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Show, Don't Tell: Video Marketing for Bookstores [5]
[6]Booksellers who missed the popular ABA Winter Institute program "Using Multimedia to Market Your Store" -- which Tova Beiser of Brown University Bookstore described as full of ideas that "seem really cool and worth doing" -- can find something of a recap in a downloadable PDF [6] created by the session's presenter, documentarian Alex Beckstead, now in the Wi4 materials on BookWeb.org [7]. Included are links to several very effective videos, either professionally or store produced, that illustrate the power of the medium to convey a bookstore's personality.
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"Using Multimedia" features a quick primer on creating videos, where to post them on the web, and the benefits and limitations of the various sites.
Beckstead is the director of the Paperback Dreams, a documentary film about the history and struggles of Cody's Books in Berkeley and Kepler's Books in Menlo Park, California. A good video, he noted, is a "visual postcard that gets passed around and conveys the personality of the store." It needs a hook, a narrative arc, and some humor and/or personal interest. The point is to broadcast the personality of the store, said Beckstead, who noted the medium is faster to digest than a blog and instantly expresses personality.
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Along with storytelling tips, Beckstead's presentation covers the tech side of video production and suggests types of cameras and editing software for a range of budgets. He encouraged booksellers to use video for author events and promotions, as well as chronicling a store's history.
In an example from Booksmith in San Francisco [8], a professionally produced video highlights the store's local-authors month with clips from participating authors singing the praises of their city and local bookstore. San Francisco's Green Apple Books created a funny and homegrown commercial [9] to promote its book of the month. Both Vermont's Northshire Bookstore video [10] and New York City's Book Culture video [11] provide visual tours, but have storytelling styles, and Vroman's in Pasadena, California, mixed holiday title and sidelines recommendations [12].
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The point Beckstead made was that it's very much a DIY world, and booksellers can easily experiment with the medium and broadcast who they are and what they do for their community.
Beckstead's downloadable presentation [6] and an additional link to a book launch video [13] are accessible to ABA member stores via BookWeb.org [7]. More information about Alex Beckstead and Paperback Dreams is available at http://www.paperbackdreams.com/ [14]. --Karen Schechner [15]