The latest ReaderBound news and updates on online book marketing

I recently had an experience as a consumer that highlighted several practical challenges readers face when buying books directly from publishers. I was lying in bed surfing Twitter, and happened across the mention of a kid’s book that falls very much into the vein of books we read at home. It was Canadian and had won all kinds of awards, so I followed the link in the tweet.

ReaderBound is a powerful website platform that helps publishers easily showcase and sell their books online.

It combines sophisticated content management and e-commerce solutions, client support, website hosting, and maintenance into one convenient package.

We often explain the ReaderBound benefits in terms of what it enables you to do. However, one of its key benefits is what it takes off your plate: a number of site maintenance worries.

Earlier this year, we wrote about the implications of these two facts:

• More than four in 10 (42%) book recommendations received by readers are now transmitted by online channels.
• Close to half of book buyers’ book purchases are now made online.

And we noted the key role that solid metadata plays in the ability of booklovers to discover and buy books online.

With December upon us and consumers beginning to enter last-minute-shopping panic mode, it’s a perfect time to ramp up your holiday campaign. This requires smart copy and good design of course, but most of all, it means adopting the psychology of a person who is:

If you’re interested in building more community around your publishing program, encouraging more engagement with your authors and books, and driving sales, you need a solid email marketing strategy.

The annual Frankfurt Book Fair always provides a sense of top-level trends, challenges, and opportunities in the book publishing industry, and this year’s event in October was no exception. Kicking things off at the opening press conference was the assertion, by Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle, that right now, making books discoverable to readers is “one of the industry’s greatest challenges.” 

We were recently asked by major industry funders to elaborate on the business case for publishers to invest substantially in new business systems. The following is an adapted version of our response. Any points that you would add or argue? Please feel free to be in touch at hi@readerbound.com.

Research shows that up to 70% of shopping carts are abandoned by visitors shopping on e-commerce sites,* which represents a huge number of lost sales. Shopping carts are abandoned for all sorts of reasons, as illustrated by the HubSpot graphic at the end of this post, but the main point is that an empty shopping cart means that a potential buyer was interested in a product – say, a couple of books – and then hesitated.

Well done! Your homepage is loaded with interesting and useful information, and it’s easy to navigate. Now take it to the next level by asking your display banner to work harder and drive readers to the pages you want them to see most. Display banners sometimes fall into the bad habit of looking pretty but not accomplishing much, and they should instead be considered as a major opportunity to drive sales.

If you’re here, you not only work in publishing but are also a reader. You love browsing in beautiful bookstores and you think carefully about which book you’re going to invest in. Beyond wanting a great read, you may have other requirements. The book you choose may need to:

In 2007, Chip Heath and Dan Heath released a hugely successful business book: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Other Die. The book stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 24 months, went on to be translated into 29 languages, and keeps on selling. The audience for it, as identified by the Heath brothers? Pretty much anyone.

Today we’re in conversation with Norman Nehmetallah, who works at red-hot Canadian indie press Coach House Books. Norman’s responsibilities – among many others – include running Coach House’s website, which as of last fall is powered by ReaderBound.