Almighty painter

Chapter 262 Data Takeoff
Every customer who participated in the signing session got a questionnaire made of cardboard cards before entering the door, which was used to count the reasons for their purchase of fairy tale books and the advantages of this book in their minds.

In order for everyone to fill in carefully.

The card can be used as a £2 cash voucher when paying at the cashier.

The marketing department of the Scholastic Group will recycle these cards, analyze the sales situation and reader feedback of each book published by the group, and fill in its own business data model.

"Sir, I need to send these to the manager immediately."

The staff looked a little anxious.

"I'll take one if it's okay, and you can send the rest."

Dean Hawke casually grabbed a dozen or so investigation cards from the basket, and waved his hand to signal the other party to get busy with his own affairs.

There are four items in the questionnaire from top to bottom——

【Do you have the habit of buying physical books regularly?Have you purchased The Little Prince from the Townsendsman Group before? 】

[What is the channel through which you learned about this signing event? 】

【Have you heard of translator Charlie Hawke before? 】

【Based on what reason did you make the decision to purchase the book this time? 】

There is a row of printed possible options under each item, allowing readers to check directly at their convenience.

Dean Hawk glanced casually, and saw a row of nos in front.

The translator couldn't help but frowned.

If it is not filled indiscriminately, it can be seen from this questionnaire.

The reader who bought "The Little Prince" usually doesn't buy books, doesn't know about the book signing, and hasn't even heard of his name, Charlie Hawke.

"Run here to attend the signing, but even I don't know!"

Mr. Hawke tugged at the beard on his chin unhappily.

To be honest, I am not a world famous person.

George RR Martin, Stephen King and the others are walking on the road, and there are still a lot of people who don't know each other.

But this reader, who just asked for his signature, was completely ignorant of his literary achievements before.

Mr. Hawke inevitably felt a little indescribably sad.

In the last column, the column that drives the customer's decision to buy the book.

What was ticked by readers was not Saint-Exupéry's reputation in the literary world, not the dean of Oxford's 30-year translation career, nor the publishing house's marketing advertisements, but the illustrations of Detective Cat, which came last.

illustration.

Another illustration!

"The guy who bought the bamboo tree and returned the pearl. The language of Lao Tzu's translation is so fresh and childlike. This is the real skill. If you like pictures, it's better to read comics. Every page is full of pictures, just a few sentences Umm..."

The old man complained helplessly.

Dean Hawke casually threw the survey card aside and picked up the next one.

Then I was taken aback again.

The information checked on the next card is completely engraved in the same mold as the previous card.

If it weren't for the different phone numbers for the return interviews filled in below, he would have thought that one person had submitted two questionnaires.

"strangeness."

Dean Hawke lined up all the investigation cards in his hand on the table.

This time he didn't frown.

His eyes widened slightly, his mouth opened slightly, and his entire face was distorted for a moment in shock.

A total of eleven small survey forms were placed on the table in front of the old gentleman.

Only one mentioned having heard his name before, and one was bought because he was a fan of The Little Prince.

The remaining ten cards without any exceptions are all exactly the same as those filled in the first survey card.

Everyone's reason for purchasing is ticked behind the option [beautiful illustrations and exquisite packaging].

This……

Hawke seemed to realize something.

Looking at the crowded readers in the bookstore in front of him at dusk after signing in, he swallowed with extremely complicated emotions.

The mood of the poor Dean of Oxford at this time is like that of a dumpling chef in a dumpling shop.

After more than ten years of hard work, the mutton dumplings are made with thin skins and large fillings, overflowing with juice.On the opening day, there was a real flow of people, and everyone was full of praise.

But after listening carefully, every diner is praising the vinegar in the dumpling shop is really delicious, asking if they can pack two taels to take home.

Presumably, the emotions in the chef's heart must be extremely difficult to express.

Neither is happy, nor is unhappy.

Could it be... I actually got the credit of that internet artist?
Dean Hawk turned his attention to the fairy tale cover of the new version of "The Little Prince" at hand.

[Illustrator: Detective Cat (A)]'s name is grandly hung under his signature.

In order to translate this classic fairy tale well, the old man has been preparing since [-].

After ten years of sharpening his sword, when he learned that a newly hired illustrator had the same authorship rights as him, Dean Hawke was a little unhappy.

It's just a person who draws a few pictures. He thinks that adding a line of small words on the title page will give her face, and he is not eligible to be nominated on the book cover.

This situation after listing was completely unexpected to Charlie Hawk.

It is a coincidence that one or two readers bought books because of the illustrations, but it is not a coincidence that all the owners of the ten questionnaires paid for books because they liked the illustrations.

in fact,

Even the only reader who bought books because he was a fan of "The Little Prince" ticked two ticks in his purchase intention.

In addition to ticking the fan of Saint-Exupéry, another tick is also drawn in the small box that thinks the illustration is beautiful.

There is a [-]% probability that customers think the illustrations will move their hearts.

Then there is no excuse.

No matter how unwilling to believe it, Hawk must also believe it.

It seems that the awesomeness of Detective Cat's illustrations has caused such a hot scene in front of me.

Looking at the amazed smiling faces in the store when flipping through the books, I thought of the reaction from the audience when I was preaching on the podium.

For the first time, an idea popped up in Charlie Hawke's mind that he had never even thought about before the book was released.

"I'll go, I, a great translator, won't be taken off by Detective Cat."
-
"Sir! Sir! Something has happened."

The staff member with the basket rushed into the manager's office on the second floor and said out of breath.

""The Little Prince"...is very popular. This is the third basket of reader survey cards that have been returned, and all the prepared intention survey cards have been sent out."

"It's all over!"

The manager of Waterstone Bookstore Oxford Street, who was sitting by the computer drinking black tea to communicate work matters, almost choked on the tea, he coughed twice and asked.

"Ahem, out of all 2000 cards, not even one left?"

The store manager was not very concerned about the situation of the "Little Prince" signing event.

It's just a signing.

In this bookstore, there are heavy authors holding autograph sessions and reader meetings every two or three days.

I have seen many big scenes.

Recently, the headquarters is negotiating about Anne Ernor's meeting with readers here next month.

Since the other party became the 16th female Nobel Prize winner last year, Waterstone Bookstore wanted to invite the other party to hold a series of reader meeting activities.

However, due to Erno's poor health, he could not make the trip.

This time the female writer is coming to London for an academic exchange, just to make up for it.

The store manager is following up all aspects of this important work with the headquarters commissioner, and has little time to stare at the signing meeting downstairs.

He did hear it outside the window in the afternoon, and it seemed to be quite busy all the time.

But Oxford Street!
There is never a time when it is not busy throughout the year, and the store manager doesn't take it to heart.

So when he suddenly heard the news that the survey cards had been sent out, the person in charge of the bookstore couldn't believe it.

Two thousand survey cards meant that two thousand readers and customers entered the venue within a few hours.In terms of the carrying capacity of a bookstore, this is very close to full capacity.

Waterstone Bookstore did not do any large-scale warm-up activities before the signing event, and so many readers spontaneously poured into the bookstore.

Thinking of this, the store manager gasped.

"It's all over, and the number of customers entering the venue has exceeded 100." The staff nodded like a chicken pecking at rice.

The store manager couldn't help paying attention to this number. He temporarily ignored the details of the Nobel Prize winner's reader exchange meeting. He told the commissioner at the headquarters to talk about it in the evening, and then interrupted the conference call.

"What about shipments. How many new books did we sell?"

The store manager went to the wall and lifted the curtains, looked at the crowd still queuing up under the signboard of the bookstore, and clicked his tongue twice.

"Has there been more than [-] copies? No, this battle should definitely happen... Tell me, has there been more than [-] copies?"

the store manager asked curiously.

There must be a lot of people who walk into the bookstore during the usual book signings to join in the fun, just to look at but not to buy, or to come with family and friends.

It is impossible for a family of [-] to consume.

The normal paid conversion rate ranges from 30% to 40%, and very popular works can occasionally exceed 50%.

“电脑后台的出货量已经超过了1200本，准确的说是1236本，60套限量典藏礼盒开售没多久就卖光了。600本精装版就在刚刚也已经卖完了。700本平装版书籍出货了576本，预计剩下的一百来本也撑不了多久。”

The staff smiled bitterly: "Sir, I know you have an important conference call in the afternoon. I came to you because almost all the inventory in the warehouse has been bought out and I can't replenish it."

"Just now I called the main distribution warehouse in the West End of London. They said that the other two waterstone bookstores in London have more than a hundred books in stock, and they have also been sold out, and they are requesting to transfer the goods."

"All...sold out!"

The store manager was a little confused.

Shop rents on Oxford Street cost a fortune.

The area of ​​the backstage warehouse of Shuishi Bookstore is compressed to a small size. In normal days, there are only 2 to 5 books in stock, and they will be replenished after they are sold out. Some books that are less popular are simply placed on the bookshelves in the store. the only one.

But today is the first day of signings.

They've already stocked up a lot.

The most optimistic prediction of the publisher, President Osborne, is that he can only sell 600 sets of books.

Waterstone Bookstore has nearly 1400 sets of goods, which is fully two and a half times that number. Such a redundant amount is still sold out abruptly.

and many more,

The more the store manager smacked the taste of this group of numbers, the faster his heart beat.

2000 customers lined up to buy almost 1400 books, and the conversion rate of payment has exceeded 70%.

Often, the higher the paid conversion rate, the stronger the long-term potential of the book.

Can make more than half of the customers who enter the store pay.

It means that either the book is topical for the whole people, or the content of the book itself is very attractive to readers.

In either case, it will not be a 3-minute hot spot, and the shipment data curve of the entire sales cycle is unlikely to be significantly weak.

Plus it sold over 1000 books on the first day.

The best-sellers he has seen that meet these two data are almost never on the weekly book sales list of the "Moon Newspaper" for less than 10 weeks.

There are even some more fierce ones, which can directly climb to the top for weeks.

If you talk about the quantity of shipments and the conversion rate of payment, the store manager has seen even fiercer ones, and the ratio of shipments in Kufang makes him really do not know how to evaluate it.

Collection gift box, all 60 sets are sold out!

Each set costs £100.

London's per capita salary income is precipitously leading the British Isles, and one hundred pounds is also most people's half-day labor remuneration.

On the outskirts of the city, many people earn one hundred pounds without eating or drinking for two days.

This is a gift for hard-core readers who are not short of money. Usually, a few sets may not be sold in a week, but now it is as if they don’t need money.

"Today's sales are almost [-] pounds, and even the hardcover edition is selling so fast. Have you heard of such a thing before?" the store manager asked in astonishment.

"No." The staff shook their heads.

After all, the base of collection gift boxes is too small, and the atmosphere at the autograph session is hot, and people who come to Oxford Street shop relatively generously.

There is a possibility that a small number of people have their brains pumped with enthusiasm, and each of them can get [-] sets after taking one set.

However, the fact that the hardcover version was sold out before the paperback version made the store manager completely unable to understand what kind of fairy tale this book is.

On average, the ratio of hardcover and paperback editions of the same book sold in Shuishi Bookstore is about 1:4.

Occasionally, a popular book that has just hit the market can reach 1:3.

Most of the customers who buy books in physical bookstores are book lovers.

The shipment ratio of this hardcover book is actually much higher than the number sold on the Amazon online store.

As a result, today's more expensive hardcover edition has almost reached a 1:1 shipment quantity with the paperback edition, and sold more than a dozen copies than the paperback edition.

outrageous,

It's outrageous!
There's really never been a thing like this before for a book with a price difference of more than 10 pounds between hardcover and paperback.

It is not a question of whether it is fierce or not, but that this data completely violates the basic laws of the book industry.

Is this world crazy!

Everyone changed their temper and insisted on buying a book and taking it back for collection?
The store manager couldn't understand the data, but his heartbeat was as fast as a drumbeat.

Suddenly he opened the drawer and took out a copy of "THE MOON" released on Monday.

Turn directly to the cultural section of the ninth page of the newspaper.

Every Monday, the editorial department of The Moon will update the book sales data in the UK on this page.

All publishers will always pay attention to this list.

The current number one is still Prince Harry's autobiography "Spare Tire", which sold 72321 copies last week, topping the list of book sales for 20 consecutive weeks, and selling more than 20 copies per week for 5 consecutive weeks.

Whether it is the book sales ranking of "Moon Newspaper" or the "New York Times" bestseller list on the other side of the ocean, it is a cliff-like lead No.2 with tens of thousands of copies in sales.

Spare Tire has become the best-selling non-fiction book in human history.

And it's on track to be the second best-selling work of the millennium in the publishing industry since the end of Harry Potter.

Numerous book reviewers have predicted that it will have no rivals in the field of books this year, and the total annual sales volume is likely to widen the gap of No. 2100 million or more.

No.2 is the romance novel "Truth" by Hoover, a Douyin celebrity writer.The third place is the work "Campus Endgame", which was just released last Monday by a highly anticipated novel star in the industry, with a sales volume of 39721 copies.

The store manager only scanned the top 10 on the list before stopping.

In a normal situation, it takes about 5-digit sales data to squeeze into the top ten of the weekly best-selling list.

In the cold months when there are no masterpieces listed, there may be hope for seven or eight thousand titles.

This week's No.10 is an old book. It is the historical palace fighting novel "Bringing Up the Hall" that has become popular again with the broadcast of the BBC's historical documentary about the Tudor Dynasty.

It sold 10098 copies last week, which happens to be the last novel on the list to sell more than [-] copies in a week.

And the new version of "The Little Prince" sold 1400 copies in just three or four hours in this bookstore, even if the addition of Oxford Street's customer traffic is excluded.

Maybe if all the bits and pieces are added up, today's first-day sales will exceed [-] sets.

What about a week?

The store manager looked at the first three sales data in the form.

He suddenly had a premonition that he might have sold a remarkable book today.

Maybe it's not possible... After hundreds of days in a row, "Backup Tire" has been dismissed from the top spot on the best-selling lists of major newspapers and periodicals, so it may be a little bit of a move.

"The Little Prince and the autobiography of Prince Harry, what is this? The Battle of the Princes?"

The store manager muttered to himself.

Prince Harry's autobiography did not hold a new book launch event at Waterstone Bookstore, and the store manager certainly hoped that "The Little Prince" would win.

He had very, very high expectations.

The store manager pushed open the window, poked his head out, and looked out the window at the door that was still guarded by reporters.

Many of these reporters were invited by the Scholastic Group itself.

There are also some book journalists in London who heard about the popularity of the signing of "The Little Prince" on Oxford Street through various contacts in the industry, and came to follow the news on their own initiative.

Now the door looks like a star is about to walk down the red carpet. Reporters from more than a dozen media have gathered, and even the interview car of the British National Broadcasting Corporation has arrived.

"No, don't transfer the warehouse to replenish the stock. There is a limit to how long the signing can be postponed. At this point, even if you transfer goods from other areas, you can't sell many books. I don't care about the extra one or two hundred copies. .”

Looking at those reporters, the store manager gave the order.

"From now on, you all need to be prepared. Once the sales are over, immediately hang signs on all the windows [All 1400 copies of the new edition of "The Little Prince" by Scholastic Group have been sold out. Please come back tomorrow!"] Try to hang it as prominently as possible, with our biggest billboards. The kind that people all over Oxford Street can see."

Book promotion also pays attention to topicality.

In the field of news, crazy readers emptied the entire Oxford bookstore, which is more of a media selling point than the difference between selling 1400 books or 1500 books.

The store manager, who has been tested in the book market, is a smart man.

He is going to create an opportunity for reporters to hype the news.
-
2023年3月26日，凌晨1：30分。

On the still brightly lit London Financial Street, the 41st floor of the Scholastic Group European Headquarters Building.

"Country roads, take me home..."

The sound of a broken voice singing John Denver's famous ballad in the office reached through the door of the soundproof office to the clerk lady at the desk in the secretarial room.

She inadvertently pressed her earlobe secretly and smiled wryly.

Leadership has always had all sorts of quirks.

President Osborne's quirk is that he inexplicably likes to hum the old song "Country Road Take Me Home" from the 70s.

The happier I am, the more I want to sing, but I always run away.

The secretary is an old man who follows President Osborne, his most trusted subordinate.

The last time Ms. Secretary heard Osborne humming this song loudly, the other party had just finished a meeting with the board of directors.In that meeting, he was promoted from regional manager to vice president of Europe.

I sang like this all the way back in the car.

Today is the first day on the market of "The Little Prince", which President Osborn is in charge of.

It started after [-] o'clock after eating takeaway supper, and the out-of-key singing of "Country road" came from the president's office, and it didn't stop intermittently.

Judging from the loudness and duration of the sound and the extent to which President Osborne let himself go.

Judging by the situation, the sales of "The Little Prince" are not generally good.

In the president's luxurious office at this time, Osborne has turned into a happy middle-aged British uncle.

Except the hair is a little bald.

Osborne is almost 20 years younger, as excited as he was when he first dated a girl in middle school.

While humming a song, he played office golf and glanced at the screens around him from time to time.

There are several unfolded laptops and IPADs on the table, window sill, and cabinet to watch the news.

Even the large TV hanging on the wall to watch the group's stock price was frozen at a certain frame on the BBC Evening News channel.

Almost all the news interfaces displayed the same theme—【SOLD OUT (sold out)!!!】

In the accompanying picture of the BBC's evening news studio,

In the window under the black signboard of the Waterstone store on Oxford Street, the staff is hanging a huge promotional plate with the words "SOLD OUT".

Next to it is written the number 1360 volumes in Arabic numerals the size of a human head, with three bright red underlines added.

The eye-catching level can be seen at a glance from across the road.

This picture has become the most important news photo in the entire field of English books today.

[On the first day of the release of the new version of "The Little Prince", a long line was raised in front of Shuishi Bookstore. The leader in the field of children's literature, Scholastic Group played a new fairy tale trump card! 】

【SOLD OUT——Fanastic buying crowd, the sales volume of the new version of "The Little Prince" on the first day has undoubtedly exceeded that of the original work on April 1943, 4.Maybe you should buy a copy too]

[The 1 books in stock were all sold out in four hours, setting a new record for similar fairy tale books sold in a single day by Shuishi Bookstore in 2023! 】

[The confrontation between giants, Townsendsman Publishing House vs. Scholastic Group, who can monopolize the exclusive ownership of the gold medal IP "The Little Prince" in the English world? 】

[Illustrated Fairy Tale Book by the Public Opinion Center——Under many doubts, the first-day sales volume of the new edition of "The Little Prince" is expected to exceed [-] copies. 】

Today the mass media saves the time of typesetting and printing on paper.

Some efficient electronic media webpage sections can be controlled within 30 minutes from the time when the reporter submits the manuscript to when the report is updated on the website APP.

The Little Prince is the biggest publication of this Easter holiday.

In the past few hours, almost all the British book media have reported on the panic buying on Oxford Street.

Even the evening cultural section of the Moon News had to mention sourly, "The success of the first-day sales may not be attributed to the level of illustrations, but the text content is the key."

President Osborne didn't care.

A sales take-off is a take-off, and no amount of eccentricity can conceal the fact that the first-day sales of "The Little Prince" exploded.

He didn't even think about it.

This new edition of the book project can deliver such a perfect answer on the first day.

Osborne is now waiting for another call.

(End of this chapter)