Consuming Books: The Marketing and Consumption of Literature

Citation

Tadajewski, M. (2009), "Consuming Books: The Marketing and Consumption of Literature", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 43 No. 3/4, pp. 565-569. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090560910935596

Consuming Books represents an extension of the project that Brown has undertaken over the past ten years. Brown, we might recall, has been vocal in calling for marketing scholars to pay closer attention to literary theory and the literary world as an object of analysis and source of knowledge (e.g. Brown, 1995, 1999, 2005a, b). After all, as marketing scholars we are writers ourselves and frequently engage in the marketing of our own work (e.g. Tadajewski, 2006a, b, 2009; Tadajewski and Brownlie, 2008; Tadajewski and Saren, 2009). This said, we could learn a great deal from the publishing world; perhaps as much as they have learnt from us. Certainly, it is not necessary to be steeped in economic theory to understand why the publishing world is so interested in marketing. To put it mildly, the sheer quantity of books published annually greatly outweighs consumer demand. And the veritable book mountain of already published material compounds this unequal demand/supply relationship, jostling for consumer attention, usually at greatly reduced prices. Publishers are also, as anybody who has purchased fiction from the local supermarket will tell you, pretty quick to release me‐too material, all of which are marketplace characteristics that make it much more difficult for any single book to stand out. Where previously a few references to Catholic conspiracy, a little light bondage and the soon‐to‐be obligatory marketing scholar (Brown, 2006a) were enough to ensure media and intellectual interest, publishers now have to pull out all the stops to get marketplace attention.

The contribution of marketing here is, of course, obvious. As Brown (2006b) gestures in his introductory chapter, while marketing may apparently be in the throes of a mid‐life crisis, and the marketing department being reduced or excised completely from corporate structures, with even the label “marketing” problematic for some, the publishing world has embraced marketing with enthusiasm:

Brand building, niche marketing, own labels, integrated communications, customer relationships, SWOT analyses, cross‐platform synergy coordination and the rest of the marketing lexicon […] [are] on the lips of literary types. Sales tracking software, category management techniques, database mining methods, space allocation procedures, sales forecasting models, direct product profitability calculations and suchlike are central to the contemporary publishing game (Brown, 2006b, p. 9).

Like other recent publications that have suggested that past marketers like P.T. Barnum or “authorpreneurs” like J.K. Rowling, L. Frank Baum or Dan Brown have been – in one way or another – exemplary marketing practitioners, Aherne (2006), in his chapter, outlines some literary lessons drawn from Samuel Beckett's corpus. Two points worth mentioning here are:

1. 1.

   that we need to fail better – we need to take those rejection slips, terrible conference presentations or intellectual marginalisation in our stride; and

2. 2.

   occasionally, despite all the knock‐backs, sometimes we will succeed in the face of adversity.

Despite the intuitive plausibility of the point that contingency and luck play a vital role in everyday business and academic life, these issues are rarely discussed in the marketing literature. Having said this, two chapters of this book highlight contingency and relate this to the consumption of literature in interesting ways.

Borgerson and Schroeder are avid collectors of a curious range of books published by the Peter Pauper Press. Ranging from “lauded literature to lascivious limericks” (Borgerson and Schroeder, 2006, p. 47), these books have captured Borgerson and Schroeder's attention and they document what makes these books special for them. In contrast to purist book collectors, Borgerson and Schroeder do not attempt to procure the cleanest, most tightly bound copies they can find. No. It is the human side of the texts that they enjoy; the little scribbles in the margins and the inscriptions on the front and back boards. To be sure, they are interested in filling the gaps in their collection, but it is the process of potentially chancing upon these titles in second‐hand book shops, rather than simply searching online, that they enjoy. Contingency then, permeates Borgerson and Schroeder's chapter, as it does with that by Maclaren and Masterman.

Taking us further away from the traditional format of book‐buying, Maclaren and Masterman draw attention to the phenomenon of “bookcrossing”. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Bookcrossing is “the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise”. Bookcrossers, Maclaren and Masterman write, realise their “childhood dreams of sending, or finding, a message in a bottle through contemporary Internet technology” (Maclaren and Masterman, 2006, p. 127). Each book that is “released” – i.e. left behind on a picnic bench, in a fast food venue, pub, boring conference, etc. – has its own identity number and to avoid any possible misconceptions that may land the new owner in trouble, each book carries messages including “Take Me Home” or “Free Book” (among others). Once found, the book becomes the property of the possessor, if only until they have read it and then leave it for another person to find, or they forward it to a fellow bookcrosser.

What I found interesting about Maclaren and Masterman's chapter was the methodological approach that they adopted in charting the journey of one book through the hands of multiple owners. In simple narrative terms, hearing how one book is “found” by the different bookcrossers, their reasons for consumption and how they later divest themselves of the book and how it is then picked up by another reader is fascinating.

While I would like to go into further detail about the other chapters, I realise that I am rapidly running out of space. So, would I buy Consuming Books? If money were no object, then certainly; it has furnished me with material that I will use in my lectures on consumer culture and the entertainment economy (e.g. Brown, 2006b; O'Reilly, 2006). The chapters are well written and students, practitioners and academics alike will find the material easily digestible; even the biographical details of the contributors offer the academic voyeur some insight into the publishing pressures that drive knowledge production. In addition, Chris Hackley (2006) provides an unselfconscious account of his negotiation of the monograph and textbook publishing game and offers some insight into the motivation that underlies why publishing houses market books at such extortionate prices:

The scholarly monograph is probably the most product‐oriented end of the academic publishing game. You sell over‐priced hardback editions to library lists on a 400 print run. Exceptionally the less stodgily written ones might make it to paperback but with little more than word‐of‐mouth inertia to power the sales. Hardback monographs are bought by academic libraries for other academics to borrow. Sales in the thousands are very unusual. If you produce a book that you can sell to ready buyers for £70 a pop, that's £28,000 gross sales revenue of safe money (Hackley, 2006, p. 178)

It is a shame, in my opinion, that when Consuming Books takes a more critical angle that the book begins to come to an end. Surely, this should have been the beginning – or at least, very close to the beginning – for an edited collection that sought to examine the marketing and consumption of literature? What is missing from this selection is not so much a focus on the marketing and consumption of literature, nor certain elements associated with the production of literature or an acknowledgement of the tenacity of certain authors in ensuring their work is published. What is missing is greater attention to the “whole complex functioning of the editorial machine: its mechanisms of selection, control, sanctioning, recruitment, internal promotion, elimination, censorship, and so on? How can one accept to ‘publish’ without putting on the stage the forces, conditions, agents of the editorial machine?” (Derrida, 1995, p. 29). Examining these issues in depth is a difficult endeavour and perhaps the editorial remit of Consuming Books was not meant to go this far (for brief dips into these issues see, however, Chandler, 2006; Shankar, 2006; Stevens, 2006). Do we want to think about how to transform the marketing and consumption of books? Obviously, the publishing industry is most definitely interested in the appropriation of managerial marketing tools, but given the occasional calls for more critically oriented marketing scholarship, a critical focus on the publishing process and the delimitation of consumption options would have been of interest. Nonetheless, this is a book that marketing scholars, especially those interested in interpretive research, will certainly enjoy.