How to Sell a Book? Insights from Romania

Many other famous intellectuals, artists and writers stress various positive aspects of reading. Scientific research in medicine and psychology also prove the positive outcomes of reading. Therefore, it is not a surprise that books are highly valued by societies. Nevertheless, book reading seems to be a rarity in some societies. Although reading is beneficial, the book market is not flourishing in many countries, including Romania. The present paper sets a framework for developing marketing strategies that could be used by Romanian publishers to attract more readers. The methodology comprises two parts. A first section is dedicated to the Romanian book market. Investigating its specificity helps us pinpoint the references for successful marketing strategies. The second part is based on the analysis of the scarce literature on marketing in the book industry in order to identify key aspects and vulnerabilities of marketing strategy in this sector

Innovation in the Book Market Retail. Preferences Among Romanian Readers

Today’s dynamic business environment forces companies to differentiate more than ever and focus on gaining long-term competitive advantages through innovation. The book market faces new challenges, mainly related to the shifting behaviour of readers. Innovation might be perceived as a path towards differentiation, attaining competitive advantage, and market success. Understanding the preferences of the readers and knowing the retail innovation trends could help all the decision-making actors of the book market adapt better to the dynamics of contemporary society and the business environment. The present paper aims at identifying the preferences of Romanian readers regarding the innovations employed in the book market retail.  To gather the data, we applied an online questionnaire to a sample of 486 respondents from Romania. The main conclusion of the study underlines that the consumers are not necessarily sensitive to technological innovation or an innovative format of the stores but are highly sensitive to the atmosphere in the bookstores and to the special offers of the bookstores

Actors of Creativity and Entrepreneurship in Romania

The new trends in the cultural and creative industries (CCI) that were theorized in the second half of the 20th century, simultaneously with the rapid development of technology, have created in post-communist Romania the premises of developing a new model of creative entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, the digitization of society and general strategic projects are not enough to create a catalyst for the explosion of entrepreneurial creativity. The unstable political climate and the lack of predictability have prompted the insecurity of the new business of "anonymous" creators - those who are not seen, those who are at the heart of cultural and creative industries - small and medium enterprises (SME), licensing individuals (PFA), family associations (AF). The Western models long described in the motivational literature published in Romania, as well as some notorious Romanian examples intensely publicized as the Romanian counterpart of Western companies, do not help and do not solve the generation of daily solutions or, more than that, Strategic Creative Solutions for grassroots companies. The present paper tries to define the terms necessary for the creative area and to analyze the situation today in Romania, presenting shortly, for comparison, the Western models, the Romanian models of notoriety, but also four examples of “anonymous” actors in the creative industries area: a floral workshop paper, an IT service company, a graphic design agency and a printing house. The conclusions of this punctual analysis are of an empirical nature, but they provide a picture of the fragility of the business environment in the area of cultural and creative industries, amid a timid and fragile but steady market growth