There's no denying that we are living in the age of the media blockbuster. A seemingly insatiable appetite for instant entertainment gratification among pop culture consumers has wrought the demand for big-out-of-the-gate TV shows, movies, CDs and, yes, books. For many years now, adult trade publishers have run with this formula, setting specific release or publication dates for their products/titles. Now it's the children's publishers' turn. Credit a certain boy wizard, or even Disney's The Lion King, but heavily marketed blockbusters for kids have come into their own.
"There are definitely more blockbuster children's books being published now," said Suzanne Murphy, v-p and director of marketing at Simon & Schuster Children's Books. "They're being published like adult books, where all the media surrounding some of the biggest books hits at once and turns their release into a publishing event." To that end, the children's book industry is looking at no fewer than 10 fall books with one-day laydowns.
At Scholastic, a house that knows a little something about laydowns in the wake of the last two Harry Potter titles, Michael Jacobs, senior v-p of trade, noted, "You do a laydown to try to get a book selling as soon as possible, in the biggest way you can. You want to build anticipation and establish a great sales pattern out of the gate." Josh Marwell, senior v-p of sales at HarperCollins, concurred. "We want to make sure a book is on sale everywhere at the same time, to take advantage of publicity and demand," he said.
Like many of his colleagues, Andrew Smith, v-p of sales for Candlewick Press, believes that the publishing industry is catching up to other industries when it comes to assigning strict on-sale dates. "Other industries have done so much marketing—of DVDs, video games and CDs—with street dates that consumers are more and more familiar with going into stores on a certain day to buy something," he said. "It makes sense when you have something that you think will create great demand to give people a date when to look for it."
Children's publishers agree that well-planned marketing and publicity campaigns are essential to achieving maximal bang-for-the-buck exposure, of which laydowns are a part. "We felt there was so much anticipation for Kate DiCamillo's new book, and she had such a loyal following, that coming up with a great campaign and building toward an on-sale date was important for us," said Smith.
Such calculated pre-release groundwork has paid off in the recent past, resulting in books like Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code by Eoin Colfer and The Carnivorous Carnival by Lemony Snicket racking up strong sales and hitting national bestseller lists in their first week of release. This focus helps the publicity and marketing teams get all their ducks in a row. Timing, of course, is critical. "We know that media will hit at the same time and that publications will be jockeying for position to get the author," said Murphy at S&S. "It's a good way of getting an author to commit to specific times. When you have someone like Lynne Cheney [A Is for Abigail, on sale September 16], with an extremely busy schedule, you need to tell them about all these things far in advance."
Jacobs has a similar view, mentioning the critical mass that happens when the elements of a campaign dovetail. "The advantages of a laydown are that you can clearly time all the marketing, advertising, publicity and promotion, especially pre-publication signage and the like, to a specific date and thus create excitement and, hopefully, in-store traffic."
Jill Bailey, children's buyer for BookPeople in Austin, Tex., observed, "The bigger a series or an author gets, the bigger the promotion gets from the publisher. When there's a big countdown display, kids really notice that." But Wendi Gratz, children's buyer for the Joseph-Beth stores, isn't so sure that the excitement is always achieved, saying, "I don't think consumers really notice laydown dates. Except for Harry Potter, I can't think of any other time when people came in and lined up for a book on a certain date. Our customers know to check our new book table and if something has come in it will be there."
For Hyperion, street-date buzz for one of its titles will reach beyond U.S. borders. "We are doing a laydown for The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud, primarily because it's a simultaneous worldwide release," said Lynn Waggoner, director of sales and marketing for Disney Publishing. Similarly, The English Roses, a picture book by Madonna and an as-yet-unidentified illustrator (rumors have swirled that it's designer and Beatle offspring Stella McCartney) will publish simultaneously in more than 100 countries on September 15.
Publishers must also decide whether pre-publication reviews will have a role in the buzz building. Famously, the two most recent Harry Potter installments were embargoed, so reviewers had to wait along with everyone else for their release. (Also famously, some leaks do occur when books are embargoed, as they did with the Harry titles and adult works like Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton.)
In general, publishers often request that consumer publications not run reviews prior to the on-sale date, but pre-publication trade journals (such as PW) are sometimes permitted to print reviews a bit earlier. An exception for this fall is The English Roses, which is a secretive project all around and has not even been seen by booksellers who have ordered the title.
Appearing to fall between the lines is The Slippery Slope, latest in the Series of Unfortunate Events series, due out on September 23. Amy Burton, publicity director at HarperCollins Children's Books, noted, "We did not officially embargo the book, but we did not produce any galleys."
Another positive aspect of the laydown process that publishers unanimously agree on is that a street date creates a level playing field at the retail level. "It's a big plus that no retailer has the book prior to another. It's very fair to the independents, the chains, the online retailers," said Waggoner. "The fact that all our accounts will have the book on sale all at once gives us lots of exposure all at once," Murphy added. Smith pointed out that the pre-publication build-up period before a laydown allows more retailers to use a "reserve-your-copy-now" strategy, which many Candlewick accounts have found to be successful.
Bailey at BookPeople applauds this strategy and agrees that it helps level the selling field. "For the bigger titles, I like laydown dates," she said. "It keeps me aware. I want to know exactly when a book is going to arrive, especially if it's going to have publicity attached to it. Without a specific date, another store in town could have the book on sale 10 days before me and I'd miss out. I don't want key titles to just come sneaking in the door."
How Do They Do That?
As a laydown suggests synchronicity on many fronts, there are some complex logistical hurdles to pulling it off without any glitches. Fortunately, adult trade publishers (and Harry Potter) have helped pave the way for things running smoothly.
First of all, publishers must consider the sheer number of books in play. "Feeding books into the pipeline involves many logistical and operational issues," said Marwell. "You need to publish a certain quantity to make it work." Waggoner mentioned a first printing of at least a few hundred thousand copies as a rough guideline. "That's a lot of inventory to get out all at once," she said. "It requires a lot more coordination on the part of the warehouses."
And once the books are on the move, it's up to retailers to make sure they stay under wraps until the appointed date. Most publishers have met with great cooperation at this stage, but then, legal agreements between publisher and retailer are usually part of the process. "We get booksellers, retailers and wholesalers to sign an on-sale agreement that asks them to comply with our street date and help us all achieve a level sales playing field and mutual buzz and benefit," said Jacobs.
Marwell at Penguin explained, "By now, it's a pretty standard procedure that's been established with adult books. We time the shipping so that the books arrive everywhere at the same time. The boxes are marked with a message indicating they are not to be opened until the on-sale date. It seems to work pretty well."
Though this system has its fans, Gratz of Joseph-Beth isn't one of them. She referred to some of the challenges that do arise: "I sign a blanket statement to abide by the publisher's rules for a laydown, but we receive most of our books from Ingram, and titles with laydowns are not separated out or shipped separately to us. It makes things much more difficult for those booksellers who are receiving the books. It's just one more thing they have to watch for."
Gratz added that some publishers are more explicit than others regarding the definitions of laydowns, street dates and strict on-sale dates, except for a very few of the biggest titles. "They [the dates] can be terribly confusing to booksellers," she noted. "It's often not clear if it's a strict street date on some of the books. Just let me put the books out and sell them when they come in, you know?"
Assuming that this fall's street dates do indeed work to good effect, are children's books laydowns here to stay? Most publishers believe so, though all we spoke to for this article indicated that strict on-sale dates will be reserved for those few titles that meet certain criteria. "We decide on a case-by-case basis," said Murphy of S&S. "Once you start hearing about a book from editorial it's easy to identify when something should be a laydown; you just kind of know."
For Marwell, it's "a mixture of factors—the author, the publicity possibilities." Jacobs at Scholastic speculated, "I think that we'll only look to do street dates for those books (truly major releases with significant advance order numbers) that justify the time, effort and expense." But Jacobs also noted his support for the industry making a shift to "a set day of the week street date so that consumers could always know what might be coming (à la film, DVD and music releases) and be able to anticipate their purchases and our marketing."
