{"id":22040,"date":"2017-06-29T06:00:58","date_gmt":"2017-06-29T10:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=22040"},"modified":"2017-06-29T06:00:58","modified_gmt":"2017-06-29T10:00:58","slug":"book-swag-essentials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=22040","title":{"rendered":"Book Swag Essentials"},"content":{"rendered":"

Great book swag makes the world a better place, but it is an ephemeral and unforgiving art form to be sure. A good idea is required, but even if you have one of those there are still many ways to fail. Take this swag for the Alice in Wonderland themed Whatever After<\/em> book, Abby in Wonderland<\/em>.
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nIt’s a great idea, but it points to one of the essential characteristics of successful promo items: they need to arrive at bookstore counters intact. In this case failure was virtually guaranteed because the candies were placed directly against an ARC of the book in a thin, unpadded mailer. It would have been a miracle for it to make it here looking edible.
\nThe same day we received a nice window cling from DownEast Books as part of their Celebrating 50 Years of Maine Books. The problem?
\n\"\"<\/a>It was printed so that it\u00a0 faced inward unless we literally put it outside.
\n\"\"<\/a>So what features must all great book swag have?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. They must be either fun or aesthetically pleasing.<\/li>\n
  2. They must function as envisioned.<\/li>\n
  3. They must engage the customer in a way that conveys the essence of the book or books.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Here’s a great example.
    \n    \"\"<\/a>This fabulous swag from Sourcebooks for Blackout<\/em> is exemplary. A Blackout canteen and emergency water packet. Huzzah. And if we ever do have a blackout at the store and turn on one of the flashlights, talk about a marketing moment. Our store book group picked Blackout<\/em> for next month’s selection after I talked up the book and showed them the swag. They had to have it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Ways for book promotional items to fail and to succeed are illustrated and explored.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22040\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}