera Development),
carrying one’s own publishing weight is still a major
roadblock. DAP’s Gallagher, who speaks regularly here
on the art of the trade sale, gave tips for getting
the books into commercial retail outlets, while urging
the publishing and retail sides to act together to each
other’s mutual benefit. The fact that they are frequently
at odds with each other — not only do stores refuse
to represent their own museum’s titles, they won’t represent
titles from competing museums — further undermines both
sides’ struggle to survive.
Christopher
Hudson, Publishing Director of The Getty,
says museums are torn by their noble mission, the “numbed
down” (to quote Martin Amis) visitors who have
no time for contemplation and are only seeking a cheap
souvenir, and the financial expectations of their management,
who in this rarefied non-profit world still expect retail
to be profitable. And based on recent research, there
appears to be no organizational model or pattern — successful
or otherwise — for a museum store and its publishing
arm to follow.
Perhaps the most important development for museum publishers
came to light during the Digital Imaging and Print on
Demand seminars. The nature of their work may change
drastically in the near future, as POD technology quickly
becomes available, and the quality and cost make it
feasible. Also of high concern are the ensuing copyright
issues, which were covered in the legal session. Increasingly
stringent requirements to gain clearance for reproducing
works of art (previously treated rather cavalierly by
non-profit institutions) should make museum publishers
think once, twice or more before proceeding with certain
projects.
But, the last word on museum sales come from Workman’s
Carroll. As an example of the serendipitous nature of
the market, her reveals her hottest title: Owl Puke.
Don’t ask.
©2004
Publishing Trends
