This last weekend marked the release of Stephenie Meyer’s ‘Breaking Dawn’, the highly anticipated third book in her vampire trilogy (the first has been made into a major motion picture - Twilight). My daughter for one was extremely excited by the release, and heard that Barnes and Noble was throwing big parties at 12:01 am across the country to mark the event. Being a marketing pimp, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, because if you can generate that kind of hype, you’re doing something right.

But instead of going to the Big Box Retailer - we decided to go to the usually excellent Fairhaven Books in Bellingham, WA to see how a small independent retailer was leveraging this great marketing opportunity. What I found was a little disappointing. Hey - if I wanted to be just handed a book with no added value (like a great book buying experience), I would’ve just gone to Amazon and saved a few bucks. See the video blog to see what all the fuss is about.