The Scotiabank Giller shortlist was announced on Tuesday, and people are absolutely delighted by the number of independent presses represented on this list. But many are also worried. They worry that the independents won’t know how to react. Steven Beattie wrote a thoughtful piece on the plight of the shortlisted indie publisher just yesterday. It’s true. It can be difficult for publishers without much Giller experience to know exactly what to do, when to reprint and how much. BNC can help with that—as long as a print job can be scheduled in time.
Every publisher on this year’s the shortlist is a BNC SalesData subscriber—that’s right, even those little guys were smart cookies and signed up long ago—which means they’ve all got access to vital information that will inform their upcoming decisions. BookNet Canada works directly with the shortlist publishers using SalesData to quantify what is known as The Giller Effect.
A little juicy SalesData statistic: Over the past two years (2008 and 2009), we saw an average increase of over 600% in the sales of all shortlisted titles the week the shortlist announcement was made. How would you know that? Well, you’d know if did your SalesData research and read our reports. And you can get even more sophisticated in your research. Perhaps the independent publishers will want to look at only shortlisted titles published by independents or shortlisted first novels. It’s all in there.
And it’s available for booksellers, too. Publishers aren’t the only ones that need to make quick decisions when awards are announced. A store that contributes to SalesData can look up those same titles and see when they spiked and by how much. Better yet, if an independent bookstore is a BNC Prospector participant, it can partner with its peer-group stores in other parts of the province or country to see what worked and when and what’s happening now.
For those of us that don’t have a shortlisted title or won’t be professionally affected by The Giller Effect, well, we can still have fun, can’t we? I know all SalesData subscribers have been following “Go, Giller,Go!” segment in our enewsletter. If not, you’re missing out on all the award season fun! Sign up here. The next installment is coming out today.
