Can Schiffer's Minimum Advertised Pricing Solve Publishers', Authors' and Retailers' Woes?
Book Business Extra caught up with Pete Schiffer, who was on his way to the airport en route to the Frankfurt Book Fair, to discuss the policy that the company thinks is the “wave of the future” for publishing.
Book Business Extra: So how has minimum advertised pricing been working for Schiffer LTD?
Pete Schiffer: We launched three titles (two and a half years ago)—[using the MAP policy]—that we created ourselves internally. We don’t want to try something new with an authored work; we don’t think that that is in everybody’s best interests to test something with the passion and the devotion of somebody who has invested the time in creating a book. We created three books, and we had success with it. So we’ve opened it up to our authors. Over the last two seasons we’ve published more than 45 additional books. They’re doing well. We created the imprint for the authors who were asking for another solution from the normal paradigm of how books are being sold in the current marketplace.