Bloggasm

The other day, I was standing in a line at the grocery store when I saw that some shopper had discarded an unsold copy of The New Yorker on top of the stand that sells candy (for those who don’t know, The New Yorker is my favorite magazine). At first, I was astonished to see that a grocery store was selling the magazine — it was the first time I’d ever spotted a copy in such a place — and after this shock wore off I decided that I’d take the magazine and stand it upright on the tabloid rack facing out. Obviously, the copy didn’t belong there — it was likely supposed to be buried in the large magazine rack somewhere within the store.

This is not an uncommon occurrence for me. I’ll be browsing in a bookstore and come across a favorite author or book of mine that is placed in such a way that the spine is facing out. I’ll pluck the book from the shelf and then rearrange it so that the cover is facing out and prominently displayed. This increases the level of the promotion for the book — a wandering book buyer is more likely to see it this way, and it increases the likelihood of purchase. Do you know how I know this? Because book publishers pay thousands of dollars to chain bookstores to have their books arranged in the exact same fashion.

By engaging in this level of promotion, I’m committing a mild version of “shopdropping” a growing trend for many writers and artists. Let’s say you’re someone who has a book that has been published by a small press. The publisher obviously doesn’t have the thousands of dollars needed to pay big box book stores to display your book prominently in the “new releases” section. So what do you do? You start visiting the stores yourself and moving your books to this section.

But writers aren’t the only ones engaging in this sort of behavior. According to an article in The New York Times just about every artist or political group can use this sort of reverse-shoplifting to his advantage.

So does this really work? I’m willing to bet that it does. How stores display their products has a huge impact on the sales of said products. I worked at a Walmart in college, and they had an entire computerized strategy of how they wanted to promote the products they sold, and this strategy relied heavily on placement.

For the artist looking to promote his work, the best tactic would be to go for efficiency. Think about your target audience and where it shops. Get your product into a highly-visible place and then hope that it catches eyes before the employees catch onto your game. But be aware that retailers are becoming increasingly wary of such shenanigans — make the swap when the cashier isn’t looking.

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