Each customer attending the book signing was given a questionnaire made of cardboard before entering the door, which was used to tally the reasons why they bought the fairy tale book and what the advantages of the book were in their minds.
In order for everyone to fill it out carefully.
The card acts as a £2 cash voucher when paying at the checkout.
The Scholastic Group's marketing department will recycle these cards, analyze the sales and reader feedback of each book published by the group, and fill in its own business data model.
"Sir, I need to get these to the manager immediately."
The staff seemed a little anxious.
"If it's okay, I'll just take a handful, and you can give away the rest."
Dean Hawke casually grabbed a handful of about ten investigation cards from the basket and waved his hand to signal the other party to go about his business.
The questionnaire has four items distributed from top to bottom——
[Do you have the habit of purchasing physical books regularly? Have you purchased "The Little Prince" produced by the Townsend Mann Group before? 】
[What channels do you know about this autograph session? 】
[Have you heard of translator Charlie Hawke before? 】
[For what reasons did you make the decision to purchase this book? 】
There is a row of printed possible options below each item, allowing readers to check directly.
Dean Hawke glanced casually and saw a row of no in front.
The translator couldn't help but frown.
If it is not filled in randomly, you can look at this questionnaire.
The reader who bought "The Little Prince" does not usually buy books, does not know about book signings, and has not even heard of his name, Charlie Hawke.
“I came here to attend a book signing, but even I didn’t know the result!”
Mr. Hawke tugged at the beard on his chin in displeasure.
To be honest, I am not a world famous person.
George R.R. Martin, Stephen King and others are walking on the street and there are a lot of people who don’t recognize them.
But this reader who just asked for his autograph had no idea about his literary achievements before.
Mr. Hawke was inevitably a little sad.
The last column is the one that drives the customer's decision to buy the book.
What ticked the box was not Saint-Exupéry's reputation in the literary world, nor the Dean of Oxford's thirty-year translation career, nor the publisher's marketing advertisements, but the illustration of the detective cat that ranked last.
illustration.
Illustration again!
"The guy who buys a casket for a pearl. The language of my translation is so fresh and childlike. This is real skill. If you like pictures, why not read comics? Every page you look at is full of pictures, just a few words... Uh-huh..."
The old gentleman complained helplessly.
Dean Hawke threw the investigation card aside and picked up the next one.
Then he was stunned again.
The checked information on the next card is exactly the same as the previous card.
If it weren't for the different contact phone numbers for the return visit filled in below, he would have thought that one person submitted the two questionnaires.
"strangeness."
Dean Hawke lined up all the investigation cards in his hand on the table.
This time he didn't frown.
His eyes widened slightly, his mouth opened slightly, and his whole face was distorted for a moment in shock.
There are a total of eleven small investigation forms placed on the table in front of the old gentleman.
Only one mentioned that he had heard of his name before, and the reason for one's purchase was because he was a fan of "The Little Prince."
The remaining ten cards, without any exception, were all filled out exactly the same as the first survey card.
Everyone ticked the option "Beautiful illustrations and exquisite packaging" among their reasons for purchasing.
this……
Hawke seemed to realize something.
He looked at the bookstore in front of him that was still crowded with readers even after dusk, and swallowed with extremely complicated emotions.
The poor Oxford Dean's state of mind at this time is like the dumpling chef in a dumpling shop.
After more than ten years of hard training, the lamb dumplings are made with thin skin and large fillings, and are overflowing with juice. On the opening day, there was indeed a huge flow of people and everyone was full of praise.
But if you listen carefully, every diner is praising the vinegar in the dumpling shop for how delicious it is, and wondering if they can take a couple of them home.
The emotions in the chef's heart must be extremely difficult to express.
Neither is it happy, nor is it unhappy.
Could it be...that I was the one who took advantage of that internet artist?
Dean Hawke turned his attention to the fairy tale cover of the new edition of "The Little Prince" at hand.
[Illustration author: Detective Cat (A)]’s name is hung majestically below his signature.
In order to translate this classic fairy tale, the old gentleman has been preparing since 2000.
After ten years of sharpening his sword, Dean Hawke was a little unhappy when he learned that a newly hired illustrator had the same authorship rights as him.
She was just a person who drew a few pictures. He thought that adding a small note on the title page would be disrespectful to her, and he was not qualified to be nominated on the book cover.
This situation after the listing was completely unexpected by Charlie Hawke.
It can be said that it is a coincidence that one or two readers bought the book because of the illustrations, but it is not a coincidence that all the owners of the ten questionnaires paid for the book because they like the illustrations.
actually,
Even the only reader who bought the book because he was a fan of "The Little Prince" had a total of two check marks on his purchase intention.
In addition to checking that I am a fan of Saint-Exupéry, I also put another check mark in the small box that I think the illustrations are beautiful.
There is a 100% chance that customers will find the illustration attractive.
Then there is no excuse.
No matter how unwilling to believe it, Hawke must believe it.
It seems that the awesomeness of Detective Cat’s illustrations caused such a hot scene.
Looking at the smiling faces in the store who were full of admiration while flipping the books, I also thought of the reaction of the audience when I preached on the podium before.
An idea that had never occurred to him before the book was released came to Charlie Hawke's mind for the first time.
"I'll go. This great translator like me won't be taken away by the detective cat."
——
"Sir! Sir! Something happened."
The staff member carrying the basket rushed into the manager's office on the second floor and said breathlessly.
"The Little Prince... is selling very hotly. This is the third basket of reader survey cards that have been collected, and all the prepared intention survey cards have been distributed."
"All given out!"
The Oxford Street store manager of Waterstones Bookstore was sitting at the computer drinking black tea and communicating about work matters. He almost choked on his tea and coughed twice and asked.
"Ahem, out of all 2,000 cards, not even one is left?"
The store manager was originally not very concerned about the situation of the "Little Prince" signing event.
It's just a book signing.
This bookstore holds book signings and reader meetings for major authors every three days.
I’ve seen a lot of big scenes.
Recently, the headquarters is negotiating for Anne Ernault to hold a reader meeting here next month.
Since the other party became the 16th female Nobel Prize winner in Literature last year, Waterstones has wanted to invite the other party to hold a series of reader meetings.
But Ernault was not in good health and could not make the trip.
This time, female writers are coming to London for academic exchanges, which is a good time.
The store manager is following up on all aspects of this important work with the headquarters specialist, and has little time to focus on the autograph session downstairs.
He did hear that there seemed to be a lot of excitement outside the window in the afternoon.
But Oxford Street!
There is no busy time throughout the year, and the store manager doesn’t take it seriously.
So when I suddenly heard the news that all the survey cards had been distributed, the person in charge of the bookstore couldn't believe it.
Two thousand survey cards means that two thousand readers and customers have entered the venue in the past few hours. In terms of the carrying capacity of a bookstore, this is very close to full capacity.
Waterstones Bookstore did almost no large-scale warm-up activities before the book signing, but so many readers spontaneously poured into the bookstore.
Thinking of this, the store manager gasped.
"We have all given out, and the number of customers entering the venue has exceeded 2,100." The staff nodded like a chicken pecking at rice.
The store manager couldn't help but ignore this figure. He couldn't care less about studying the details of the Nobel Prize winner's reader exchange meeting for the time being. He told the commissioner at the headquarters to talk about it in the evening and interrupted the conference call.
"What about shipments. How many new books did we sell?"
The store manager walked to the wall and raised the curtains, looked at the people still queuing under the bookstore sign, and clicked his tongue twice.
"Have there been more than six hundred copies? No, this battle must have happened... Tell me, have there been more than eight hundred copies?"
the store manager asked curiously.
There must be many of the people who come into the bookstore at normal book signings who are just looking at the books without buying, or they come with their family and friends.
It is impossible for two thousand people to have everyone consume.
The normal paid conversion rate range is 30% to 40%, and very popular works can occasionally exceed 50%.
"The shipment volume of Computer Backend has exceeded 1,200 copies, 1,236 copies to be precise. The 60 sets of limited collection gift boxes were sold out not long after they went on sale. The 600 hardcover editions were sold out just now. The 700 paperback editions were sold out just now. 576 books have been shipped, and it is expected that the remaining 100 or so books will not last long.”
The staff member smiled bitterly: "Sir, I know you have an important conference call in the afternoon. I came to you because almost all the inventory in the warehouse has been bought and there is no way to restock it."
"I just called the distribution warehouse in the West End of London. They said that the more than 100 books in the other two Waterstones bookstores in London have also been bought out, and they are asking for restocking."
"All...sold out!"
The store manager was a little confused.
Shop rent on Oxford Street is very expensive.
The backroom area of Waterstones Bookstore has been reduced to a very small area. On normal days, only 2 to 5 books are kept in stock. When they are sold out, they are replenished. Some less popular books are simply placed on the bookshelves in the store. the only one.
But today is the first day of signings.
They've got a lot of extra stock.
As for the publishing house, President Osborne’s most optimistic estimate is that he can only sell 600 sets of books.
Waterstones Bookstore has nearly 1,400 sets of goods, which is fully two and a half times this number. With such a redundant quota, it was still sold out.
etc,
The more the store manager chewed the taste of these numbers, the faster his heart beat.
2,000 customers lined up to buy nearly 1,400 books, and the payment conversion rate has exceeded 70%.
Often, the higher the paid conversion rate, the greater the long-term potential of the book.
It can make more than half of the customers who enter the store pay.
It means that either this book will be a topic for the whole people, or the content of the book itself will be very attractive to readers.
No matter what the situation is, it will not be a three-minute hot spot, and the shipment data curve of the entire sales cycle is unlikely to be significantly weak.
Plus, more than 1,000 books were sold on the first day.
The best-sellers he had seen that fit these two statistics almost never stayed on the Moon's weekly book sales list for less than 10 weeks.
There are even some more powerful ones that can reach the top of the mountain in a row.
If we talk about shipment quantity and payment conversion rate, the store manager has seen worse ones. Then the shipment ratio of Kufang makes him really don’t know how to evaluate it.
All 60 sets of the collection gift box are sold out!
Each set costs 100 pounds.
London's per capita wage income leads the British Isles by a cliff, and one hundred pounds is the remuneration for most people for half a day's work.
In the suburbs of the city, many people can earn a hundred pounds without eating or drinking for two days.
This is a gift for hard-core readers who are not short of money. Normally, they may not sell a few sets in a week, but now it seems like they are free of charge.
"Today's sales are almost 50,000 pounds, and even the hardcover version is selling out so fast. Have you heard of such a thing before?" the store manager asked in surprise.
"No." The staff member shook his head.
After all, the base of collection gift boxes is too small, the atmosphere at the autograph session was lively, and people who came to Oxford Street to shop were relatively generous.
There is a possibility that a few people will get so excited that they will end up with sixty sets after each person takes one set.
But the fact that the hardcover version was sold out before the paperback version made the store manager completely confused about what kind of magic this book was.
The average sales ratio of the hardcover and paperback editions of the same book at Waterstones is about 1:4.
Occasionally popular books that have just been released can reach 1:3.
Most of the customers who buy books in physical bookstores are book lovers.
The shipment proportion of this hardcover book is actually much larger than the number sold on Amazon's online store.
As a result, today's more expensive hardcover version has almost reached a 1:1 shipment volume with the paperback version, selling more than a dozen copies more than the paperback version.
outrageous,
It’s so outrageous!
This has never happened before for a book with a price difference of more than 10 pounds between hardcover and paperback.
It’s not a question of whether it’s powerful or not, but this data completely violates the basic laws of the book industry.
Is this world crazy?
Everyone has changed their temper and insists on buying a book and taking it home for collection?
The store manager couldn't understand the data, but his heartbeat was as fast as a drum.
Suddenly he opened the drawer and took out a copy of "THE MOON" released on Monday.
Turn directly to the culture section of the ninth page of the newspaper.
Every Monday, The Moon's editorial board updates this page with book sales data across the UK.
All publishers will always pay attention to this list.
The current number one is still Prince Harry's autobiography "Spare Tire", which sold 72,321 copies last week. It has topped the book sales list for 20 consecutive weeks, with sales exceeding 50,000 copies per week for 20 consecutive weeks.
Whether it is the book sales ranking of "The Moon" or the "New York Times" bestseller list on the other side of the ocean, it leads the second place in sales by tens of thousands of copies by a cliff.
"The Spare Tire" has become the best-selling non-fiction book in human history.
And it is expected to become the second best-selling work in the publishing industry after the completion of "Harry Potter" after the millennium.
Countless book reviewers have predicted that it will have no rivals in the book field this year, and its total annual sales are likely to open a gap of more than 1 million copies between the second place.
The second place is the romance "True" by Douyin celebrity writer Hoover. This is also an old face that has dominated the best-seller list for a long time, with weekly sales of 39,721 copies. The third place is "Campus Ending", a highly anticipated work by a rising star in the industry, which was just released last Monday, with sales of 36,521 copies.
The store manager only glanced at the top 10 items on the list and stopped.
Under normal circumstances, breaking into the top ten of the weekly bestseller list requires sales data of around 5 digits.
In a quiet month when there are no major works on the market, there may be hope for 7,000 or 8,000 copies.
The tenth place this week is an old book, the historical palace battle "Ti Tang" which became popular again with the broadcast of the BBC's historical documentary about the Tudor Dynasty.
It sold 10,098 copies last week, which happened to be the last week on the list to sell more than 10,000 copies.
The new version of "The Little Prince" sold 1,400 copies in this bookstore in three or four hours alone, even excluding the additional traffic from Oxford Street.
Maybe if we add up all the bits and pieces, today's first-day sales will exceed 10,000 units.
What about a week?
The store manager looked at the top three sales data in the table.
He suddenly had a vague hunch that he might have sold a great work today.
Maybe... the "Spare Tire" that has been at the top of the best-selling lists of major newspapers and periodicals for hundreds of days may have to move.
"The Little Prince and Prince Harry's autobiography, what is this? A battle of princes?"
The store manager muttered to himself.
Prince Harry's autobiography did not hold a book launch at Waterstones, and the store manager certainly hoped that "The Little Prince" would win.
He was filled with very, very strong expectations.
The store manager opened the window and stuck his head out, looking out the window at the door where reporters were still guarding.
Many of these reporters were invited by the Scholastic Group itself.
There are also some London book journalists who heard about the popularity of the book signing of "The Little Prince" in Oxford Street through various contacts in the industry, and took the initiative to come over and follow the news.
Now the door looks like a star is about to walk on the red carpet. Reporters from more than a dozen media have gathered, and even the interview car of the British National Broadcasting Corporation has arrived.
"No, don't move the warehouse to restock. The time you can postpone the book signing is limited. At this point, even if you move goods from other areas, you won't be able to sell many books. I don't care about the extra one or two hundred copies. .”
Looking at the reporters, the store manager gave the order.
"From now on, you should be prepared to put up signs on all the windows as soon as the sales are completed. All 1,400 copies of the new edition of "Scholastic Group's "The Little Prince" have been sold out. Please come back tomorrow!" Try to hang it as eye-catching as possible, and use the biggest publicity board we have. The kind that can be seen by people all over Oxford Street."
Book promotion also focuses on topicality.
In the field of journalism, crazy readers emptied the entire Oxford Bookstore of books, but the difference between selling 1,400 books or 1,500 books is more of a media selling point.
The store manager who has been tested in the book market for a long time is a smart person.
He was prepared to give reporters an opportunity to create hype for the news.
——
March 26, 2023, 1:30 am.
London's Financial Street is still brightly lit, on the 41st floor of the Scholastic Group's European headquarters building.
"Country roads, take me home..."
The sound of a broken gong-like voice singing John Denver's famous ballad in the office reached the ears of the clerk lady at the desk in the secretarial room through the soundproof office door.
She inadvertently pressed her earlobe secretly and smiled bitterly.
Leaders always have various quirks.
President Osborne's quirk is that he inexplicably likes to hum this old-fashioned 1970s song "Take Me Home, Country Road."
The happier I am, the more I want to sing, but I always run away.
The secretary is an old man who follows President Osborne and is his most trusted subordinate.
The last time the secretary heard Osborne humming this song loudly, he had just finished a meeting with the board of directors. In that meeting, he was promoted from regional manager to vice president of Europe.
I sang like this all the way back in the car.
Today is the first day on the market for "The Little Prince", which President Osborne is officially responsible for.
After eating a takeaway late-night snack at around ten o'clock, the off-tune singing of "Country Road" came from the CEO's office and continued intermittently.
Judging from the loudness and duration of the sound and the extent to which President Osborne let himself go.
Judging from this situation, the sales of "The Little Prince" are not generally good.
At this time, in the president's luxurious office, Osborne had transformed into a happy middle-aged British uncle.
Except for the bald hair.
Osborne was almost twenty years younger, and he was just as excited as when he was in middle school and dating a girl for the first time.
He was humming and playing office golf, glancing at the screens around him from time to time.
On the tables, windowsills, and cabinets next to me, there are several unfolded laptops and IPADs for watching the news.
Even the large TV hanging on the wall, which was used to monitor the group's stock price, was fixed on a certain frame on the BBC evening news channel.
All news interfaces almost invariably display the same theme - [SOLD OUT!!!]
In the accompanying picture of the BBC's evening news studio,
In the window under the black Oxford Street Waterstones store sign, staff are hanging a huge promotional board with "SOLD OUT" written on it.
The number 1,360 volumes was written next to it in Arabic numerals the size of human heads, with three bright red underlines.
It is so eye-catching that you can see it at a glance from across the road.
This accompanying picture has become the most important news photo in the entire field of English books today.
[On the first day that the new version of "The Little Prince" was released, a long queue formed in front of Waterstones Bookstore. The leader in the field of children's literature, Scholastic Group, has played a new fairy tale trump card! 】
[SOLD OUT——Fanatical buying crowds, the first-day sales of the new version of "The Little Prince" have undoubtedly exceeded the original work on April 6, 1943. Maybe you should also buy a copy and read it]
[All 1,360 copies in stock were sold out in four hours, setting a new record for similar fairy tale books sold by Waterstones Bookstore in a single day in 2023! 】
[Confrontation between giants, Townsend Mann Publishing House vs. Scholastic Group, who can monopolize the exclusive ownership of the gold medal IP of "The Little Prince" in the English world? 】
[The illustrated fairy tale book at the center of public opinion - amid many doubts, the new version of "The Little Prince" is expected to sell more than 10,000 copies on the first day. 】
Nowadays, mass media saves the time of paper typesetting and printing.
The web page section of some efficient electronic media can be controlled within 30 minutes from the time the reporter submits the report to the update of the report on the website APP.
The Little Prince is the biggest publication this Easter holiday.
In the past few hours, almost all British book media have reported on the panic buying on Oxford Street.
Even the evening culture section of the Moon News had to mention sourly, "The success of the first-day sales may not be attributed to the level of illustrations, but the text content is the key point."
President Osborne doesn't care.
When sales take off, they take off. No matter how weird it is, it can't hide the fact that the sales of "The Little Prince" exploded on the first day.
Even he didn't think of it.
This new version of the book project was able to deliver such a perfect answer on the first day.
Osborne now awaits one more phone call.
(End of chapter)
