Advertising Online: Is this the Wave of the Future for Selling Black Books?
by Leah Mullen
Denise Turney got her start selling books over the internet a few yeas ago as part of a group of women business owners who were promoting their wares online. The author of two self-published titles, Portia and Love Has many Faces, thought that perhaps her books would do well in the virtual marketplace the web has created over the last several years.
Turney says she's gotten a lot of positive feedback from her website www.chistell.com., which gets upwards of 2,000-3,000 unique visitors or 6,000 hits per month. Right now Turney is happy with this number considering that there are only two books on her site. Her goal, however, is to increase online sales. To do this she hired an online marketing company to change the look of her site as well as create new linkages to other websites. When Turney was interviewed over the spring, she said that www.chistell.com was linked with 200-300 newsgroups, and she paid a monthly fee for a "banner ad" that appears on the African American Literary Bookclub's website (www.AALBC.com). All of these linkages Turney created herself while working full time and raising her children.
It can't be denied that he web has created opportunities for many armchair entrepreneurs who can now display their products from the comfort of home, while keeping their day job. This environment is also promising for self-published African American authors, who might have difficulty distributing their work otherwise. In addition just about all-major publishing companies have websites serving as extensions of their brick and mortar establishments.
Of the 78 million people who used the Web at that time, 5.6 million made book purchases according to the study. |
What interests Anita Diggs, senior editor and director of One World Books, a division of Ballantine Publishing, is the amount of visitors that frequent sites like AALBC.com that reportedly gets over one million hits per month. A "hit" according to Troy Johnson, AALBC.com founder is "any request by a Web Browser for data such as a web page or graphics file." Diggs who recently agreed to advertise One World's front list with AALBC.com said the reach of the site is "amazing."
Books traditionally have not been sold in the same manner as say vacuum cleaners since the audience for books is rather targeted, still the World Wide Web is bursting with possibility. During the first half of 1998 aside from computer products, books were bought more frequently than any other items via the Web according to a study conducted by Nielsen Media Research and CommerceNet. Of the 78 million people who used the Web at that time, 5.6 million made book purchases according to the study.
Many with products to sell are lured by the growing number of internet users. Aside from the one million visitors that frequent AALBC.com every month, there is another draw for those who are considering advertising their books online and that is price. The cost for corporate clients to advertise on AALBC.com is between $1,200-$3,600 per month. With banner ads for independents going for $100 per month. This is a steal compared to ad space in some African American publications that can go from a high of almost $50,000 to a low of $4,000 per issue.
A recent study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, a portion of which appeared in The Internet Advertising Report, predicts double-digit growth in the amount spent "globally on Web advertising and access, with overall income jumping from $40 billion in 2000 to $90 billion in 2005."
Says Kevin Carton of PricewaterhouseCoopers, "The Internet now plays a key role in the business model of virtually every entertainment and media industry segment...as with any new distribution model there is some turbulence..."
Now if we're talking about African American Interest books, what might be some stumbling blocks to advertising and selling books online? For now, it's probably simple access. Unlike telephones, radios and television sets, not everyone owns a computer.
Speaking from a consumer's point of view Sheree Thomas, editor of the speculative fiction anthology Dark Matter, said that many of her family members don't have computers and some that do, aren't online. Speaking for herself Thomas says she enjoys buying books online and some of her purchases are based on "reader reviews" and list serves like Kalamu ya Salaam's e-drum, which distributes information for Black writers and supporters of Black literature.
Thomas makes an important point-- about half of the African American households in the US are not linked to the internet according to comScore Networks. But is the glass half empty or half full? ComScore's findings report that African American households represent a 35 percent growth rate from April 2000 to April 2001.
Gian Fulgoni of comScore Networks says "Web usage is on its way to becoming pervasive, and that many marketing strategies may need to be re-examined in light of the ability of the Internet to efficiently and effectively reach a wide variety of target consumer segments."
"My sense is that ad banners, regardless of the site, don't get much attention," |
Despite the increase in web use among African Americans, Chet "C. Kelly" Robinson, author of Not All Dogs has mixed feelings regarding advertising his books online.
"My sense is that ad banners, regardless of the site, don't get much attention," says Robinson. "There is so much on the Net to draw people's attention, I just don't think the little banners with titles or faces they don't recognize register."
Rather, Robinson believes that reviews and other kinds of coverage are what sell books. Johnson of AALBC.com disagrees saying that there many factors which determine the success of an on-line campaign. "While a lot of people rule out the power of ad banners, I do not," says Johnson. "There is a benefit to people seeing something over and over -- even if they don't click through."
"The problem with new writers is that people don't know who they are," Johnson continued. The more people that see you, the better. No one is at risk of overexposure here," he said.
However, Johnson admits that those inspired to buy books based on ad banners is difficult to quantify. He says it's "sort of like quantifying how many books AALBC.com is responsible for selling by looking only at AALBC.com's online sales figures. Most people who discover a book on AALBC.com will still go to the brick and mortar B&N store to buy the book."
There's the conundrum. Looking at an advertisement for a book online is one thing. Purchasing that same product via the Web is another matter. Aside from access, there is yet another level to the difficulties encountered when selling products over the Internet and that is trust. Johnson says "there's minimal risk involved when using your credit card online if you're using a secure site." And Turney claims that it's actually safer to purchase goods online than it is to shop at a store, but many don't share their view.
And is it a wonder considering that Black folks have been marginalized, infiltrated, experimented on, racially profiled and just bamboozled to the point that we might be a tad bit suspicious when it comes to giving up the credit card digits over the much-trafficked internet super highway?
Miami Internet.com reported on a recent study conducted by Access Worldwide Communications, Inc., which found that African Americans primarily used the Internet for career advancement, professional development, education, entertainment, and exploring hobbies and interests, but not necessarily to make purchases. However the study found that the longer users worked with the internet, the more likely they were "to engage in e-commerce activities."
But even if advertising online doesn't directly lead to online sales at the moment, what about the sales that are garnered indirectly while people are still warming up to the internet as Johnson pointed out? After all, before the computer, advertisements were limited to the small screen, radio and print vehicles and the same situation existed there. No one ordered soap powder directly through the television, they went to their local supermarket to purchase the products they saw on the tube.
Despite rosy predictions that online advertising will increase in the years ahead it was reported in the New York Times this summer that Yahoo, one of the few popular dot.coms that didn't go belly up, was still suffering from "a shrinking advertising business," which accounted for 80% of the company's revenue. But since the medium is quite new, the burden of proof that online advertisements actually sell books lies with those like Johnson who are selling virtual ad space to booksellers who want to expose their products to the millions who are now surfing the web.
Johnson who believes that the web hasn't reached it's full potential concluded saying "The internet is definitely a wave of the future and in terms of the way people promote their work, we're going to see some changes."