Thinking Outside the (Big) Box (Stores): A Surprising Alternative to Traditional Book Shops

"Local bookstores are dying!" is the common refrain from many in the publishing industry. In fact, Tyler Lifford wrote a blog post on the topic a few weeks ago. With more and more local bookstores reducing their stock or outright closing, authors are feeling the pinch. So what can you do when your potential market starts shrinking?

Simple: start looking for other markets.

Specifically, gift shops.

The Entrance to the Hong Kong Science Museum gift shop

 Museum gift shops are a viable option particularly for non-fiction authors whose subject matter falls nicely in line with a museum or historic site’s interests. For example, the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa (obviously) stocks war-related books. Depending on centennials or bicentennials, the museum will target works on specific topics, such as the War of 1812 during its recent bicentennial. While museums mostly focus on non-fiction works, fiction and poetry related to exhibits is occasionally sold from gift shops as well.

Stocking books in museum gift shops can also serve as a springboard for future marketing opportunities; in Kristin Eckstein’s post “5Profitable Places to Sell Your Book,” she mentions a student who not only successfully sells books to museum gift shops but is also invited to book signings and lectures at other museums, which increase the likelihood of making sales.

You might scoff at the idea of gift shops as a potential alternative to local bookstores. “Sure, some stores might stock books, but nobody goes to a museum to buy books,” you might say. However, that ignores the fact that 60 million people visit the 2000 museums that are part of the Canadian Museums Association (the total number of museums in Canada exceeds this).

So consider this; thousands, potentially millions, of visitors care enough about a specific topic (war, art, science, etc.) to go to a museum dedicated to that topic and browse through the inevitable gift shop that lies between them and the exit. They see a biography of their favourite war hero or a book about Canadian Aboriginal art and then BAM! sale. Most visitors to your typical bookstore, including big box ones like Chapters-Indigo, aren’t as likely to have even a basic interest in such titles as museum visitors. Plus, gift shops don’t stock nearly as many titles as a traditional bookstore, meaning that your book (assuming it gets put on a gift shop’s shelves) would have less competition than in a traditional store.

Selling through a gift shop certainly won’t make anyone a New York Time’s best seller, and is a bit trickier for fiction and poetry authors. However, for non-fiction or even fiction with a specific interest and/or a niche market, you might want to start thinking about getting in contact with those museum gift shops.