Marketing James Patterson

James Patterson is a renowned best-selling crime fiction author whose novels, such as The Beach House, Four Blind Mice, Violets are Blue, and Roses are Red, have sold over six million copies from November 2000 to June 2003. His novels are found in just about every outlet from bookstores, book clubs, grocery stores, and airport stores. With his background in advertising, Patterson had been successful in utilizing various marketing strategies to explore different avenues to increase his brand awareness generating $120 million in sales annually. Despite all of Patterson’s success, he began to believe that selling through the Book Club channel was draining his profits and contemplated different strategies to increase his readership, in turn increasing his sales. Book clubs have shown to be successful with books such as Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier by exposing these books to readers that typically would not ready that genre, but Patterson believed that Book Clubs benefited from brand name authors more than they did from the book clubs.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

• Diverse population of members

• Book clubs have remained a significant force in the industry for the past 70 years

• Patterson has a strong loyal reader base

• Patterson’s brand has the highest share of trial and he commands the highest share of wallet

Weaknesses

• Lower profit margin

• Lower book quality

• Lower sales when compared to physical markets (bookstores, mass markets, etc.)

• Only 5% of members stay beyond the commitment period

Opportunities

• Help reach an international member base

• One-to-one marketing provided by the book clubs to identify with unreached readers

• Book club editorial reviews have the ability to create buzz which help create blockbuster books

Threats

• Increased competition from a larger selection of authors

• Potential lower sales for Patterson generated from book stores sales...