In this panel from Tech Forum 2017, panelists Léonicka Valcius, John Toews, and Tan light discuss how to effectively market and sell diverse book lists. This discussion goes beyond championing diverse books because it's the latest trend to acknowledging it as a business priority. They tackle how to identify the right tools and strategies to get diverse books into the hands of readers, while addressing the obstacles and assumptions that stand in the way of that goal.
(Scroll down for a transcript of the conversation.)
Transcript
Zalina: Welcome to the BookNet Canada podcast. I'm your host, Zalina Alvi. And this month, we're sharing one of the more popular panels we had at our recent Tech Forum conference in Toronto. As the largest tech-focused book publishing event in Canada, Tech Forum provides hundreds of industry professionals a chance to discuss new research, strategies, and advancements in the book industry, to help publishers and booksellers better reach their readers. In this panel, the focus was on how to effectively market and sell diverse book lists. Led by Léonicka Valcius, the founder of DiverseCanLit, and the chair of the Festival of Literary Diversity's board of directors, this discussion goes beyond championing diverse books because it's the latest trend, to acknowledging it as a business priority. Structured as an open brainstorming session, the following discussion tackles how to identify the right tools and strategies to get diverse books into the hands of readers, while addressing the obstacles and assumptions that stand in the way of that goal. Now, here's Léonicka, who will kick things off, and introduce her fellow panellists.
Léonicka: All right. So, I'm gonna go super fast, because we don't have a lot of time and there's so much to get through. We're going to try to solve all of publishing's problems in 45 minutes. Yeah. So, how it's gonna work is that this panel is about brainstorming and problem-solving. It's not about us having all the answers. It's about us, as a group, using our collective wisdom and experience to try to troubleshoot some of the problems we're facing while we're out there selling books, or even before then, when we're starting to market and think about how to place it in the context of the marketplace. So, I'm going to work from, and we are going to work from, two basic assumptions. One is that diversity and inclusion are important to the growth and development of our industry, and two is that all of us in this room can be part of that solution.
So, working from here, what we're going to do is I'm going to introduce my fellow panellists, and then ask them some questions about what they've done in the past, what's worked for them, what kind of obstacles they've faced, and how they worked through them. And then, at about 15 minutes left in our time, I'm going to turn it over to you and ask you those same questions. So, hopefully, you can share obstacles you've faced, and that we can brainstorm solutions together. Sound cool? Awesome. So, first up, right next to me is Tan Light. After five years with Random House Canada, Tan Light joined the Literary Press Group as sales manager, in early 2013. Tan manages all aspects of LPG's sales force project, which includes working closely with the Canadian Manda Group to develop seasonal catalogues and sales conference events. Tan also contributes content to LPG's digital project, alllitup.ca.
And then, John. John Toews is the event coordinator at McNally Robinson Booksellers, Canada's largest independent bookstore, located in Winnipeg, Treaty 1 territory. He's responsible for hundreds of author events and musical performances annually, and was granted Honorary Membership in the League of Canadian Poets in 2015.
So, diving right in, I wanna start by asking if you have a process or way of thinking about when you're buying and selling diverse books, and if that process differs any way from when you're selling books that are mainstream? And for this discussion, diverse books is anything that's not written by white folks, written by straight folks, written by people who normally operate in the default setting. Is that cool as a working definition? All right. So, how do you think about diverse books differently when you're selling?
Tan: Well, with the Literary Press Group, we're a membership organization. So, we have 60 different publishers, and I work directly with about 40 of them, so, for a good group of my publishers, diversity is their mandate. They don't publish books by traditional authors that will operate in the norm. So, I mean, I'm constantly looking at those books. I'm not sure that there's a process that's... Well, there is a process that's different. I mean, I have to do work into the demographics of the audience that we're looking at, so that I can understand where folks are in Canada who are the primary target for any specific book. There are pockets of different identifications that are within major cities, but then, also there are now rural pockets that are growing, with the recent refugee wave that we've had. There are definite areas of Canada that are having their demographics changed, and that's happening really quickly.
So, those are opportunities that we're looking at. You know, like, right now, Windsor and Essex County is apparently one of the top spots for Syrian refugees to relocate to after their first year in Canada. It's a temperate climate, and it's in Ontario. People speak English. It's very nice there. There's a lot of small towns, but also a lot of mid-sized cities, so people are relocating. So now, where I'm trying to work with my reps to see if there's any way that we can start to bring attention of the booksellers to the fact that they now have a new population and a new market for the books that are in Southern Ontario. And there are other cities that have different population groups that when we have a book that fits with that, I want to make sure that my reps know how big that population is, where the major centres are, and I don't necessarily have to do that work for a straight white author of a fiction title.
Léonicka: And you, John, how do you think about it when you're in the bookstore, whether it's creating an event or thinking about how you're going to share this book with your buyers?
John: Of course. So, we kind of look at the buying process in two different ways, because there are two different areas of strong focus for us. So, the way we buy kids' books is slightly different from the way that we buy adult books. When it comes to buying adult books, the initial process is the same, in that we're looking at the quality of the book, the support that it's getting, the publicity, everything like that. But what we're also doing is taking a look to ensure that the book has context within our store, or has a supporting group of books, so it's not just a single isolated title that we're just putting up somewhere. You need to ensure that you have that kind of representation on the bookshelves in the first place, because then you're drawing in a market that's looking for those books, looking for those stories. So, it's that support that we're always looking for. And if there is a new book that we're looking to try, what can we do within the store to support the book, and ensure that it's getting the visibility that it deserves?
The one thing that we kind of always say during the buying process is that it's always so dangerous to assume that you know your customers or know who your customers are. Really, the key thing is to think who can you reach with the book? And what are you doing when you're putting that book on the shelf in the first place, and who are you trying to reach with it? Also, especially with issues-based titles, we get hit with such an onslaught of books depending on whatever the issue of the day is. So we're always looking for those kind of unique political and intellectual approaches to the topics at hand, as well, too. So, rather than just pulling up, say, a fairly generic book, or a book from a perspective that everybody's heard 500 times before, it kind of behooves us, as somebody who's interested in having that kind of intellectual dialogue with the community and inviting in a wider community as well, to bring in books that speak to their experience, speak to their approach, and raise interesting questions.
When it comes to kids' titles, the buying process is slightly different. We're quite privileged in that we're really keyed into the education market. We have tens and tens, well, hundreds of schools, from across Manitoba, that regularly shop in our children's department. And part of the mandate in the Manitoba curriculum is diversity. So, by that point, if we don't have a selection of diverse books on our shelf, we're really not doing our job correctly.
But the nice thing is that that also allows us to play a little more fast and loose with our children's department than we otherwise may be able to market-wise. It gives us the freedom to bring in a wider range of titles, experiment with wider titles, and, again, because of the curriculum, the both upstairs and downstairs as well, too, because of the community within the city, while other bookstores are typically almost pulling away some bookshelves, as well, too, from various sections, expanding for other things, our two huge areas of growth are indigenous children's books, indigenous YA, and indigenous fiction and nonfiction, as well, too. So those are the sections that we're constantly adding shelves to, and expanding the selection. So, having that support within our store and the market means that we can do all kinds of interesting things.
The one thing we're always looking for as well, too, is trying to kind of peer down into the metadata and see where there is diversity that's not really the core subject of the book as well, too. Simply those books that feature in children's diverse families, and adults' diverse environments, just so that the books that we have on our shelf accurately reflect the community around us.
Léonicka: So, what I heard at that was, first of all, framing the book within a context for both adult and for children's books, and also making sure that there's support within the market for those books.
John: Absolutely.
Léonicka: Okay. Excellent. So, doing a bit of self-evaluation, what are some of the things that you found worked really well for you, and what are your strength when selling the diverse books? What are things that LPG is doing really well, do you think?
Tan: So, each season, I have a set of collective sell sheets, and those pull from all of my publishers on different topics. Some of those topics are informed by working with our library reps so that we understand what libraries are looking for particularly, in any season. Some of them are just really important for us. We have an African Canadian voices, we have an LGTBQ+ voices sell sheet, and we have a First Nations voices sell sheet. And so, that gives me several pages to work with. I can pull out different themes. I can highlight poetry from any one of those voices, or graphic novels, or fiction or anything, and I can put several of those onto one page, so that, you know, if we're presenting to John, then he gets several titles that kind of go together, and help support that, you know, supporting within the store. They can pull an entire table worth of LPG books on one topic together from the materials that I've got. And also, All Lit Up was a huge project for us in the last few years, and that allows us to pretty much do all of our own programming. We do hire writers to provide content for us, and there's almost always a focus on highlighting diverse books.
And further to that, we also have been programming PD. Because we're an organization, we wanna work directly with our publishers to help them work more directly with diverse authors. So, in the last few years, we have worked with Greg Younging to develop a First Nations and indigenous style guide. We have worked with Shameless magazine to develop an intersectional style guide. We have talked with Cherie Dimaline and Greg Scofield about marketing diverse books and how authors can help, but also how the publishers can reach diverse markets. And so, our PD and our own sales vehicle have actually really helped us. The discovery is super important for everything that you're doing to support diverse books, because if you can't get them into the bookstores for whatever reason, at least now we have a vehicle to promote those books to people like yourselves, who are in the industry, but also really avid readers, who I think are discovering some pretty interesting stuff because of what we are starting to associate, and what we can highlight.
Léonicka: But John, I'm really curious...ask the same question. What are the strengths that you find in-store you're able to do? But also, a lot of what you talked about, Tan, was very industry-focused. What are you doing specifically customer-facing to highlight those books to them? Are you doing anything different, or is there a way you find to reach those customers, or to reach any customer for those books?
John: Well, I guess the good thing about the store itself is that we do have very strong community support, people constantly in our walls. And the one benefit to being a bookstore rather than, say, a publisher or a distributor, is that we have a place to invite people in and get everybody's feedback. And people are not hesitant to provide you with feedback. And so, I think recently, we've been very keen to listen to what the community is telling us and what people are telling us when they come into our store. Kind of learning from what people have to say to us when we do kind of... I always kind of put myself out there at events as almost the awkward uncle, to see what might work in certain cases, and see what might not, to try to make people feel more comfortable and more invited at the store. So, receiving feedback and kind of manipulating things in that regard is a really good way to proceed.
One thing we've found as a store, too, is that you can never really get complacent, and never assume that what you're doing is correct at any point. The most vital thing is to constantly have that dialogue going on both with your readers and yourself, to see exactly what they're looking for, what you can provide, and what you could be doing better or completely differently. We've always had a strong group of readers on staff who are interested in a diverse range of literature. And we also have the ability for all of our sections in the store, as well, too, each has an individual bookseller that's allowed to specialize in that area. So, it's not one omnipresent person making the decisions regarding purchasing for the entire store. So, that allows for an individual variety of voices, and also allows for those voices to regularly change. So, we're freshening up sections.
When we have part-timers coming in, we also will give them a section, if they are specifically interested, so that they can mould it in that own way, as well, too. So that also creates this great internal dialogue. We also have a strong display program as well, too. And so, we have tables all throughout the store. And rather than just featuring new titles, what we always try to do with those is ensure that every display is essentially telling a story or focusing on a specific thing, almost as a form of...well, yeah, absolutely, storytelling, within the store. So, we can find ways to explore topics in greater detail, contextualize books, as well, too, and, yeah, just provide, again, the support for those titles that may need it. Yeah. I'd say those are some of the strengths, at least.
Léonicka: For sure, yeah. I like the idea of breaking down who gets to pick what books are... Because I remember, when I talk about my job at Scholastic, I would say, "I chose every French children book that went into the French immersion book fairs," and so it was just me. And yes, of course, I had a team and I worked with my colleagues, but at the end of the day, it was just me. So, it's interesting, the idea of breaking that down a little bit, and having people specialize in one area, and have different voices interacting. And hopefully, in that way, you can get different perspectives with people who are seeing something one person might not. I'm curious to hear about your obstacles, things that you're still struggling to deal with, roadblocks you're finding, things you've tried that haven't worked. Tan, do you want to start?
Tan: Well, it comes up a little bit later, but there's definitely still some pushback in certain areas of the country. So, we are still facing some of the traditional roadblocks that have always been in place to celebrating diverse books, but...
John: Well, I guess one of our key issues is, while we do have a huge bookstore, and are able to do a lot of things within it, our location works against us to a certain extent. We're very suburban. We have a single bus route. We're not located in the downtown. So, that poses a bit of an issue for us in terms of getting a diverse crowd of people, and welcoming different communities within to our store. The area around our store is very much in flux now, but primarily, it was mostly upper-middle-class White folks. So, our audience and our bookstore was more geared toward that. And, for a while, there was a bit of complacency there, but then we realized that in order to bring more people in, we need to ensure that people feel comfortable in it, that they recognize themselves on our shelves, recognize themselves in the way our store is arranged, and the displays as well, too. And it's important for us as a store to get out into the community as well, too. So, those are things that we definitely need to improve on, that we are working on at the moment. And I think when we get to how we've overcome certain things a little bit later on, we'll touch on that a little bit.
Our staff make-up is also working a little bit against us because, again, we are a primarily Caucasian store. So, trying to find people that can speak with authority, or speak with authority on behalf of or to certain groups can be a little bit difficult as well. There can be a certain amount of resistance from readers as well, too, a certain amount of resistance from people even regarding event topics as well. So, just dealing with that, and finding ways to learn from that experience more than anything else is pretty key for us. And also, another thing which kind of dovetails with our location is that we don't have a very young demographic coming into our store. And that's a young demographic where, if... There's basically an assumption, and this is where I sound like an old man, that the books that they're interested in won't be on our shelves, because they're traditionally not in physical locations as well. So, trying to convince them that they are looking for interesting, like, avant-garde writing, or poetry, or just anything that speaks to their experience, that it can be found on our shelves, and they don't need to necessarily just go immediately online and discount the possibility of finding themselves represented in us.
And, again, the other thing that's important to struggle with as well, too, is ensuring that the diversity that's inherent to the store isn't simply there as just a marketing or a selling point as well, too, that it's embraced, and that we actually follow through with the ideas that we're presenting. Exploring ideas around reconciliation especially is key in Winnipeg. That's a huge emphasis. And ensuring that when we are dealing with community organizations, that they're getting as much out of that relation as we are as well, too, that it's a purely reciprocal exchange.
Léonicka: Tan, I'm gonna come back to you. I don't want you to escape, so... Because I want you to be super explicit about what you meant. Like, what are the struggles you're actually facing?
Tan: So, okay. So, John touched on it a tiny bit a little while ago when he said that they look at the book cover and the production and all the values that go into it, and they select books that look good all together, and that you can kind of have a quality baseline. And there's an opinion about independent publishing that is not as good as traditional publishing. And it's true that we have fewer resources. I'm not gonna lie. Smaller houses have fewer resources than the bigger houses. And so, a lot of the diverse publishing is coming out of the smaller houses that don't have an in-house cover designer, and they don't have a typesetting department. They don't have in-house marketers and salespeople that can influence everything while the book is being developed.
They're working to a specific stage and then it gets to me. And so, we do get a lot of pushback about, you know, books don't have the covers that we're looking for, the covers aren't strong enough, or the paper stock isn't what we typically carry. And I'm not sure how much of that is pushback that can be legitimized by these kinds of comments about the product, or if that isn't necessarily an actual, like, real problem for readers to pick up books that maybe look a little bit less polished, but that they're still really interested in the topic. And so, I mean, with e-books, you kind of take the physical object out of it, so you can start to see in the e-space where your content might be succeeding, where the package is taking away from you.
And so, there's been a lot of learning there. And, again, bringing back to our PD, we have done a lot of PD work on copy, on production values, on cover design, what works, what doesn't work, like, best practices to keep in mind. So, we're constantly trying to help our publishers compete on that level with the big houses, so that their books are not being dismissed out of hand, and they are actually getting a chance to be considered. I would say that's probably a big issue, still, in getting diverse books to the shelves.
Léonicka: Yeah, to the shelves. I think that's interesting. And this is, it's not a question, it's a comment, because part of this was supposed to be us brainstorming solutions to these problems. And I'm curious if part of that is just how our industry is set up, and whether those same issues, if the customer necessarily is... Like, does the customer...? I go into a store and feel the paper, and I'm like, "Oh, hmm, I don't know." But that's also because I'm in the industry and I've touched a lot of paper, right? But I'm not sure if every consumer is like that, mostly because we know that self-publishing works. We know that... I know for a fact that chapbooks sell. I go to... There's a Toronto Urban Book Expo that's run by this fabulous woman named Stacey Marie Robinson, and it's basically all indie publishers, predominantly Black authors, who are coming from the Greater Toronto Area, but also some of them coming up from New York, Detroit area. And all of them have books that, where the production value we would probably look down our nose at, but they're selling their books, and the customers are there, and it's quite a successful event. So, I'm wondering, perhaps, if we need to think about who we're trying to reach, how we're trying to reach them, and if there's a way to find a compromise there, perhaps. Or provide more support to those indie and smaller publishers who need it.
Tan: And I think the other thing, and this kind of dovetails into it, is a lot of our publishers don't host their book launches in bookstores because they can't find a bookstore that believes they have the community to support that book. So they're launching in community centres, or temples, or other places where they have a congregation and an audience that is specific to that place. So, if the book launches aren't happening in the bookstores, the bookstores don't know that there's a huge audience for this book, and we need to find a way to kind of bring all of those elements together, you know. We need a bookstore to be at this offsite launch, so that the bookstore is aware that this community exists and the community is aware that this bookstore exists that wants to support them, right? Both of those groups need exposure to the other.
And if we continue to have big events offsite, where we have publishers selling themselves, and then quietly slipping the numbers into BookNet, when we go to look at that later, and look at the sales numbers, the numbers are there, but they didn't come from any of the stores, and the stores are like, "Oh, well, I only sold, like, two or three copies of that last one." And I was like, "Yes, but we did an event down the street from your store, and we sold 800 copies. That could have been yours." You know? So, it's trying to bring all parts of the conversation together, and to allow everyone to realize they're operating in the same geographical space, they're just not operating in the same cultural space. And there's an opportunity for everybody to kind of get together on that, and both benefit financially and as a community.
Léonicka: Yeah.
John: Do you mind if I comment on that really quickly?
Léonicka: Yeah, please go ahead.
John: Because that's actually one of the things that we kind of looked at as an issue years ago as well. And so now what I spend a lot of my time doing is basically scouring all catalogues for any mention of Winnipeg, any mention of Manitoba, and kind of proactively going out into the community and just saying, "We know you have a book coming out." Or if I hear about it from somebody else, also approaching an author and saying, "We know you have a book coming out. Would you like to host an event here at the store?" And one of the things we've tried to do as much as humanly possible is ensure that that's accessible as well, too, to everybody. And accessibility is key, because so often, people will assume that there isn't the possibility to have a launch at the bookstore, and will go off and, say, rent a community centre or something like that. Whereas we could have them in the store, celebrating, bringing their friends and family in, and their entire community, and then not really be on the hook for anything as well, too. So, that's kind of key, that kind of outreach.
Léonicka: Right, right. So, I'm looking at the time, and I'm looking at the questions I have left. So, I think I like this question, so I'm gonna ask it. What problem did you used to have that you think you've fixed, or that you've found a good solution for? Because I think we're all in this room trying to grapple with some of the same things, and I think you've touched on some of them, especially with your talk about your professional development workshops that LPG does. And, John, you touched on the work you're doing towards getting different members of the community within the store. But I'd love to hear other things you tried. And just because this comes a little bit later on, but might dovetail into this, how do you win over the readers who may be a bit resistant to the topics or the material, as you're changing what the store is carrying? How do you win them over?
Tan: Oh, okay. So, I don't work directly with the stores, but after talking to my reps, they kind of indicated that... Like, some stores, their mandate is to support diverse books. So, you go into that store armed to the teeth with all the knowledge that you have of all the diversity and all of the aspects of these books, but for some of the other ones, they're apparently being cut off mid-sentence when those diversity claims come out. And if you can't pitch the book, like, if it's just, as soon as any keywords are out there and that shuts down the conversation, you have to figure out how to pitch the book without pitching as a diverse book, right? You have to draw on all the other aspects. So, part of it is knowing who you're talking to, what their store is like, what they consider to be their audience, and to kind of frame the books for them. And as I'm saying that, it's not, like, whitewashing the books, but...
Léonicka: I see what you mean. No, I get it. I'm going to quickly point...the We Need Diverse Books organization in the U.S., one of the things that they did when they first started, so they created sample sell sheets of here's how to take a book that you would usually pitch as a diverse book, and pitch it on the merits of the story, rather than saying, "Well, you know, you have a big Muslim population in your area, so here's a book about a Muslim girl and her coming of age story." Rather, saying, "Here's a book about a Muslim girl who goes to high school in a new place, and she meets a new boy," and yadda, yadda, yadda. So, taking the merits of the story and saying, "Here are the read-alikes."
Tan: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's knowing when you're... Sometimes you just have to pitch the book, right? Just pitch the story or the topic, and why it's got a spin. But it's not necessarily the author or the orientation or the race or the gender or anything like that, it's the rest of it. And we have a lot of authors who identify one way, but don't necessarily write about the topic or the issues or the things that they're facing. But we want to know about their identification, because there are accounts that look for LGBTQ voices to support, or indigenous voices to support. And so, sometimes I find it a little bit difficult because some of my publishers don't ask for that information.
Léonicka: I think all publishers should ask. Sorry, I'm gonna jump ahead and say things that would make my life easier. Ask, and record it, so we can track and see improvement.
Tan: Yeah. Agree. And so, when I ask for, you know, can you send me some ISBNs that fall into the following categories? And they'll be like, "We don't actually know that." So, that's an issue because we can't promote the books into those categories if you don't know from your authors whether or not they fall into any of these categories. But sometimes you may not want to self-identify. And in that case, you know, we have to work around that as well, and try to get the best support for them as possible. So, I mean, there are many, many levels to how everything is identified, the keywords, the metadata. You'll hear... I will tell you, again, it is very, very important to selling diverse books, having your books show up in the same results. A few years ago, we had an indigenous YA debut novel.
Léonicka: Is it Lightfinder?
Tan: It was Lightfinder.
Léonicka: Lightfinder is fantastic.
Tan: Please go read Lightfinder. But by Christmas time of the year that it came out, it was on Amazon's top 10 fantasy, full stop, fantasy books. Settled right between Neil Gaiman and George R. R. Martin. Because the data was awesome, the author was awesome, they pushed that book so hard. He had connections pretty much everywhere across Canada. He went to every single school and reservation and everywhere, and talked about his book. He was an artist. He gave away art. He has been talking about this book for three years. It's still, like, a runaway bestseller for us. And that book was amazing. And for a while, it took us a little bit to get that going, because it was a debut novel by an indigenous author in Canada, right? It's not the book that everybody picks for the bestsellers list. And it's great.
Léonicka: Yeah. John, I want you to jump in here. We were talking about basically what are things that you want to do better? What are problems you've fixed, and winning over retailers and readers? So, as a retailer, what would win you over? Knowing that you have to make a selection, right? Because you do. I mean, you do. You can't carry everything. So, what are things that help make your job easier when you're faced with these books? What things can the sales force do to help win you over and help you win your readers over?
John: Well, I think some of the problems that you raised are ones that are so key when it comes to actually talking to our readers and the people in the community as well, too. It's that, really, there are the two dangers you come into when you're trying to sell diverse books, and one of them is kind of falling into exoticizing the books, almost, when you're trying to sell them to readers. And then it does nobody any services, and is just demeaning, more so than anything else. You're having these books supposedly succeed just on the basis of their cultural merits, rather than on the quality of the writing, which is incredible. And then, also assuming that diverse authors can only write about diverse experiences as well, too. And so often, we have readers who'll come into the store and just think, "No, that's not for me, because they're not writing about this issue that I'm interested in."
So, I think a lot of it is just convincing readers of the quality of the writing. Receiving lists from publishers as well, too. Lists that dig deep, as well, that provide us with lists of people from certain communities that we can form displays around, that we can form events around. And I think another...because the problem is always trying to sell those books in isolation. And when you're just dealing on a title-by-title basis, it becomes much more difficult than to create that surrounding supportive environment. The problem that we used to have was also that community engagement, which is something that we're working on quite strongly now to try to increase, going out into the community, working with organizations, bringing people in. And I think one of the struggles as an events host that I deal with is that we previously used to covet all events, and just presumed that if you have a book being published, you want to launch it in our store. And what we've realized now is that we're not always necessarily the right place for an event. And so, there is some times to just kind of pull back, suggest other possibilities, or not just try to sink your talons into every book event that comes to the city, and ensure that they're being launched in a venue that is right for them, and respectful for them.
Léonicka: Perfect. I'm gonna turn... I have, like, two minutes left. We're gonna go over. I'm sorry, but...you don't need a break. So, I'm going to pare down and ask the audience two questions. First, I want to ask them the same obstacle questions. What are the obstacles you face when you're selling diverse books? Or even as you think about how to market, sell, publicize, how do you approach them? There are two mics that you can...if you want to go to them and share your comments, if you have questions for us, if we can help you quickly brainstorm things. So, that's question number one. Question number two is what would make your job easier? I'd love to hear it, because we have people in this room who could literally do the thing that would make your job easier. Please go to the mic if you want those things. No? No one has comments or questions? Yeah, you do.
Attendee 1: I'll do it.
Léonicka: There you go. Hi.
Attendee 1: Hi. So, I work at Harlequin. I work in editorial. So, you know, we're constantly trying harder and harder to get those diverse reads for our consumers that definitely want them. And we're hearing more and more, especially at RTA and different sort of conferences that we go to that they want that more. And a great example that we're experiencing this, is a huge problem, is the bookseller. So, we'll have a great author, like Brenda Jackson. She's a New York Times bestselling author. She's fabulous. And she'll have a Black character, and we'll put them on the cover, and then, instead of selling her in contemporary romance, which is what the book is, it's a contemporary romance, it'll get put in a bookstore into the African American section, and she wants to go into the contemporary romance section. It's a contemporary romance.
And she's finding her sales are getting pigeonholed into this one section. And while it is a diverse book, that's not what it is. And more and more, we find that, like, "How do we push back on these booksellers to be, like, 'Sell them in the categories that they are?'" Like, we have the keywords to say, "Yes, this has a diverse cast of characters." If there's a bisexual character in the book, we'll say that in the metadata, and that information's there, but we're trying to sell to everyone. And it's just, like, how do we combat that, when, like, we're trying to do it, and it's hard when the booksellers aren't supporting us, and how do we get them to support us?
Léonicka: Yeah. Yeah. I think about this all the time. So, I guess, my idea, and booksellers in the room, tell me if it's wrong to think this way. I actually hear a lot that the African American section is useful for Black romance readers who just, like, they're like, "I don't even want to bother trying to go through the whole mess of the store. Let me know that there's a section for me." But, especially online, can you double-face those books, so you put them in both places, so that the new reader, who knows they like contemporary romance, but doesn't necessarily know Brenda Jackson's name, will stumble upon her? But the reader who knows Brenda Jackson is in African American fiction all the time will find her there as well. I think that would be ideal, if possible. Is that something that... I mean, I'm looking to you, John, as if you're going to answer for all retailers everywhere in all of Canada.
John: On behalf of the Canadian bookselling industry.... No, I think that multiple section coding is so key. Like, Gwen Benaway, for example, from Kegedonce Press, Anishinaabe, Métis, and transgender poet. So, we're able to basically try to feature her as much as we humanly can within the store, exactly by that way of multiple coding. So, we can have her in the LGBT section, we can have her in indigenous poetry, and we can have her in Canadian poetry as well, so she can find this wide variety of readers. And it is about that. And I realize store space is limited. We're somewhat privileged in the fact that we do have a larger store, that we can play around with those things a little bit. But if you can find ways to showcase books in multiple sections, you'll see great success as a result, and lead to finding new readers for them and the books around them.
Léonicka: Right.
Tan: All of our sales information, when we send it to our reps, it includes both the BISAC codes, and two sections of the bookstore where you would like to see the book. So, it allows the publishers to say, "I think this book fits best here and here." And that may... I mean, it should correspond to your BISAC codes, hopefully. But it gives you a chance to decide out of, you know, Gwen's four categories, which two they think the readers are going to look for first. Because the problem with taking books out of a section for specific readers is that those specific readers are looking for those specific books, and you don't want to just bury them in the general bookcases, but you do want the general readership to be able to find them as well, right? So, you don't want to make things harder for the core readership of that book, to find it, but you also want to make sure that it's discoverable to all the other readers who may be interested in contemporary romance.
Léonicka: Right, right. Repeating the questions again, what are some obstacles that you're facing, and/or what are things that would make your job easier? Yeah?
Attendee 2: I have a question, going back to what Tan was talking about with the look of the book. And maybe it's not even a question for you guys, but for everybody. We have a book coming up in the fall. It's on reconciliation. We have an indigenous author. We're trying to involve as many indigenous people as possible, but when it came right down to designing the book, we found that we were not always in agreement. And I think it's partly because book design, in many ways, is quite staid. And we've seen magazines develop and change their look and become more edgy in some ways, and online, certainly. And I wonder if we might start adjusting our expectations of how books look, not just for diverse books, but across the board and be more open, maybe. And it sort of became a challenge to us in-house to not always be thinking about the traditional book design as the only way to present information. So, not so much a question, maybe. Maybe a challenge.
Léonicka: No, I agree. I think that it's larger than just book design. It's the idea of how do we typically do things, and how can we do it differently? Just because we've done it this way for so long doesn't mean we need to do it this way again. Yeah, that was part of all the notes that I didn't speak. I actually didn't say any of the answers I was going to say, you guys. I held back. Any other questions, comments?
Attendee 3: I'm new to kids publishing, and Lorimer's mandate is obviously to publish diverse books, and getting these books into schools, so that kids can actually see themselves reflected in the literature that they're reading. And I guess the challenge that I've noticed since I started working on our metadata is finding the right place to communicate information about the books on the diversity of the book. And not just about where the author is coming from and their perspective, but about the characters themselves as well. And it's hard to pack all that information into the book product description alone. And so, finding a place where, you know, the booksellers are gonna be finding and using this information. Is it keywords or...? You know, the BISAC subjects alone are not sufficient.
Léonicka: Tell me about it. So, yeah, I think that's the end of it. But just to speak to that really quickly. One of the things I had listed as things that would make my life easier is if there were fields to enter that information specifically, so that not only when I'm pulling data I could do a quick pivot table to see how we're performing and what percentage of our books are from certain demographics, but also so that it could be easily categorized that way. I believe there are certain publishers, and I think Lorimer is one of them, that don't simply do sell sheets, but do customer-facing categories on their site. Here are all the books that are about LGBTQ. Here are all the books that are about religious minorities. And I think that we would be surprised how often customers are searching in that way, and how useful that would be for them. I wish, wish, wish we had more time, but I think I'm going to get in trouble. So, thank you so much for coming.
Zalina: If you're interested in continuing the discussion on diversity in the publishing industry, you can check out FOLD, also known as the Festival of Literary Diversity, which will take place from May 4th to 7th in Brampton, Ontario. Visit thefoldcanada.org for more information on that. To learn more about Tech Forum or the work we do, visit booknetcanada.ca. Thanks to Léonicka, John, and Tan for leading this discussion, and to all those who helped to make Tech Forum a success, including the attendees, all the great speakers, and those who volunteered or worked at the event. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for this project. And of course, thanks to you for listening.
