Book Depot Blog - Page 4 of 6 -

Four young readers standing and reading books.

Engaging More Readers

May 23, 2018

When catching up with an old acquaintance I have not seen for years or in general conversation with someone I have just been introduced to, invariably the question will eventually come around to “What do you do for a living?”

After telling them that I work for a bargain book distribution company and explaining a bit about my job, the typical follow-up question is, “Do people still read?” I usually respond with a sharp quip that I hope people are still reading for another 15 or 20 years so I don’t have to go looking for another job before I retire! However, the question is still a valid one— I think especially so for the younger generation. Are people still engaged in reading at the same level as say 10, 20, or 40 years ago? Are young people today inclined to read a book? And I don’t really think it matters whether it is a print or electronic book, although we print booksellers are certainly pulling for the one over the other! But I don’t think we should be as concerned over the format of the book as much as whether or not people are still reading.

The Pew Research Center conducts a yearly survey about book-reading trends in America, and it is interesting to note that the amount of reading is relatively unchanged over the past few years based on the 2016 survey. What the survey has also uncovered is that print books are still the preferred medium for most readers; the amount of people reading a book on a dedicated e-reading device is pretty much flat. Where there is growth in e-reading is on tablets (multi-use devices) or smartphones. Put me firmly in the category of preferring to read a printed book, though. That might make me old school, but I just cannot wrap my head around reading a book on my phone—if I ever did it had better be a short story!

Regardless of the medium, I believe the challenge for our society, especially for those of us in the book industry, is how to engage the youth of today to be readers in an age of so much distraction. We all love having instant access to a wealth of information at our fingertips or the ability to communicate with someone immediately without having to make a phone call or even send an email. We can watch our favorite programs when we want on our DVR or Netflix without the intrusion of commercials. Our communications are in the realm of 140 characters or less, and everywhere we look people are walking with their heads down staring at their handheld devices. I marvel when I go out to eat and see a family sitting together and no one is talking to each other because they are all on their devices. So how do we get the youth of today to slow down their busy and distraction-filled lives and pick up a book to invest some time reading, learning, expanding their minds or imagination, and losing themselves in a good story?

The Harry Potter era was certainly a wonderful time for booksellers as it really engaged a generation of new readers, but it has been over ten years since The Deathly Hallows, and nothing has really come close to matching that level of sustained excitement and anticipation for a new installment in a series. Waiting for the next big thing to come along to draw in a new crop of readers is wishful thinking, but I think it is also unnecessary. There are so many great books that are just waiting to be read, and what we need to do is encourage reading from an early age. The hope is once children get started and with some helpful prompting, we can create more book lovers. For instance, my eldest daughter loves to read but has a hard time deciding what to read next. Based on her tastes and sense for adventure, I recommended the Redwall series to her. It was not received with much enthusiasm at first and I had to keep encouraging her to give it a try and get past those first couple of chapters so that she could see the story start to build and then get wrapped into it. It took some time and the book was on and off again for a couple of weeks, but finally, the story grabbed her and now she is deep into book two and I am sure well on her way to devouring the series.

I do have a vested interest in the success of the publishing industry because of my career, but more than that, as a father of four children I want to see my kids reading, enjoying a good story, and learning about new and exciting things. And the sooner we can start them on this journey the better! At Book Depot we have the privilege of working with some great nonprofit organizations that are dedicated to putting books in less privileged children’s hands at no cost. We also are involved with some local schools where we donate books for their reading incentive programs. I don’t mention these things in order to congratulate ourselves but to raise awareness that we all can do our part to help the cause of literacy and try to engage more readers. As a book-related community, I think we all share the responsibility to encourage children to read with the hopes that this will open up a world of opportunities for them.

Rick Mechelse

Senior Sales Representative

Book Depot

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Hands being raised to take part in a survey.

The Survey Says – Make Your Business Stronger

May 9, 2018

How do your customers truly feel about you? Are you their “go to” source for books? Should you be restyling your store, or offering more products? I am sure these questions and countless others are always top-of-mind for all booksellers, but formalizing the process may get pushed aside in the hectic daily running of your business. One way to truly know how you are perceived – surveying your customer base. At Book Depot we query our constituents for each of our lines of business on an annual basis. We use this data to reflect on where we’ve been and as an important tool for planning our future. Some of the benefits of taking the time to properly plan and execute a surveying initiative include:

Customer appreciation. People inherently love to feel valued and that they have a voice that is heard. They will be impressed that you respect their opinion enough to ask them how you are doing.
Customer retention. Customer acquisition is tough and extremely expensive. Satisfying your customer’s needs will keep them coming back – increasing their lifetime value and providing a revenue stream that will be easier to forecast.
Free information. Utilizing your own client base for information comes at no cost (other than time) and will be completely pertinent to your business as all the questions are about your business.
Improve problem areas. We all like to think that each aspect of our business is running smoothly. Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to recognize the areas that need to be addressed.
Recognize trends. Are you carrying the right mix of categories and keeping your finger on the pulse of the industry? Can you expand your product lines by carrying higher margin products? Asking product based questions will reduce your fiscal risk by identifying fact-based gaps in your selection. (It is impossible for one person to know everything there is to know about the publishing world.)
Establishing a baseline. Performing surveys consistently over a length of time will provide you an opportunity to gauge yourself against yourself. Track all the changes you made and monitor how they are received.

I know what you must be thinking, theoretically I see the value – but I don’t have the time or know where to even begin. Let me assure you that it has never been easier than it is today. To make the process manageable, we have broken it down into three basic steps to help ensure your initiative will have success:

Scripting the Survey

Pinpoint exactly what you want to know (i.e. should we expand our bargain book section?).
Use basic language. Stay away from industry lingo that could confuse your customer.
Keep the questions as short as possible and never exceed a total of 10. Only ask the questions that will not have the biggest impact on success.
Utilize the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Book Depot ends every survey by asking, “How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend, or colleague”. We feel this is the most powerful way to gauge the overall health of your business. Willingness to recommend your store to a friend, is extremely powerful.

Administering the Survey

Choose a web-based survey provider. We use Survey Monkey for all of ours. It is extremely user friendly, offers great examples & step-by-step tutorials and provides the data in a manageable format.
Define who you want to query. Are you looking to poll your entire list or are you really looking for information from a specific subset of customers in your database?
Decide if you want to provide an incentive. Often times we will offer a predefined discount off the customer’s next purchase if they complete the survey.
Design the survey. Most provide an extremely user-friendly template, so all you need to do is cut-and-paste your questions.

Analyzing the Results

Calculate the response rate (divide the number of completed surveys by the total number of surveys sent). The higher the response rate, the more representative and trustworthy the data will be. Aim for over 10%.
Be open minded. Listen to what the data is really telling you, not what you want it to tell you… this can be harder than you would think.
Categorize the data. “Bucketing” your responses by area of your business will make it easier to focus on the specific needs of each.
Look at your results on both a micro and macro and level. You will glean key “nuggets” by looking at both.
Thank your respondents. Let them know how much you appreciate their time and how you plan to utilize the responses to better serve their book buying needs in the future.

As David Penn succinctly stated, “Measuring engagement and engaging consumers are two sides of the same coin.” At Book Depot this is one of our mantras. We know that not only have our customers made us who we are today, but make us who we will be in the future. If we want that future to be successful, we must keep our finger on their collective pulse.

Making customer surveys a key part of your annual planning will pay off with making your store stronger and more profitable, while keeping your customers loyal!

Greg Sizelove

Business Development Manager

Book Depot

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Product Diversity – The Book Depot Anthem!

May 2, 2018

Diversity: the condition of having or being composed of differing elements; variety.

Diversity is a 21st-century buzzword. How diverse is our society? Would you consider yourself inclusive or exclusive? Do you have enough variety in your life or are you pretty much same old, same old? This word often pops up in discussions about race, religion, politics, or a variety of other social or economic issues.

At Book Depot, diversity in terms of product is something that we have striven for since day one. Offering a wide variety of products is what we feel separates us from most other bargain book suppliers. Whether it is fiction, children’s books (in just about every format), history, biography, crafts, cooking, health, business, religion—you pretty much name it, and we have it. Maybe it is because of our roots in retail many years ago when we had to fill a very large store with as many different books as possible, but we have the mindset that there should be “something for everyone.”

Fast forward some 25 years later and not much has changed. Our motto is “The Largest Selection Pays” and our mission statement (did you know we had one?) is “To save retailers time and money by offering the largest selection of high-margin books.” Having the largest selection of books is our goal, but married to that is the idea that the selection has to be made up of a diverse range of product. It is nice to say that you have 50,000 titles, but it is just as important to have a range of titles over many categories and genres. We want to be a one-stop shop for you and all of your bargain book needs. It doesn’t matter whether you are a specialty store or a full-range bookshop; everyone recognizes how crucial it is to have as much variety as possible to meet your customers’ needs.

Creating this diversity in product means a lot of hard work; relationships with many publishers and suppliers; lots of air miles and meetings around the globe; and leaving no stone unturned in the search for something new and exciting for our customers. We will take the risks to find the product we want you to be successful with. Every one may not be a home run, but Book Depot is a company that is not afraid to take a chance on something if we think it may benefit our customers. I remember 18 or so years ago when our owner came back to the booth very excited after acquiring 10,000 copies of Billy Graham’s autobiography. The conventional wisdom at the time was that Rev. Graham was likely nearing the end of life and this would be a good title to have in relatively short period of time. Needless to say, we sold all those copies long before we ever anticipated, but this is an example of the mindset we have always had at Book Depot—we take risks. A smart buyer once told me that you are not doing a good job as a buyer if you don’t make a mistake once in a while. Certainly, you don’t want to make more mistakes than your successes, but when bringing in product and trying to diversify to meet all your customers’ needs, you need to take some chances.

Book Depot is committed to being the most diversified supplier in the bargain book industry. However, to maintain this reputation, we need your help. We would like to get your feedback on items that you would like to see us consider for additional product offerings! We recognize the importance of good sidelines and the impact they can have in a bookstore, and maybe you have some suggestions for us? What additional items work well for you in-store, whether it is book, book-plus, or non-book product that we can investigate for you? We want to hear from you!

Rick Mechelse

Senior Sales Representative

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Loyalty Program: Why you need one and how to get started

March 14, 2018

Loyalty programs can make customers feel more appreciated and special, and in turn increase the likelihood of them advocating your brand to their peers. Your customers are your biggest cheerleaders (or your biggest threat!), so treat them well and it will pay off. Customers will join a loyalty program firstly to save money and secondly to receive rewards, so be sure to make the program worthwhile otherwise they will lose interest. If there is too much of a barrier for customers to receive discounts and convert points to dollars, your loyalty program loses meaning and people will drop off and no longer encourage others to sign up. Find the sweet spot for making it fun for your customers by giving them real value for their actions while you gain valuable analytics.

Why you should have a loyalty program:

As much as your customers think a loyalty program is a benefit to them, the real winner is you. When customers initially sign up for a program, most don’t think twice about the impact they have when filling out form fields such as age, gender, and address. Gaining customer information on habits and buying patterns is powerful information that you can use in decision making for purchasing product, sales, events, store layout, etc.

The moment a customer walks out your doors, you have lost contact with them and you are at their mercy regarding when or whether they decide to come in again to browse for new books. A bonus of a loyalty program where you collect people’s email addresses is now you have a way to keep your brand top-of-mind and entice them into your store with sales, promotions, and exclusive member-only content. With these promotions, you can incentivize more frequent and/or larger purchases that make the customer feel like a winner, but you ultimately come out on top.

Loyalty promotion ideas:

Creating a loyalty program that makes your customers feel good and also benefits you will take some research as to what you are willing to give up in order to gain. Depending on how complex you would like to get with your program, you may have to take a deep dive into analytics such as AOV, LTV, CPA, etc. to see exactly how much you can give away. The focus of this article is to give you some basic ideas you can implement relatively quickly, all while keeping things simple to maintain and attainable for your small business.

Punch Card

If you want to start out cheap, punch cards are a great option. Design your own or visit your local printer to come up a simple punch, stamp, or sticker card where each time a purchase is made, a mark is made on the card to get the customer closer to a special offer. But, in order for the customer to get the card, collect information from them such as name, email address, address, age, and gender that you can track against their purchases each time a mark is made on their card. Incentives could range from a free book under a certain value to 50% off your entire purchase under a certain amount. If you want to get a little fancier with it, once one card has been redeemed, you can graduate your customer to the next level that is a little harder to attain, but the perk at the end is that much better.

Special in-store offers

Forget the card and just collect your customer’s information in your POS system, where you can associate a purchase to an email address. At the point of purchase, inquire with your customers as to whether or not they are a loyalty member and look them up by email address. This allows you to run promotions whenever you choose and the customer does not have to deal with a card. Run deals where loyalty members get x% off on a certain slow day of the week to up your sales on those days. This will make all your customers want to join your program! Or offer a limited-time sale where customers can get x% off their order for a certain amount of time, where only loyalty members can take part in the promotion.

Anniversary perks

When collecting your customer’s information, if you record the date they signed up and/or their birthday, you can offer them fun anniversary or birthday perks, like giving them a free book under x amount for the 7 days before and after their birthday. This makes the customer feel like you have a personal interest in them and associates a positive life experience with your brand.

Points = money

This one can get a little tricky. The sweet spot for finding out how much you are willing to give away will need to be determined by looking at your AOV, LTV, CPA, etc. If you would like to hear about our personal experience with our retail brand on how to get started, please leave a comment below and we will get in contact with you! With points, you can have more fun with promos by running 3x or 10x days, for example, where your customers rack up the points faster by making a regular purchase. Keep in mind that customers do not like their points to expire, so send them reminders that they have points available to redeem or let them know at checkout when you pull up their account. Also note that expiring points in Canada is now illegal, so be sure to set up your program in a way that abides by the new laws. This loyalty program approach can be a lot of fun, but if you make it too hard for your customer to earn real dollars towards future purchases they will quickly realize this and stop using the program.

Marketing your program:

It’s great to have a loyalty program, but if your customers don’t know about it, no one benefits. A simple way to make sure your customers know about your program is to ask each one at point of purchase if they are a loyalty member. If they are, mark their purchase against their email address. If they aren’t, be sure to have pamphlets at cash that you can hand to your customers that summarizes the perks they will experience by signing up that day. When customers first join your program, add them to an email campaign that welcomes them to the program and confirms they are successfully signed up to be a part of an exclusive community with perks. Since you will be collecting everyone’s email addresses, send out monthly or bi-monthly emails about exclusive offers and reminders about why being a member benefits them. Use this opportunity to also give them exclusive insight to sales before they start so they are the first to know. When you let your loyalty customers know about something exciting before everyone else, it makes them feel special.

Measuring success:

Once your program is up and running, you will want to know if it is worth your time to continue or not. Important metrics to look at when comparing your loyalty members to your non-loyalty members are frequency of purchases, average order value, and program engagement rate. Are things improving for your bottom line? If not, don’t worry. It might take a couple of changes to start to see where you are making an impact with the customer. Be patient with it and give it the time and dedication it needs before you decide to stop your program.

Don’t be afraid to ask your customers how they are liking your program. Send out an email survey or run a simple ballot survey in-store and learn about what your customers love or dislike. The key metric you are measuring here is Net Promoter Score (NPS) by making sure to include the one question “How likely are you to recommend [store name] to your friends and family on a scale from 1-10?” Your customers are your biggest advocate, so you want to ensure they will be telling their friends about you if they are happy. Check out this article here to learn about the importance of NPS for your store.

Let us know if you plan on trying to implement some of these ideas in-store and keep us updated on how things are going! We would also be happy to have someone from our marketing team jump on a call with you to discuss our own experience with loyalty programs, so please leave your info below if you would like to be contacted.

Mary Tigchelaar

Book Depot

Marketing Coordinator

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Visual merchandising display of books in bookstore.

Creative Merchandising Ideas

February 28, 2018

Does your store stand out from the crowd? Does it excite customers? Is there a way you can beef up your merchandising to increase sales? Is that even possible in a bookstore? I say YES! Having 11+ years’ experience working for a major book retailer in Canada, I have seen many ways to increase sales via in-store merchandising. People come to your brick-and-mortar store to discover new items, to be WOWED. Making your store stand out from the competition is crucial to staying healthy and profitable in this competitive marketplace. Not only are you competing with other brick-and-mortar stores, you are now competing with online retailers too. Therefore, creative merchandising becomes even more important. You want to provide your customers with the ultimate shopping experience! Here are six easy ways to boost sales, while making an aesthetic impact on your store.

Change displays biweekly

All of us know that it is crucial to merchandise displays to follow holidays, seasons, etc. But is that really enough? Keep your store vibrant and fresh by switching your displays on a biweekly schedule whenever it is possible. This will keep customers excited and looking forward to see what’s new when they return.

Is your cash lineup exciting?

New arrivals should be displayed near the front of the store. Most book retailers have ample new arrivals weekly. Keeping your cash lineup fresh gives you more opportunity to entice your customers to impulse buy an item they didn’t even come into your store for. Alongside these sought-after new arrivals, display easy add-on items (low ticket priced items – like bargain books) to increase your customers’ basket size.

Tables should tell a story

Grouping like products together will give your customers additional reasons to buy more items from you, saving them time mixing and matching categories and topics that interest them. All tables should tell one cohesive story. A customer is looking for a complete solution. For example, if doing a Mother’s Day table and you are featuring some books on tea, cross merchandise this with tea, tea cups, and cookies, for example. Table displays that tell a story are more interesting to a shopper and potentially much more profitable to you as a retailer.

End-caps

End-caps should be used to display new releases or older books by popular authors. When customers browse through your store and pass by the ends of your shelves, they can be influenced by what is displayed. Use end-caps creatively by adding products such as book lights, reading glasses, or gift cards. Adding one or two higher-margin products to every basket can really affect your bottom line.

Back of store merchandising

Categories such as Science, New Age, and Crafts and Hobbies, to name a few, should be placed in the depth of your store. Less impulse in nature, customers will travel to the back of your store to find these categories. By doing this you will increase the chances of those customers putting other items in their basket, increasing their basket size.

Make the shopping experience a comfortable one

Most shoppers shop with another person; a spouse, a friend, or a child. The more uncomfortable the spouse, friend, or child may get, the less time your customer will spend in your store browsing and adding to their basket.

Examples may include: chairs and sofas to make browsing more comfortable, ample heat/air-conditioning, or sufficient room to maneuver between shelves and tables.

These are just a few ideas to get your juices flowing. You will have many unique ideas that tailor to your store and your target customer. Have fun and be creative!

Tracy Basnett

Book Depot

Category Manager

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Book Depot Shopping Experience

February 14, 2018

In the heart of the Niagara Region—a place that is known for its beautiful vineyards, countryside, and of course Niagara Falls—sits the warehouse and home to Book Depot. At a sprawling 450,000 square feet, our building has a long history and likely many stories to tell, starting with its early days as a paper mill all the way to the major reconstruction it underwent to become the fully automated warehouse that it is today (Click here to read more about Book Depot’s origins). Featuring a sortation machine, miles of conveyors, and even robots to help manage the flow of product, it can seem like a complicated operation. As time shifts and the technologies do as well, however, I think there’s one thing that both wholesalers and retailers alike believe—that the physical presence of books is often best appreciated in person.

Technology has afforded buyers some pretty amazing options, such as the ability to simply scan through Excel spreadsheets and PDFs to purchase product for their stores. While these options have proved to be a great resource, the one experience they cannot provide is that of seeing the books in person. Some believe that certain books can be judged by their covers, and that their shelf appeal can be a great factor in their success. Book Depot has for many years opened our doors to wholesale customers from around the globe who, with this principle in mind, have come in the search of new titles.

Why Choose Book Depot?

In dealing with the industry’s leading publishers, our company has been able to amass a collection of almost 60,000 titles, which we’re proud to say leads the bargain book industry in terms of selection. To showcase this selection, we’re extending an invitation to our wholesale customers to come in and see some of the exciting changes we’ve made as a company, as well as shop in a clean, warm, organized, and friendly environment.

Our full inventory can be accessed by perusing the three levels of our main warehouse space, and entering titles into an order couldn’t be easier. We provide handheld scanners, which allow our customers to quickly scan a book’s ISBN to find out the quantity we have in stock, further details, as well as to add it to their order if desired.

As a second option, many of our customers will use our showroom, which generally features books that we have in a higher quantity. Often, this means we have 100+ copies available in our inventory. From within the showroom, you will have the comforts of a kitchenette, WIFI, lots of table space, carts to stack books on, and perhaps even some peace and quiet! At any given time, our showroom features up to 20,000 titles and is updated weekly to add new titles and remove those that have sold out.

Book Depot currently ships to 80+ countries around the world and we’re very proud to have hosted wholesale shoppers from many of them throughout the years. While we understand the challenges that travel presents, we work closely with visitors and receive preferred rates from some of the best hotels that Niagara has to offer. We are also happy to supply a letter of invitation to customers who may be originating from a country that has visitor visa requirements.

To both our long-term and new wholesale customers, you’re invited! We’d love to show you around Book Depot and provide what we consider one of the best shopping experiences you can find in this industry. For further information, please reach out and speak with your sales representative or our customer service team, who will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

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Adults sitting around boardroom table discussing hiring basics.

Hiring Basics: Tips to Help Find the Right People

December 27, 2017

Hiring is not an easy task, but if you have a good plan in place, you’ll be well on your way to finding the right people for your company. Read on for some tips and guidelines to keep in mind when you’re hiring your next team member.

Know the Position You’re Hiring For

Before you post a job ad, the first thing you should do is come up with a list of responsibilities for the position. This will serve as the basis for the rest of the hiring process. If you’re overseeing the hiring for a department that you’re not part of yourself, ask the department manager or supervisor for more details—they will have the best idea of their department’s specific needs. Beyond job responsibilities, some other basic factors to consider are: Is this a brand new position, or are you looking to fill an existing one? Is it full time, part time, or contract? What will the salary or hourly wage be? How many hours per week does the position require? Is it an entry-level position for which candidates do not need any previous experience, or is experience/schooling necessary? Knowing all of this information beforehand will help you find the most suitable candidates for the position, as well as help prevent you from inadvertently representing the position in a misleading or contradictory way.

Have a Plan

You’ve posted a great ad and interested candidates have sent in their resumes. Now you’ll need to prepare an order of operations for the selection process: Which staff members will be participating in the interviews? What will their roles be? Will there be one interview or two (or more)? Will the first interview be conducted via phone? Will you issue a personality/aptitude assessment, or a project? What is the expected timeline? When will you contact candidates for each stage of the process? Having a clear roadmap (and communicating it with your candidates) will help keep you on track, organized, and professional.

Consistency is Key

It is important to treat all candidates fairly throughout the selection process. Come up with a standard list of questions to ask everyone you interview for the position. If you plan to issue an assessment or project, ensure you use the same terms, timeline, and criteria for each candidate. Using consistent evaluation methods for everyone will go a long way in helping you to determine the successful candidate.

No Surprises

Make sure you and your candidates are on the same page from start to finish. If you’re hiring for a contract position that has a definite end date, clearly specify this in the job ad and reiterate it during the interview process. If the position requires specific experience, education, or equipment, be upfront about it; don’t wait until both you and your candidates have invested a significant amount of time in the selection process to find out you’re not going to be a good fit for each other.

Take Notes

Whether you’re meeting with three candidates or ten, it’s good practice to take thorough notes each time you sit down for an interview. With everything else that is going on in your busy day, remembering who said what will be one less thing you have to worry about. You’ll also have something tangible to refer back to for any follow-up interviews or contact, making it that much easier to navigate the selection process.

Consider the Culture of Your Workplace

Your company’s culture—which is continuously reshaped by everything from the unique personalities of your staff members, to the goals and values of your company, to the working environment itself—plays a large part in both hiring and retention. A thriving company culture attracts qualified applicants, and perhaps more importantly, gives them a good reason to stay! When hiring, look for candidates who have the potential to positively impact your company’s culture; our CEO Wilf Wikkerink wrote a fantastic blog post at the beginning of the year titled “The Right People on the Bus” that covers this topic in greater detail—we suggest you check it out.

Have any questions or tips of your own you’d like to share? Leave a comment below or email us directly at [email protected]—we’d love to hear from you.

Faeryn Genovese

Book Depot

Human Resources Coordinator

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The Right People on the Bus

September 27, 2017

It is often said that people are your greatest asset, but Jim Collins said it much better in his national bestseller Good to Great when he wrote, “People are not your most important asset. The right people are.”[i] Collins used the analogy of the company being like a bus and spoke a lot about getting the right people on the bus (the company) and that once you get the right people on the right seats (the right positions) of the bus, you can drive the bus anywhere. The reality is we will often spend more time with our colleagues than with our family members, so getting the right people on the team is of paramount importance to building a successful company and one that people want to be a part of.

Increasingly over the past number of years I have realized that attitude is everything when it comes to getting and retaining the right people. There’s a common saying that we should hire for attitude and train for skill, and I believe this is more relevant than ever as the pace of change in business continues to move at an alarming rate. Employees who are positive, love life, and are engaged in the vision of the company will adapt quicker to change and are more willing to follow leaders who take them down new and uncharted territories. Of course, there are certain hard skills that are required for any job and some more so than others—I would most certainly fail if I was hired to be the head programmer of a software development company. However, a highly skilled and experienced member of your team with a negative attitude will be a cancer in your organization and will ultimately fail themselves. Someone who has less experience and fewer hard skills but a positive and infectious attitude will always outlast the more skilled employee and will be much more beneficial to the overall culture of your company.

Jack Welch outlines five qualities in his book Winning that we need to look for in people to create a winning team. These five qualities are: positive energy, the ability to energize others, the courage to make tough yes/no decisions, the ability to execute, and passion.

When you read through the above list it seems so simple, and yet so many of us hire people with only some or none of these qualities. Then, when we realize we’ve made a mistake, we lack the courage to move those people out of the organization for their own well-being and the good of the company. One of the first questions I ask my HR manager after an interview is, “did they have good energy”? Who doesn’t want someone on their team who comes into work each day with a smile on their face and the attitude that he/she can take on whatever comes their way?

Those who have energy are also infectious to those around them; if they are excited about life, both at home and at work, it will energize those around them to be the same way. You can see how a few of the right people with positive attitudes can have a huge impact—I’ve seen whole departments completely turn around by getting the right people in the right seats on the bus, and it’s one of the most rewarding things to witness as a leader.

One of the more difficult soft skills to hire for is what Jack Welch calls “edge.” We must find people that have the courage to make tough yes/no decisions. Anyone can analyze a situation from every angle, but great people have the ability to cut through the murkiness and make the call. Many difficult calls must be made with little information and will require that gut decision. As leaders, we need to encourage our team members to make decisions, knowing that sometimes they will make the wrong one. It is important that we impart to our team members that they won’t “get shot” for making the wrong decision as long as they learn and grow from it.

The next key quality is the ability to execute. We may be able to find someone who has the energy, excels at energizing others, and has the courage to make tough decisions, but if they cannot execute, nothing will get done. Successful teams are full of people who can see the end goal and map out a plan to reach the goal, no matter what comes their way. Having goal-driven people on your team is absolutely imperative to delivering results year after year. One of my favorite business books on the subject of execution is Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan—it is definitely a business book you want on your to-be-read list.

The last quality is the notion of passion. Successful teams are full of people who absolutely love their work. They enjoy coming to work each day and ultimately feel like they’ve never worked a day in their life. The right people aren’t just passionate about work, however; they are normally passionate about all of life. They have a vigor for life, whether that be in their hobbies, their family life, their churches, sports clubs, etc., and they live fulfilled, purposeful lives.

If you find people with these qualities, do everything you can to retain them, take care of them, grow them, and reward them for successes; by doing so, you will create a team with A players who will be a pleasure to work with and will consistently deliver results for your company. I’d like to leave you with this closing quote from Jim Collins in his book Good to Great:

For no matter what we achieve, if we don’t spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect – people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us – then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people [we] interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with.[ii]

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[i] Jim Collins, Good to Great (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 13.

[ii] Collins, Good to Great, 62.

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Customer Success Story: The Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation

September 6, 2017

Customer: The Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation

Business: Nonprofit Organization

Website: ellafitzgeraldfoundation.org

The Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation is able to successfully sustain the “A Book Just for Me!” program through Book Depot’s unbeatable, low prices.

The Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation

The Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation, established in 1993 by the late American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, assists at-risk and disadvantaged individuals and families in communities located predominantly in Los Angeles, California, and the surrounding area. One of the foundation’s aims is to help provide educational opportunities for children, which they do in part through their “A Book Just for Me!” book give-away program. The foundation supplies books to 100 nonprofit organizations each year through this program, which was created in memory of Fitzgerald following her passing in 1996. As of 2016, the foundation has given books to hundreds of thousands of children, ranging in age from birth through to college.

In order to keep the “A Book Just for Me!” program viable, the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation requires a dependable source for new, unread, low-cost book product that is suitable for a broad spectrum of ages and interests, as well as flexible, affordable shipping options to service all of the nonprofit organizations they are partnered with.

Solution

Book Depot’s large inventory of children’s and young adult titles provides the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation with the selection and quantities they want at the unbeatable, low prices they need to sustain the “A Book Just for Me!” program. Additionally, Book Depot’s ability to ship directly to the foundation’s nonprofit partners using the most economical shipping method for each location helps save the foundation time and money. While the foundation prefers to place their orders online via Book Depot’s comprehensive, user-friendly website, they are also partnered with a sales representative for personalized service.

Results

Since the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation first began purchasing from Book Depot just over 10 years ago in 2006, we have supplied them with 965,122 units to date at a fantastic average per-unit cost of $0.99 cents, which helps ensure that as many children as possible are able to receive books and benefit from this excellent program.

“There is just no way we could run this program without Book Depot and your amazing selection and even more amazing low prices. We are very, very grateful. (Plus, you are ALL so nice and helpful, what a pleasure!) And you ship wherever we want, which makes my job so much easier. Your website is a pleasure to use.” – Fran Morris-Rosman, Executive Director and Chief Literacy Officer

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Multicoloured book pages and paperback book covers.

10 Interesting Facts about the Book Publishing Industry

August 16, 2017

The book publishing industry has a history spanning several decades and many great continents. It is arguable that some may even consider books to be the greatest medium to deliver content in the history of mankind. With so many years behind the publishing industry, it would only make sense that some interesting things have happened along the way.

To pay homage to some of the strangest records, stats, and facts ever recorded in publishing history, we have created a Top 10 list about the book publishing industry for your entertainment. We hope you have fun reading some of the eyebrow-raising, jaw-dropping, and just outright crazy facts we were able to find out about this great industry!

Without further ado, enjoy!

10 Interesting Facts About the Book Publishing Industry

1. According to a survey conducted by The New York Times, 81% of Americans feel they have a book in them. But most haven’t written it.

2. The Bay Psalm Book was the first book to be published in British North America. This was in 1640, just a mere 136 years before the United States became a country and 267 years before Canada was formed.

3. One of 11 original copies of The Bay Psalm Book sold in 2013 for a whopping record of $14.2 million. (Little did they know they could have opened several bargain bookstores for that very same price.)

4. Without paper, we quite possibly would not have publishing! This great invention originated in ancient China during the years of 206 BC – 220 AD. Though that’s not a specific date or length of time, the e-readers certainly have a long ways to go to catch up.

5. Approximately 60% of English-language books are produced through the “Big Five” publishing houses. Book Depot is proud to say that we are currently distributing bargain books issued by all of them and a wide selection of many other notable publishing houses as well.

6. Now an asset to the book selling industry, bargain books have not always been in the picture. In 1986, Book Depot was formed and became a pioneer in this industry, which now distributes many millions of books each year. Can you imagine how much paper was shredded and wasted up to that point?!

7. Books actually come in all shapes and sizes! While we are accustomed to popular formats such as hardcover, softcover, board books, etc., there are some publishers who look to make their mark in a different way. In our warehouse we have seen books as small as a business card, as big as a television, and even ones that are shaped like a wine bottle!

8. Though there is little doubt, the best-selling book of all time is the Bible. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, it is estimated between the years of 1815 and 1975 that a whopping 5 billion copies were distributed!

9. The largest known book to have been published is titled The Little Prince and measured an incredible 6’7” high and 10’1” wide when open!

10. Founded in 1534, the Cambridge University Press is the oldest publishing house in the world. It’s incredible to think they have a 500th anniversary right around the corner!

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