Michaelangelo had his Lorenzo de’ Medici, and Beethoven his Count Razumovsky. But where are today’s patrons of the arts? Tatiana de Rosnay, whose St. Martin’s Press novel Sarah’s Key has spent some six months on the bestseller list, might well claim Target as hers.

Target?

Not long after publication de Rosnay’s novel was nearly on life support until the discount retailer waved its magic wand over it, selecting it as a Bookmarked Club Pick and vigorously displaying and promoting it to customers. This blessing exalted Sarah’s Key to the Times list, with Target alone contributing more than 145,000 sales in its 1700 stores.

“Through its book club, as well as a program it calls Bookmarked Breakout, both started in 2005, the company has highlighted largely unknown writers, helping their books find their way into shopping carts filled with paper towels, cereal and shampoo,” writes the New York Times’s Motoko Rich. The chain’s success rate is all the more remarkable in that it carries no more than 2,500 books a year, according to Rich, but every one of them is displayed face out.

How does Target do it? Rich quotes Patrick Nolan, director of Penguin Group USA’s trade paperback sales division: “Target says every month, ‘Here are some new titles we’re bringing to you, and you can trust us, even if you haven’t heard of them,’ That is a very different approach.”

Read details here and learn about some other titles that Target has rescued from obscurity and lofted onto a pedestal.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.