Penguin Group USA is not depending only on its new premium, higher-priced paperbacks to boost mass market sales. Beginning this fall, Penguin's Berkley imprint will launch a Hot Shots promotion that will feature paperbacks at $2.99—$7 cheaper than the new premium editions. "We were looking for a way to spur the business, and we came up with this," said Ken Kaye, v-p and director of distribution sales whose team dreamed up the promotion. The program will feature short stories, 92—128 pages each, by Nora Roberts, J.D. Robb, Jayne Castle, Christine Feehan, Sherrilyn Kenyon and Maggie Shayne that have been culled from anthologies. Kaye hopes the low price will entice people to sample new authors, and is counting on customers buying more than one title at a time.
To encourage stores to carry the line, Penguin is packaging the books in floor displays to avoid taking up shelf space. Penguin will also do just one print run for the titles, in a bid to keep inventory down and limit returns. "We're going to print to order," Kaye said, speculating that the print run for each title will be in the mid-six figures. The Hot Shots promotion was originally planned for mass merchandisers and supermarkets, but has been expanded to include bookstore chains. Penguin will do a second promotion in early 2006, using previously published short stories by different authors, but if the $2.99 line becomes a permanent series, the company may publish original works.
The importance of mass market paperbacks to Penguin was illustrated in a recent presentation by CEO David Shanks at a Lehman Brothers conference. According to Shanks, mass market paperbacks represented 33% of the company's gross sales in 2004, making mass market Penguin's largest segment. Hardcovers generated 30% of gross sales in 2004, followed by 21% for trade paperback and 16% by the young readers segment. A Penguin spokesperson said the percentage for mass market falls when net sales are counted. And despite softness in the mass market segment in 2005, Penguin expects the category to once again generate the highest amount of gross dollars this year.
