Anyone out there but me rooting for Alabama to win the BCS championship game on Thursday night? Anyone?
Go Tide!! Seriously, I hope a week of work is not for naught. Our publishing company is feverishly putting together the championship book for Bama. I don’t know if there is a more intense, loyal, and fired up fan base than fans from Alabama. I absolutely love how important college football is to, literally the whole population base of Alabama.
I’m trying to think how cool it would be to play for a program like that. Okay, I can’t imagine, so I’ll just put together their championship that commemorates a national championship.
This will be our 4th book in last 6 months, and 3rd in last three months. We did the Lakers book with the Orange County Register. Than after the Yankees won we partnered with New York Newsday, and most recently, our book on Brett Favre with the Star Tribune is still for sale throughout Minnesota.
Here’s a little behind the scenes peek at how these books get put together. First, off, we have to partner with a newspaper. The paper in Tuscaloosa, Alabama had roughly 30 proposals for books, and they picked ours. The key to success is designing a book that looks great on the shelves. Hs to be eye-catching and literally jump off shelves.
But it has to have great content that fans will want to have around their house to relive the memories. It’s an easy formula–lot’s of great photos, game stories and features from the season.
The other two key things— speed. You have to have the book on shelves 3-5 days max after the team wins the title. There will be other books, but the first is the one that sells.
And- to do that, you need distribution. We have it. It’s a three-pronged attack. Jim Pouba negotiates the deals with the newspaper and puts everything in place.
Don Kapral, our marketing VP handles the distribution deals and pre-sells the books to stores by the tens of thousands.
And then me and our designer Marlon go to work to put the book together. It takes us 3-4 days to build the book. It’s printed immediately, than shipped, and in stores in that 3-5 day window.
Now the potential for the Bama book is huge. We’re talking a state where the only sport is really college football. This is the home of Bear Bryant! This could be their 13th national title. They have the Heisman Trophy winner.
It’s all there. All lined up. We could sell well over 100,000 books.
The only thing that could screw this operation up is if Texas wins on Thursday night in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.
So, again–I say Go Alabama!!! Since we do not have a deal in place with a Texas newspaper.