When I self-published my book, The New American Road Trip Mixtape,
in December, I knew there was pretty much zero chance bookstores would
sell it. I was a relative nobody (beyond a blog that gets a million-plus
page views per year), I had a not-so-unique storyline (young writer
goes on road trip to find new American Dream), and, of course, no one
reputable (or even disreputable) had published the book. So the
marketing strategy was a big blank.
People would only see it
online, through social media channels. No one was going to see it on the
shelf in a store, flip it over, read the cover blurb, and buy it. Or
could they? I had one idea.
"I'm just going to shove copies of
the book onto the shelves at Barnes & Noble," I told a friend. Maybe
I could mail five or so copies to friends who wanted to help/engage in a
little mischief, and they could plant the books in their city's
bookstores.
I told myself at the beginning that making money off
the book wasn't important; reaching people who needed the story was the
most important thing. So why not give a few copies away, or "donate"
inventory to Barnes & Noble? That's not illegal, is it? I mean, you
can't walk in and take a book off the shelf and put it in your jacket
and walk out -- but there's no law that says you can't walk into the
store with a book in your jacket and put it on the shelf, is there? Nah.
It was a genius strategy, I thought, congratulating myself.
In his book Super Rich,
Russell Simmons reminisced about a brilliant idea he'd had in 1978, in
the early days of hip-hop, before anyone knew what hip-hop was. Friends
of his had spent their life savings making a single called "Christmas
Rappin'" with a then-unknown MC named Kurtis Blow, and they asked
Simmons for help creating buzz for the record. Simmons ran around New
York handing it out to club DJs, begging them to play the song. As the
buzz began to build, they started pressing new versions of the record
with a (fake) order number from Polygram Records. As DJs played the song
more and more, they hype grew, and record stores began to call Polygram
to order more copies of the song. Polygram was of course confused, but
eventually got enough calls that they figured out how to track down
Kurtis Blow and sign him to a record deal.
I cackled to myself. Like Russell Simmons, I would give it away until they wanted to pay for it. Genius!
"How
are people going to get the books out of the stores, though?" my friend
asked. "They can't just walk out with your book under their arm."
Oh.
I
ran the idea by a few more people, and someone who had previously
worked at a Barnes & Noble confidently said that as long as a book
has a bar code with an ISBN number, it will scan at the register. I
decided to test it. In Flagstaff, Arizona, I sneaked a copy of my book
onto a shelf in the Travel section. Two hours later, my girlfriend
walked into the store, grabbed a magazine and the copy of my book and
went to the register to pay. I sat in the coffee bar waiting.
"It
rang up," she announced back at the table. "Twelve dollars." I pumped
my fist and laughed. It worked. As a business idea, it was terrible, of
course: I'd just donated one of my author copies (about $5 worth of
inventory) and given Barnes & Noble $12. But as a marketing
investment, I had an idea.
Another friend had told me about comedian Jim
Gaffigan's Instagram account, and how he would pick up copies of his
book at airport bookstores, sign them, and post the photos on Instagram
so fans could find them and buy them. Cool, but Jim Gaffigan has 75,000
Instagram followers. I have 2,000. But what did I have to lose? Just
revenue and some inventory.
In Tempe, Arizona, I drew a saguaro
cactus on the cover page, took a photo of it, and nervously walked in to
the Barnes & Noble on Rio Salado with the book under my arm. I
searched for the Travel Essays shelf, trying to act normal. I had
flashbacks to my handful of teenage shoplifting experiences, then
laughed at myself. I slipped the copy onto the shelf in its proper
alphabetical place, between Donna Leon's My Venice and Other Essays and Peter Mayle's French Lessons. I snapped another photo of the book on the shelf. I posted it on Instagram from the parking lot. 186 likes.
I
planted another one in Flagstaff, this one with a drawing of a train on
it. Then Las Vegas, with a drawing of the Welcome To Las Vegas sign. I
started having fun with the drawings on the cover page. At breakfast
with a friend, I mentioned that I figured at some point Barnes &
Noble would find out about it and ask me to stop doing it. He asked,
"Why?"
I
said, imagine if every self-published author started shoving their
books onto the shelves at Barnes & Noble -- what a mess that would
be. He said,
"They wouldn't do that. People want to sell books, not give them away. Especially to Barnes & Noble." Indeed.
I
drew the Sears Tower on the one I dropped in downtown Chicago,
wondering if the security guard saw me. I bought a magazine to make
myself look less suspicious. I dropped one on the Upper West Side in
Manhattan, then as I was slipping the special "I <3 a="" at="" avenue="" b="" camera="" copy="" fifth="" flash="" ny="" off.="" on="" onto="" shelf="" store="" the="" went="">My friend
Forest had taken a photo of the reverse-shoplifting-in-progress from
around the corner3>
. Fortunately, no one saw him. A day later, a friend
from grade school, whom I haven't seen in two decades, tagged me on
Facebook -- she was living in New York and had bought the copy from the
Fifth Avenue store.
I dropped one in Portland, and another in
Seattle, which, according to Instagram comments, was gone less than two
hours after I put it there. In every store, I find the Travel Essays
section, eyeball it for Donna Leon's book, then slide mine in next to
it. I got out colored markers and drew the old Denver Nuggets logo on
the one I dropped in downtown Denver, and it disappeared two hours after
my Instagram post.
Last week, I drew a series of Colorado flags
on four copies of the book, then drove around the city and put them on
the shelves at four different Barnes & Noble stores. Three of the
four were purchased by the end of the day, and I'm not sure about the
fourth.
The New American Road Trip Mixtape
has been on sale for five months, and it's sold more than 3,000 copies
in paperback and ebook formats, mostly online, including Barnes &
Noble's website, though not on their shelves.
They haven't yet asked me
to stop desecrating their shelves with my book, or notice, for that
matter. But I wonder how the stores reconcile the $12 purchase of a book
that's not in their inventory. A tiny part of me hopes, like in the
Russell Simmons story, that they'll somehow start selling my book -- but
a larger part of me thinks they'll probably more likely just send me a
cease-and-desist letter. Which would also be kind of awesome, in its own
way.
Follow Brendan Leonard on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/semi_rad
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