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P try Book Club Launched
Karen Angel -- 6/15/98
The Academy of American P ts, a nonprofit group dedicated to promoting contemporary p try, will launch a P try Book Club this summer. Building on the momentum created during the first three annual National P try Months, the club will seek to expand the audience for p try and increase p try-book sales, according to Tom Bevan, the Academy's director of marketing and promotion.
"We had heard that if it could be profitable, it would have been done," Bevan noted, "but because we're nonprofit, the profits don't have to be monetary. If the public and the p try field profit, that's good enough."

But Bevan added that he and club marketing consultant Keith Goldsmith, also direct-marketing manager for the Library of America's Continuity Club, fully expect the club to also be financially profitable. It was created with a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and matching funds from publishers and from the Academy's members. A direct mailing will be sent to 50,000 potential subscribers in mid-July, offering them a collection called The Hand of the P t (Rizzoli, cloth, $40), based on a New York Public Library exhibit of photos of p ts and their work, at a premium of $5.95. The Club will initially release a catalogue with 50 titles in August or September. As its subscriber base grows, it will increase the number of catalogues to up to six a year.

In addition to announcing the new club, Bevan responded to some of the doubts about National P try Month's efficacy voiced at a recent P ts House publishing panel. The logical conclusion is that the high level of publicity NPM has achieved would lead to higher p try sales, Bevan said: "If publicity didn't lead to sales, publishers wouldn't have publicity departments." And as a result of the heightened coverage, more publishers are strategizing around the month and publishing into it, Bevan added.
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