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For Booksellers

Because I started out as a bookseller, many of the decisions I’ve made for Felony & Mayhem are intended to make booksellers’ lives a little easier. You’ll find some listed below, but in the future this section will tell you immediately if we’ve got any bookseller-ish news – anything from an extra-tasty discount on a particular title to a change in sales reps.

FELONY STUFF

Buying Our Books  Our books are sold through Publishers Group West (PGW). You probably have an account with them, but if not, please visit their website for info about how to get set up. Alternatively, our titles are available through all the major wholesalers, including Ingram, Partners West, and Baker & Taylor. They are, of course, fully returnable.

Sales Tools

  1. The Felony Icon. You’ll see, on the spine and back cover of every Felony book, a peculiar little drawing of, for instance, a crown or a chess-piece or a globe. Those are the Felony “icons,” which tell you at a glance whether this book is English (crown), espionage (chess-piece) or has a foreign setting (globe). There are eight categories in all, with the icons. Mystery readers, in our experience, tend to be very loyal to “type,” and this is an easy way to help them find the kind of books they most enjoy.
  2. The Famous WLTLT Box.  “WLTLT” stands for “Who’s Likely to Like This?” and it’s the box on the back of every Felony book that tells the reader, instantly, that this book will appeal to, for example, fans of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. It’s a great way to help introduce readers to Felony books with which you, personally, may not be so familiar.
  3. Inside of a Dog…   When we were launching Felony, we knew our readers were likely to be somewhat older, with the aging eyes and other physical issues that go along with not being 23. And we wanted to make our books comfortable for those readers. Accordingly, all our books are set in 11-point type, with wider-than-usual gutters and leading. They are not “large-print” books by any means, but they are designed to create a pleasant reading experience for people who don’t want to have to peer at the page or crack the spine. We’ve seen too many customers pick up books, open them, say “Oh, I can’t read that!” and put the books down in dismay. With Felony books, you will never have that problem.

Would You Like?  Over the years Partners & Crime was in business, we were inundated with useless stuff from publishers – endless bookmarks, postcards, baseball caps, novelty dice…you know the drill. We could do that (the dice-people would love our business), but we’d rather send you stuff that might actually be useful and help you sell books. Some things we’ve thought of:

  1. Shelf-talkers
  2. Posters showing the Felony categories and icons, and also new titles (should these be a size to stick on a counter or table, or big enough for the window or wall?)
  3. Post-It pads
  4. Little bitty bags of rock candy, imprinted with the Felony logo, that you could give out free with the purchase of Felony books
  5. Felony-branded bags
  6. Book-group questions
  7. Little booklets offering the first chapters of several books in a particular category
  8. Free books

Some of these would be things we would send out to say Thank You, others might be as a form of co-op – if, for example, you create a Felony & Mayhem section in your store, and send us a picture of it that we could post on this website. (In our experience, shelving Felony books together significantly boosts sales.) We know that cash is the universal Great Gift, but we are limited in our ability to offer traditional co-op. So please, tell us what you would like. Send us an email at mail@FelonyandMayhem.com.

Do you have a suggestion or complaint? Again, please email us. In particular, we’d love to hear about the out-of-print titles that your customers keep requesting.