'Post-Covid swing to offsite events' but bookshop events still valuable, Marketing & Publicity Conference hears

“Bookshop events are back in full force”, Waterstones’ head of books Bea Carvalho has revealed, though she cautioned against the increased enthusiasm for theatre-style tours post-Covid. 

Carvalho revealed her tips for working effectively with the retail chain at The Bookseller’s Marketing & Publicity Conference at London’s County Hall on Monday (1st July), stressing the advantages of events with local stores in particular.

“A lot of the time as an industry, we’re focused on those big, flagship stores but Waterstones is not just Waterstones Piccadilly,” she told the packed-out session for ‘Achievable, Affordable, Effective: Case Studies of Stellar Waterstones Collabs’.  

“Getting your authors out and about to all corners really makes a difference and encourages that local support,” she added. 

“When it’s done right in those parts of the country that are less well serviced and have less high footfall, naturally they can become destinations in their own right and increase footfall, attract local press and actively draw customers into bookshops when they might not have been going in. So thinking about local opportunities and interrogating where the core customer is for your book is likely to really build above the audience.” 

Overall Carvalho is positive about how events have returned after the pandemic. “Bookshop events are back in full force — January to April this year we ran 200 events, which is more than we held for the whole of last year,” she said. Recent highlights included an event with Sophie Kinsella — which also featured a major streaming component — as well as a signing with Rick Stein in Morpeth which attracted local press and a silent disco for the Britney Spears memoir last year. 

However, she warned against simply prioritising the ’theatre-style’ author tours, as pioneered by companies such as Fane, which have flourished in the last few years .“There’s been a real swing post-Covid to these large, offsite events,” she said. “Obviously those do work really well in a lot of cases and we host a lot of them successfully, but also hosting events actually in the bookshop has a huge onward effect for the lifetime of the book, so we want to stress this is the preferred avenue where possible.” 

Installations can also have a major impact, such as the science lab set-up based in the Piccadilly store for Lessons in Chemistry (Transworld) and the cafe for the Fleabag: The Scriptures (Hodder & Stoughton). 

Carvalho emphasised the overwhelming number of titles competing for space, including the “alarming stat” that for July to December highlights, her team was shown over 5,000 books. "There’s simply not space to do them all justice at that highest level." 

Publicists should not be discouraged if a book takes a while to land after publication. “Starting small can lead to massive things,” Carvalho said. “With Cleopatra and Frankenstein [Fourth Estate] we sold a couple of hundred copies, maybe a thousand, in hardback, but that real local bookseller enthusiasm led us to do massive things in paperback... that was our second bestselling Book of the Month last year.” 

She recommended delegates focus on their priorities and what Waterstones could work with, though warned against overly decorative proof packages. “We’re never going to order more of the hot book or do more with it just because it’s in a beautifully packaged proof has arrived with sweets or socks or something... Save your money for something else.”