Sales and Marketing at Behrman House, Apples & Honey Press

Behrman House is deeply rooted in the Jewish community with a growing presence among secular audiences as well. We are nationally and internationally recognized as a leading publisher of educational and general Judaica, and as a leading independent publisher of books for children that center values, character development, and Jewish culture and religion. We work with authors as well-known as David Adler, Eric Kimmel, Jane Yolen, and Ruth Westheimer, and also with debut authors and those building their following. Over our long history more than a few Behrman House titles have exceeded six-figure sales when they became embedded community resources; our books backlist for long periods of time; several decades is not uncommon.

As a result of this deep and long engagement over more than a century, Behrman House has roughly 1,100 titles currently in print. Our Apples & Honey Press children’s imprint, which started in 2015 with an initial list of five titles, released its 111th title at the end of 2023 and our intention is to continue to grow that list by 20-25 titles annually.

As a small independent publisher, Behrman House can give each book the editorial attention it deserves and the marketing attention that will help it find its audience. At the same time, we have the benefit of access to a large and experienced sales force as well as broad distribution into North American as well as international markets through our partnership with Two Rivers, a division of Ingram. Two Rivers provides sales representation into the full range of trade wholesalers, booksellers, and other retail outlets. Behrman House retains the primary selling relationship with organized Jewish communities and institutions, such as synagogues, religious schools, and JCCs and a large following of educators and clergy. Unlike most traditional publishers, Behrman House maintains its own direct-to-consumer ecommerce site as another strong distribution channel.

Overall Marketing Efforts

Our sales and marketing efforts reach deeply into many markets. Our books are achieving growing recognition among book buyers and we have significantly broadened our reach specifically into school and library markets.

General sales channels

In this segment, which represents a large and often untapped potential sales opportunity for Jewishly focused and Jewishly adjacent works, Behrman House is represented in the trade by Two Rivers, a full-service sales and distribution company that is part of the Ingram network.

  • Our books are regularly reviewed by Kirkus and submitted to Publisher’s Weekly, Horn Book, School Library Journal, Booklist and others.
  • Our books are sold into libraries and schools through Baker & Taylor, Follett, Ingram Library Services, Mackin, and others.
  • Our books are available through outlets as diverse as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Target, and local independent bookstores.
  • We attend American Library Association conferences and are increasing our representation at other state and regional conferences, as well as other gift and trade shows with the support of Two Rivers.
  • We have begun working with Junior Library Guild and had our first book distributed by them in Spring 2023.
  • We submit eligible titles for the Newbery Award and Caldecott Medal, as well as a broad range of other national, regional, and state awards.

Organized Jewish Community

We have unparalleled reach into the Jewish community. Our books compete successfully for awards; our list includes three Sydney Taylor Award winners and five Notables, two National Jewish Book Award winners and two Finalists, and a Sugarman Family Children’s Book Award winner. Our books for both children and adults regularly land on ‘best of’ lists of books for Jewish holidays and other subjects. Apples & Honey Press also accounts for a significant proportion of the books purchased by PJ Library for its subscription program.

We also have longstanding ties to synagogues, schools, and academic institutions, and their leadership, throughout the community.

Our newsletter, which is weekly during the school year and biweekly over the summer, goes out to over 10,000 Jewishly involved educators, tutors, organizations, and individuals.

  • Our print catalog goes out to over 2,500 synagogues and religious schools each year, as well as to individual buyers; a digital version is available on our website and is used in digital marketing.
  • Both our content website and our ecommerce site each attract over 60,000 unique visitors each year.
  • We attend and/or present at Jewish educational and literary conferences including ARJE Annual Gathering; NewCAJE; Institute for Southern Jewish Life; Jewish Educational Association, Association of Jewish Libraries, the Jewish Educators Assembly, and others.
  • For appropriate titles we support appearances before the Jewish Book Council’s Author Network with a required 110 promotional copies, registration fee support, and guidance regarding the required personal presentation. 
  • Our books are regularly reviewed by Association of Jewish Libraries, the Jewish Book Council, Hadassah Magazine, and in online and regional Jewish publications, and are featured often in holiday lists and social media spaces such as the AJL Holiday Highlights, Sydney Taylor Schmooze and Jewish Kidlit Mavens.
  • We submit all eligible titles for the Sydney Taylor Book Awards, and selected titles for the National Jewish Book Awards, the Natan Award, and other prizes where appropriate.
  • We have a close and ongoing relationship with PJ Library.  Over the past seven years, slightly over 2/3 of our Apples & Honey Press titles have been PJ Library selections.

eCommerce

Book metadata is distributed to all sales channels through Ingram’s CoreSource platform, which integrates continuously with platforms such as Amazon, Goodreads, IndieBound, Bookshop.org, Target, Walmart, and others. Our front list titles each season, as well as our backlist titles, are represented on Edelweiss, the main platform used by booksellers and other retailers for learning about new books.

Unlike many traditional publishers, Behrman House and Apples & Honey Press also maintain their own robust ecommerce site, allowing significant sales directly to Behrman House customers at lower discounts than those required by most national accounts and distributors. This means a higher net price on those sales for calculating author royalties.

Physical distribution

All physical distribution is done from an Ingram warehouse in Jackson, TN. In addition, Ingram’s print-on-demand facilities in the UK and Australia allow seamless distribution into those regions.

Sales force

Two Rivers’ sales team is organized in the following manner, and we work with each group separately to help position our titles for their markets. Each book is presented at least twice to our sales teams 4-8 months in advance of publication to help them understand the full range of its merits. These teams include

  • National Accounts.
  • Schools and Libraries (our titles are represented to over 8,000 libraries)
  • Field Sales: Two Rivers’ sales team reaches out to over 2,400 independent bookstores.
  • Mass Merchant, Gift, Specialty, and Other Retail.
  • International: Two Rivers’ dedicated sales team has market access to more than 85 countries worldwide, hand selling to chain stores, indie bookstores, online retailers, distributors, educational institutions, and specialty channels all over the world. The International team has generated demand for Behrman House and Apples & Honey Press books in areas as diverse as the UK, Canada, Israel, Luxembourg, Germany, Singapore, and South Korea.

Customized Promotional Efforts

We work with each of our authors to find the best ways to leverage their specific communities, networks, and skills to find the audience for each book. Our internally developed author/illustrator questionnaire helps begin that process, providing the basis for bios and pitches as well as brainstorming ideas for positioning the book for the audiences for whom it will resonate.

We are expanding our range of support materials to include teacher and reader guides with summaries, discussion questions, and hands-on activities, as well as postcard and bookmark giveaways. We are generous with review copies and we support author outreach to bloggers and others in their networks with books for contests and giveaways, as well as providing ARCs and giveaway copies when appropriate for a number of the conferences and exhibitions we attend ourselves.

In addition to creating a variety of posts, videos, and photo montages for new releases to feature on Instagram and Facebook for both our Behrman House and our Apples & Honey imprint, we also look for ways to create unique social media and other campaigns to engage audiences and where possible expand them. Here are just a few examples:

  • For a book on aging, we created an eight-week pre-release Facebook campaign using cartoons created for the book to drive online pre-orders.
  • For an adult coloring book, we crafted a social media audience of women who color and sold out the first printing before the book was released.
  • For a book about the future of the synagogue world, we worked with the authors to develop and place news stories in the Daily Beast, eJewishPhilanthropy, Religion New Service, and other venues; provided advance review copies to over 100 community leaders and influencers, and planned out a 24-event calendar for the publication year.
  • For a family Haggadah featuring a cartoon frog we created a series of video interviews with the author’s frog puppet.
  • For a children’s book featuring character illustrations made from food, we created a series of memes from the illustrations for advertising on a social media site devoted to Jewish humor.
  • For a YA collection of essays, art, and poetry we held workshops with educators to show them ways to explore the book with teens, and we worked with the teen contributors to develop an Instagram campaign in which they are featured.
  • For a parenting book we reached out to a variety of established mom bloggers with a series of giveaways, offered some of the unpublished pieces from the book to several online publications, and put together an Instagram campaign featuring memes created out of quotes from the book.
  • For a book on teen leadership we mailed ARCS to a list of over 150 decision-maker educators along with materials explaining the extensive web-based materials created by the authors to support their book.

(rev 12/23)