CoffeeAndBooks.com Judges Books on Quality, Not Publishing Model

My company’s new site, CoffeeAndBooks.com, is designed to introduce readers (who happen to frequent our coffee-house partners) to books not found on end-caps at your local B&N.  We do that by:

• Giving readers who join the site benefits like free coffee, discounts at our partners’ coffee houses, etc.
• Enticing readers to buy books from the Coffee & Books online bookstore by giving them a $5 gift card to the coffee-house partner of their choice for each book purchased.
• Selling books directly in our coffee-house partners’ stores (right now we have one partner and books will be sold in 60+ stores).

Each participating store will have the same eight titles in a point-of-purchase, stand alone display for a period of two months.  Then we rotate them out and with eight new books.  We do this six times a year.  So, 48 books get a shot at being seeing by 60,000 people a day for 60 days (with the one partner we have now.  This will grow over time).

If you’re an indie or self-published author, why should you care?  Because, we believe that a good book, is a good book.  Period.  It makes no difference to Coffee&Books whether a traditional publisher published a book, if it was by a small press, or self-published.  Who paid the up front money to publish a book shouldn’t be the determining factor of whether a book deserves shelf space.  However, this only works if a coffee-house visitor looks at those eight titles and they all have a quality about them that is of the same caliber.  Our vetting process is extensive.  All aspects need to be present for a book to make it in:  great cover, professional interior, top-notch editing, and a story / subject matter that can appeal to a wide audience.

Remember, our program only works if our coffee-house partners sell books.  So, if your self-published book can compete head-to-head against traditionally published books, there could be a highly visible bookstand with your book on it in a bunch of retail locations.  Books will go on sale in the stores in November.  For that sales period, we have four self-published titles and four traditionally published titles.  Total parity.  What all of these books have in common is that you can’t tell which ones are traditionally published and which aren’t.

I’ve written three books.  Only one of them could make it into this program.  And, that’s exactly how it should be.

So, folks — the playing field (at least in my microcosm of book retail space) is now 100% leveled.