#I PROMISE I AM NOT BULLYING MY STAFF OVER VA THEY KNOW IT’S FINE IF THEY DON’T REC IT

[rose--hathaways]

How do you recommend VA to your customers?

oh my god i love this ask, i have multiple approaches & just a warning this is gonna be a long response bc i love talking about my job and thinking that i’m a great salesperson (when i’m actually really probably not)

so first of all i’m the store manager, and i’m going to be honest here and admit that i’ve convinced most of my team that it’s a key part of their job to recommend vampire academy. a few of them have called bullshit but play along, and a few of the younger team members fully believe it, so we make some sales from that 😅 not all of the team have read it (they don’t all read — we always keep a few people on staff because they’re good salespeople and can promo memberships, book of the month etc.) but they all trust that it’s a good series because i don’t shut up about it, and those on the team who have read it all liked it too, so everyone knows that it’s a safe bet for recs

selling it to parents who are buying for their kids is the easiest to be honest — “it’s about two best friends who would literally die for each other, repeatedly trying to save each other’s lives while managing and trying to overcome a power imbalance due to their social statuses. there’s a bit of romance, and yeah it’s a vampire book so there’s a bit of slaying and drinking blood, but it’s really about the friendships”. am i giving a fully accurate description? absolutely not but some parents treat their nearly-adult kids like babies so i play it safe. lately parents have also really been eating up the fact that it’s going to be turned into a tv show by the people who did vampire diaries — they’re always like “oh my kid loves that show! i know nothing about it but if it’s being adapted by the same people i’m sure they’ll love it!!” so that’s made my job easier

teens are harder, because they’re sometimes judgy and don’t want to listen to a twenty-three year old recommend something because apparently we’re old and boring 😅 this isn’t all teens though, some are cool and love books and are happy to take suggestions from the slightly-unhinged bookseller with winged eyeliner and mcr pins on their lanyard (thank you to these teens, you make my day 🙌). twilight has also been making a comeback lately (i think this is thanks to tik tok? idk but it’s been super popular in our store lately with younger teens), so chiming in with a “yeah twilight is great BUT you should read this series which is what everyone was actually into as a teen in the 00s/10s” seems to sell it because apparently everything i loved as a kid is now retro??? (sometimes these kids got me feeling like a grandma lmao but no complaints bc i love their enthusiasm)

as for people in their 20s/30s i just go hard with the enthusiasm and talk up all the parts of the series that they’d seem to be into (for example them: “oh i’m after something romantic” me: “OKAY LET ME TELL YOU ALL ABOUT ROMITRI”; them: “i’m just looking for something easy and maybe a bit trashy” me: “HERE’S SOME TEEN VAMPIRE ANGST”). the forbidden romance aspect is also a huuuuuge upsell for this age bracket, though everyone who comes back for book two is like “PLEASE TELL ME THERE’S MORE SPICE THIS TIME” so @ richelle mead if you ever re-release heads up we all want more smut. nostalgia also sometimes helps with this age bracket — lots of customers remember reading the first book or seeing it advertised or whatever so they usually give it a go just from that alone

sadly i have been unsuccessful at getting anyone in the 40+ age bracket to read it yet except for one customer who had actually read bloodlines already and didn’t realise that vampire academy existed 💀

also for bloodlines (and sometimes i try it with VA but to less success) the enemies-to-lovers thing makes it an easy sell with everyone, but i always try to get them to read VA first because i’m one of those people who have to read/watch things chronologically

if this is my regional manager you saw none of this and i promise i’m telling my team to sell the book of the month and not vampire academy 🤭👀