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.
