National Book Awardees: Where is the Marketing?

Publishers Weekly, based on Nielsen BookScan rankings, shows the four winners of the National Book Award (NBA) this year have sold fewer than 8,000 copies of their books combined. These figures indicate how tough it is for even quality books to attract readers. Media coverage given to the winners doesn’t always translate into sales and booksellers don’t necessarily promote the honored books as heavily as expected.  

Books, like anything else you want to sell, need to be marketed and promoted heavily, and authors need to do this. You have to do everything and be everywhere all the time. While Christmas shopping, I’ve gone into Wal-Mart, K-Mart, and bookstores such as Borders and Barnes & Noble, and have not seen any marketing or promotion being done for the awardees’ books. In fact, Borders did not have one of the books I wanted on their bookshelf yet. They lost a sale because of that faux pas. The main question: where is the marketing?  

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