Why Jewish Americans Love Books, Buy Books and Read More Books Than Practically Anyone Else on the Planet--How to Get Them Into Your Store (or Make Them Your Customers) Today!
This was the full title of the Jewish Book Panel at BookExpo America, which tried every which way to explain why Jews disproportionately seem to buy more books than any other segment of the population. At the same time, the panel offered ways to sell even more books to Jews, further enforcing the notion that Jews are not only the people of the book (as dubbed by Muslims), but "people of the books," said Stuart Matlins, founder of Jewish Lights Publications.
Matlins asked the group, "What is with us?" He answered his own question, saying, "Jews read books directly in proportion with education, not in proportion with our numbers, which is less than 2% of the population." (Most of that population seemed to be at this well-attended panel.)
Matlins emphasized that Jews don't just read books about Jews. They read everything, including "self help, 'junk fiction,' Eat, Pray, Love and books about identity of all kinds. Great hunger for knowledge continues," he added.
Daisy Maryles, executive editor of Publishers Weekly, echoed Matlins's sentiments about Jews readings books about identity. As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Maryles said she asked herself such questions as, "Do people from other cultures feel this way? Do Japanese and Indians feel this way? Does the world need to know we feel this way, too? I thought no one went through what we went through." Then she read Amy Tan and found that the issues in her books were similar to her own: mothers and daughters, family, cultural identity. Books by authors with different traditions have given her insight into places she would have never known and illustrated ties between the cultures, she said.
Ruth Andrew Ellenson, the editor of The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide to Guilt (Plume)--may we suggest a follow-up title, The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide to Gelt?--spoke about niche marketing of her book. Her publisher asked her to change the name to The Modern Girl's Guide to Guilt, but she stood by her title and wrote and marketed her book as she wanted--to Jewish women.
The book of essays by young Jewish women writers, including Aimee Bender, Daphne Merkin, Dara Horn, Tova Mirvis, Rebecca Goldstein and Molly Jong-Fast, explores things that their rabbis warned them never to discuss in public--and it landed on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list. Ellenson called Jewish marketing "the great miracle."
Ellenson encouraged writers to market heavily to the Jewish market and not shy away from it, saying, "Making [a book] broad enough for everybody makes it marketable to nobody." But, she added that her book received strong responses from black and Asian woman as well, illustrating that guilt is not a Jewish monopoly.
Someone mentioned book clubs as another way of drawing more Jewish customers to bookstores. But the booksellers present indicated they have had mixed results with in-store book clubs. It's about creating a network, not always about reading Jewish-themed books. [Note from the author: When working at Barnes & Noble in the late '90s, I ran a book club called "the Vaguely Jewish Book Club." The sought-after Jewish community showed up at the store in a non-Jewish neighborhood to discuss books with a vaguely Jewish theme. Jews and non-Jews alike enjoyed the club.]
To illustrate how surprisingly difficult it can be to market to a niche group, Matlins spoke about the marketing efforts of the Book of the Month Club to reach the Jewish reader. The program was called "Traditions" and had a marketing line "Covering All Subjects From Joy to Oy." Matlins said the effort "was put to death because they were delusional about the size of the population. Traditions produced the highest number of books per order, but there weren't enough customers to make it work."
The Internet is another important marketing tool, of course. Several people in the audience suggested marketing books through a variety of sites that have been notable for viral marketing of Jewish-themed titles, including Jewlicious.com, Jewityourself.com, Ritualwell.com and Jewcy.com.
The panel, put together by Carolyn Hessel of the Jewish Book Council and moderated by Marilyn Hassid, director of the Houston Jewish Book Fair, also addressed how booksellers should best sell and shelve Jewish books.
Stuart Matlins summed up the panel discussion by speaking of a children's book that asks if being Jewish is "about how we look or what we do." He jokingly answered, "It's how we look."
It's safe to say, besides buying and reading a copious amount of books, we are also funny.--Susan L. Weis
[Full disclosure: Weis, who is Jewish, opened a bookstore, breathe books in Baltimore, Md., because she loves books, bought more books and read more books than practically anyone else on the planet, as the panel title implies. Now she sells those books to Jews and other people, too.]