ENnies, your FLGS, and ordering books

[RangerWickett]

Publishers and store owners, we're planning on drafting some informational flyers about the ENnies that EN Worlders can take to their FLGSes as sort of a grassroots approach to spreading ENnies awareness (this is in addition to more direct things like getting articles published in gaming magazines).

Now, I'm not a print publisher, so I haven't had to deal with getting products distributed to dealers, so what I'm looking for is some information from the print publishers on how we could make an informational flyer more useful to game store owners. We want the store owners to stock ENnies winners and nominees, to raise the value of the awards, so we'll want the flyer to include all the necessary numbers and codes to help store owners locate and buy the ENnies products.

All help is appreciated.

 

[HinterWelt]

I was not sure by the post so I will ask for clarification.

Is your intended audience store owners?

Are they customers?

Depending on that, you should include titles, distribution sources (ACD, Blackhawk, Alliance?), ISBN, SKU, selling points, very brief write (i.e. genre, system (d20 or not) and what it is used for (source book, core rules, adventure)) and price. An aside, some store owners like stickers for the winning books others do not.

For customers as flyers at a store, a more detailed write-up, price, general sales text and awrd won in big letters. Probably a good thing would also be to include a URL to the company's web site.

Both should include a "Why the hell should I care about Ennies winners and by the way what the hell are the Ennies" style short write-up. Nothing huge, a paragraph at most.

Former Retailer who never gave a damn about awards,
Bill

 

[RangerWickett]

The primary idea is that EN Worlders will take a sheet of paper with information about the ENnies to their FLGS, and the store owner will read the info on that sheet, realize the ENnies are cool, and buy nominated and winning products.

 

[Turjan]

Former Retailer who never gave a damn about awards...

That's probably because nobody can expect the customers to know about the awards. There should be at least a poster available for the retailers. A cardboard installation would be even better, but that would probably be to costly, and not every shop has the place.

 

[D_Sinclair]

It's going to take a lot more than flyers to generate value to the ennies.

Things that should be done:

Set up an Ennies web site at www.theennies.org. Stay away from www.ennies.org, because the natural habit of most people to end urls with .com would send them off to a dance wear retailer.

Develop multiple posters promoting enne winners and nominees, in 8.5x11 and 11x17 size. Set them up as downloads the retailer can take to the local kinkos or as something they can order off cafepress (stay away from zazzle, their terms effectively nullify copyrights, which can cause trouble when dealing with cover art of ennie nominated products on the posters)

Develop the flyers which consumers can download, print, and take to their retailers.

Retailers sign up on a mailing list. Main purpose of this list is to provide them an annual email informing them of the ennie winners, less than 5 minutes after the awards ceremony has concluded, allowing them to order immediately so hopefully the ennie winning products can be in their stores by the time gencon attendees can get home and brag about their award winning swag.

Get distributors to sign up on a separate mailing list. As soon as nominations close, compile a list of nominated products and the related publisher information. Send the list out ASAP, with a note that you've provided the list so the distributors have some lead time on getting unknown nominees into the supply chain prior to the inevitable week-after-gencon rush to order the winners.

Of course, leverage everything you can to generate revenues. Keep the flyers very catalog-like unless a publisher ponies up some cash for advert blurbs or a dedicated flyer. Same for posters; first year, just do the posters, but the second year on, look for cash for preferential treatment or dedicated designs. Sell ad space on the website to generate revenues, particularly looking for retailers who want to brag that they carry ennie winners.

 

[Pramas]

Make sure the product codes and ISBNs of the winners are on the flier. That'll make it easy for the retailers to order product they may not be familiar with.

 

[Tinner]

I'm not a publisher, but as a customer, I know I'd like to see the book marked with an "Ennies 2005 Award Winner" sticker.
You know, something like you see on all those Caldecott, and Newbury award winning books at the bookstore.
Just a simple gold foil sticker wih the Ennies Award logo that could be peeled off by the retailer and stuck to the books.
Send something like that out, along wih a flyer explaining what the Ennies are, and how to order the books might be helpful.

Just my .02 as a consumer.

 

[Paradigm]

Publishers and store owners, we're planning on drafting some informational flyers about the ENnies that EN Worlders can take to their FLGSes as sort of a grassroots approach to spreading ENnies awareness (this is in addition to more direct things like getting articles published in gaming magazines).

I am both a retailer and a publisher, so here are my thoughts:

Make the flyer available both in greyscale and color so that the store can print as best suits them. Or ask a nice EN Worlder to help out and print one at Kinkos on nice paper.
Have the stock number and ISBN of each title listed, either nominee or winner.
Have an image of the cover of each winner.
Provide the URL of each company's website so that the store can check it for details (like distributors that carry them for example)
Also, point out that some nominees such as "Capes" cannot be obtained through distributors


For future years, I recommend printing winner labels so that they can be put on the books. I also recommend getting posters made to be distributed. Check online, here in greater-Miami one can get posters printed on short notice and at low cost. I know all of the places can ship them out via UPS.

 

[thalmin]

I would like to see "shelf talkers" with the ENnies logo on them so I can place them with the appropriate products around the store. Draws attention to the product, makes the Ennies more visable. Make it something I can download and customize to fit the product's display. Ideally we should have 3 logos: (non-metallic gold, non-metallic silver, and nominee) plus greyscale. Yes, nominees too. It works for the movie industry.
This plus the poster/flyer idea. The flyers will help get the products into more stores, the poster and shelf-tallkers help move the products into the customers hands.

 

[shaylon]

I'm not a publisher, but as a customer, I know I'd like to see the book marked with an "Ennies 2005 Award Winner" sticker.
You know, something like you see on all those Caldecott, and Newbury award winning books at the bookstore.
Just a simple gold foil sticker wih the Ennies Award logo that could be peeled off by the retailer and stuck to the books.
Send something like that out, along wih a flyer explaining what the Ennies are, and how to order the books might be helpful.

Just my .02 as a consumer.

I will second this idea. Making gold and silver stickers and putting them on the respective books would be a big selling point IMO. You could also add the url to the sticker and increase chances that people would hit the site to learn more about the awards.

Other ideas I have are making a shelf liner (one of those pieces of cardboard that hangs down a few inches off of the shelf) and asking the FLGS's to group some winners on it. You could also make an Ennies shelf out of cardboard that could feature some titles. I know that might be expensive though.

I think starting with the flyers will at least increase awareness but you might need to spend some money and make something catchy in order to gain acceptance at a retail store.

-Shay