How can you say they did a piss-poor job of promoting the books? They promoted at the largest cons (what's larger than SDCC and Dragon*Con?), and in the few likely magazines that are left.
What percentage of B5 fans, or sci-fi fans in general, do you think get to take time off from their
jobs to go to SDCC and/or Dragon*Con? How many people do you think are serious enough or have the means to travel half-way across the country to go to a con? 1 in 100? 1 in 1000? 1 in 10,000? If you want to reach
outside of your current group of devotees, if you want to
grow the fanbase instead of being content with the existing fanbase, if you want strong sales over a long period of time, how about you advertise in something more general, like, i don't know....
Time, The New York Times, etc.? How about a 15 second ad. on The Sci-Fi Channel to reach people who don't know the books exist, maybe with some of the cost borne by Warner Brothers and The Sci-Fi Channel? The goal is exposure which could lead to sales and increased viewership. Everybody benefits.
However, you have to spend money to make money. You can't timidly sit back, spend a penny, and spend that penny in the usual, formulaic way, and have any realistic hopes of making a million dollars.
Do you think they ought to have been buying ad space in The New Yorker, or Rolling Stone? How could they justify that based on sales?
New Yorker? No, only if they wanted to reach upper-crust snobs. Rolling Stone? Dunno. I was going for more general, not different niches.
As for in-store promotion, as he said, the bookstores decide what displays they want, and if bookstores by the hundreds were requesting end-of-aisle cardboard standups for Babylon 5 novels, they would have made them available.
Good grief, listen to yourself!
Who takes the lead here? What bookstore is going to request
anything, and based upon what, sales of some other publisher's (Dell's) previous set of
mainly disappointing and low rated novels (Dell #1 thru 9)???
To not request anything is conceding defeat on the part of the bookstore, an almost complete lack of faith, getting only a half-dozen or so books of each trilogy in, and burying them in spine-on display, usually categorized by author, or in spine-on display in the sci-fi section where all Star Trek books and all Star Wars books are grouped together, etc., and when they sell, they sell, and if they don't sell, they get their covers ripped off and are returned. The bookstore is not going to take a chance. They're not interested in selling these books, per se. They're interested in selling books, in general. The ones who
should be in selling these particular books is the publisher, and to a lesser extent, Warner Brothers and maybe The Sci-Fi Channel, that is, if
anybody is looking to the future (and apparently nobody is).
To not supply anything (or at least make overtures in advance about the availability of display materials) is conceding defeat on the part of the publisher, and it shows an almost complete lack of faith, being content with staying withing the pre-existing niche and then complaining about lack of continued strong sales. The magnitude of the illogic there is astounding. These people ought to work for Fox Network or The Sci-Fi Channel. They'd fit right in.
Who should have been interested in promoting these books?
The publisher. The publisher should have
offered display materials (end-of-aisle cardboard standups and posters to put in stoor windows) in an effort to
promote their books. The publisher should have made these overtures
well in advance of the books street dates, and then if there was interest, had the materials made. And if they were creative, they'd try to do it with backing from other interested parties who might benefit (Warner Brothers, The Sci-Fi Channel, Space, etc.), to spread the risk around a bit.
I just think you're being unrealistic about this.
...and I think you're being a closed-minded, knee-jerk contrarian, who thinks a half-hearted, unimaginative, token effort at promotion is good enough and all that can be expected.
To sell books, people have to know that the books exist. They have to catch the eye of people (perhaps B5 fans, or sci-fi fans who are not on the net) as they are walking through a bookstore. Otherwise, you're just getting sales from people who
already know the books exist, and who are
searching for them. That's limiting your sales, selling to the people who are already sold on the product. To expect strong sales over the course of years, based upon the amount and type of promotion that Del Rey gave the B5 novels,
that's what's unrealistic.
There's quite a lot of money involved (licensing fee to WB, advance to authors so you get decent ones like Peter David and Gregory Keyes on board, manufacturing and promotion costs), and if people weren't buying the books, publishers are not going to throw good money after bad, no matter how well-written the books are, and no matter how long the fans have been left hanging (which matters to a book publisher not a jot). It's such a niche market...
That's part of the problem. They should be trying to reach OUTSIDE of the niche market.
... it probably ought to be done through a 'boutique' imprint, but I think it's probably too much money for a small publisher to do, and the big publishers want high sales figures in return for their investment.
No, that's going the wrong way.
That's usually the result when uncreative, unimaginative people have unrealistic expectations.
