IndieBound Wish Lists More Popular Than Ever

A growing legion of indie bookstore fans are using IndieBound.org's Wish List feature to build a list of books they want, alongside a list of their favorite bookstores, and to e-mail it to family and friends. Although Wish Lists were introduced on IndieBound.org for Holiday 2008, this past March saw more lists created than any previous month.

"It came as a surprise to me," said Web Content Coordinator Matt Supko. "I expected the lists would peak in popularity over the holiday season. But every month they've been up over the previous period." Supko credits the increasing popularity of the lists to IndieBound's book info pages, introduced in February, the ongoing LinkIndie campaign, and IndieBound's continuing social networking strategies, including the IndieBound Facebook Fan Page and Twitter conversations , as well as general growing consumer awareness of the IndieBound brand and the Shop Local movement.

IndieBound.org's Wish Lists are unique in that consumers can not only create a list of books they want, but associate those books with a list of their favorite indie bookstores on IndieBound.org. For each title on the user's list, a link is included to purchase that book online from the user's top-ranked bookstore with an e-commerce-capable website.

ABA member stores are encouraged to share the Wish List feature with their customers. "It's a great way of making sure the gifts your customers get, come from your store," said ABA Chief Marketing Officer Meg Smith. "There are plenty of other online Wish List services out there, and most of them don't link to independent bookstores."

To help stores promote the Wish List feature, ABA has created a simple, editable Counter Card that can be displayed at the checkout, or anywhere in the store. Booksellers who would like to further customize the Counter Card, or want to brainstorm ideas to promote the Wish Lists, should contact IndieBound Outreach Liaison Paige Poe at (800) 637-0037 x6668, or paige@bookweb.org.

The top five most wished for books as of April 1 are:

1. Little Bee, by Chris Cleave (Simon & Schuster)
2. Fool, by Christopher Moore (William Morrow & Co.)
3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (Dial Press)
4. Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese (Knopf)
5. The Help, by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam)

Future upgrades planned for the Wish Lists include the ability to maintain multiple lists, as well as add custom comments to each book, such as requesting a signed copy. Watch BTW for announcements when these features are ready, and keep up with IndieBound.org news by subscribing to updates in the upper right corner of IndieBound.org .