Co-Branding with Sponsor Bookstores

A few days ago Carla Cohen of Politics & Prose, in D.C., told me that she thought this is a great idea and that P&P would be happy to participate. As I noted here about a week ago, Carla actually has led literary travel expeditions with her customers.

In light of my most recent post, in which I talk about using an ongoing email campaign to promote specific upcoming tours, it strikes me that, gosh, who do I know that has a good email list of potential riders? Who but the various bookstores themselves. In particular -- the ORIGINATING bookstores, not the target bookstores.

So -- for instance, if I create a fun one-day, three-day or five-day vacation to Western Massachusetts book-museums and bookstores and authors'-houses -- then it's a store like The Strand which has the email list I want to get access to. But -- this is a pretty valuable list! So, ideally, I'd be encouraging stores in places from which tours depart to become Tour Sponsors. Perhaps the name BiblioExpeditions is completely concealed from the public, even: the tour is completely branded with the identity of the Originating Bookstore (e.g. The Strand). Or -- the Originating Group Of Bookstores (e.g. Greenwich Village Bookstore Organization)

And, when I'm selling tours of Greenwich Village bookstores to people living up here in Western Massachusetts, ideally I would be marketing these tours utilizing email lists owned by bookstores and book-institutions around here. The NYC tours could be branded with the names of one or more of these local stores/museums.

"Sponsorship" by a bookstore or book-museum could include revenue sharing, at the least, with BiblioExpeditions. Principally of course it would function as a signal to customers that the bookstore is a company that is providing additional services to readers, though. That is, a tour would function as a tool binding customers more closely to the originating bookstore.