Why We Like Barnes & Noble

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We were ecstatic last summer when Barnes and Noble committed to order and stock 300 copies of our award-winning Christmas title: The Kringle Chronicles: Catching Santa in their Florida and top selling Christmas stores.  I know that doesn't sound like a lot but think of it like this. Once a title begins to sell, it continues to sell unless of course there is something inherently wrong with the story. 

From:

Sent: Friday, July 08, 2011 12:49 PM

To:

Cc:

Subject: Product placement: Christmas\Holiday book octagon

The buyer will order 300 units. Stock will be placed in Florida stores and in top Christmas stores.

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Knowing that Catching Santa was going to be placed in top selling Barnes and Noble stores we got to work on expanding our marketing campaign. We spent months preparing an ad campaign to advertise to some of Brighthouse TV’s customers. By the first of November we were set to begin advertising. Unfortunately our publisher noticed Barnes and Noble was incorrectly distributing Catching Santa. He flipped out. Below is the email he sent Barnes and Noble. E-mail addresses have been removed. We don’t want people spamming B&N buyers and executives.  

From:

Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2011 4:43 PM

To:

Cc:

Subject: Product placement: Christmas\Holiday book octagon follow up

What happened to your commitment to order 300 units of our award-winning Catching Santa book which you said would be placed in Florida stores and top Christmas stores? I just received and reviewed our October sales report from Ingram and it shows that B&N ordered 216 units of the book. Okay, great, you ordered 216 units but when you analyze unit destination by store it reads pretty ridiculous and frankly, makes no sense. Maybe I’m crazy but I think stores in Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Phily, NYC and Miami sell more books than Iowa, Montana, Michigan, Louisiana, North and even South Carolina combined. So why send books to those states? As if the report couldn’t get worse, it shows that you ordered 32 books in one Florida store with another 62 in another Orlando store. The report also shows the book stocked in 10 Florida stores. Really? So they’re just sitting in boxes. Why wouldn’t you spread them out across Florida? Why even order then? Why commit to something and not follow through? Digging deeper into the report I see that you sent some of the books to the same stores you sent them to last year in support of the authors schools visits: Va. Beach, Columbia SC, Atlanta and Charlotte. He’s not touring there this year. We are driving sales with advertising and our Hollywood trailer to come out Thanksgiving evening. You do know the books come back to us as returns which means they’re damaged or have shelf ware. That destroys my bottom line.

Look, my expectation of “The buyer will order 300 units. Stock will be placed in Florida stores and in top Christmas stores.” is that our book was to be included on the Holiday book octagon in Florida and top Christmas stores. Come on, I’d been talking about the octagon since my first email request to reevaluate the title for 2011. I’ve attached said referenced report and pasted it below. All of this begs the question: Are the books even being merchandised or are they sitting in store stock rooms? Forget professionalism here. This is not cool.

What happened next was completely unexpected. The Vice President of Children’s books for Barnes and Nobles replied wanting to discuss the situation. See below.

From:

Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2011 6:57 PM

To:

Cc:

Subject: Product placement: Christmas\Holiday book octagon follow up

My name is Mary, and I am the Vice President of Children's Books for Barnes & Noble. I am happy to review the merchandising and allocation strategy for Catching Santa with you. Please send me some days and times that work early next week for a phone call, and I will set up a meeting so we can connect directly.

Thank you.
Mary

Days later our publisher and Mary had a delightful conversation over the phone. She took ownership of the misrouted books citing personnel changes with her buyers and said in short that they had “dropped the ball”. This is why Barnes and Noble is our favorite book store company. They didn’t brush us aside as if we were nothing more than a nuisance. They listened to us and gave us their time. Barnes and Noble is a class act!