Recently we got a group of sales reps
together to talk to our publishing divisions
about the way their roles are changing,
and the creative ways they're 
working with their accounts.
Well, a few years ago reps would have 
spent most of their time in the back office
of an account, working with the buyer,
going through the catalog page by page
and writing orders. They are now doing a
lot of marketing directly to the community.
They're working with traditional bookstores, 
but they're also working with libraries, 
non-traditional accounts, superstores 
as well as independent bookstores.
In the fourth quarter of last year, 
we did sixty bookstore presentations, 
reaching over thirteen hundred booksellers.
If you get a staff member who is excited about a book, 
a whole store can adopt that book,
and that leads to longer 
and better in-store placement.
Katie Mehan and our Random House 
Children’s rep, Deanna Meyerhoff,
spoke at Elliott Bay bookstore in 
Seattle to their booksellers.
And they also invited  five other 
bookstores to send their staffs along.
So in that one evening
our three reps touched six 
bookstores in the Seattle area,
about thirty different staff members.
And those staff members are going to go 
back and recommend those books. 
When you get Random House 
reps on social media,
the passion and enthusiasm they have 
for their books, coupled with the
information and knowledge 
they gain in their day jobs,
really creates a sense of 
credibility and engenders trust.
Since 2008 Ann Kingman and I have been producing
a weekly podcast called Books on the Nightstand.
Last year we launched the Books on the 
Nightstand weekend retreat that we
we had in April in Manchester, Vermont 
with the Northshire Bookstore. 
There were seventy-five Books on the 
Nightstand Booktopia attendees,
some of whom traveled from Switzerland, Germany
Canada, Australia, and all across the US.
Random House reps are also on Twitter,
with nearly sixteen thousand followers combined,
and they are a perfect complement 
to the corporate twitter accounts
that are out there because
we can share the passion that we have
for a book whether it has
a five thousand first print or a 
five hundred thousand first print.
Field and national account reps are currently 
calling on about a hundred of the top
Barnes & Noble stores throughout 
the country.
They go in and do staff presentations 
and consumer presentations.
This is to really raise the title 
awareness in those stores.
I was lucky enough last week
to participate in the Barnes &
Noble booksellers school.
This is a program where B &N 
brings in, in this case, booksellers
from thirty two stores around
a metropolitan area
to hear from their management 
and their buyers about 
initiatives, strategies, and products.
It was a really terrific
response that I got.
I was scheduled for an hour and, 
not because I talked so long, 
I was given an hour and a half
because of all of the questions and
comments I received.
And my favorite comment perhaps was
“I can't wait to bring this information back
to my store.”
Mass merchandise accounts are the big box
retailers. 
They’re discount chains, grocery stores, 
price clubs.
And they're looking for ways to create some
 excitement in their book departments.
This year, Random House 
will be the one publisher
that has a large range of autographed 
stock in Target and Costco.
So we definitely see this as a big
competitive advantage for our authors.
This past February at Wegmans 
saw the start of a new book club program
thanks to the persistence 
of our rep, Steve Maddock,
that will allow them to develop
a stronger voice to their customers,
and at the same time highlight some 
of our strongest trade paperbacks.
Sales reps can really help with 
author events in a number of ways.
Random House reps are working
harder than ever now to
really maximize those events. We’re
working with our booksellers
to plan the marketing, plan the publicity, or
making sure that we get galleys into the
hands of the right booksellers at those stores,
so that they can read the books, talk up
the events with their customers in their
conversations, really get everybody excited about it. 
Random House field sales force started a 
Twitter account called Live at Random.
And we describe this as a “virtual front row seat”
for some of the most interesting author events,
at some of the coolest book stores in America.
Reps are finding new and
creative ways every day to
reach the people who have a 
say about books 
and a voice about books 
in the community.
