{"id":28468,"date":"2019-02-05T07:30:04","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T12:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=28468"},"modified":"2019-02-05T07:30:04","modified_gmt":"2019-02-05T12:30:04","slug":"mystery-date-with-a-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=28468","title":{"rendered":"Mystery Date with a Book"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"

This is one of Book Culture’s mystery books. Can you guess the book inside?<\/p><\/div>
\nFlying Pig co-founder Josie Leavitt may be retired from bookselling\u00a0(though she takes substitute shifts now and then), but she still loves books and indie bookstores. Recently, she was in NYC and visited Book Culture<\/a> on the Upper West Side. She found herself intrigued by their display\u00a0of ‘mystery date’ books: books wrapped in brown paper with no title, author, or publisher noted, just\u00a0a few enticing clues to make readers want to take a chance on a blind date with the hidden title.
\nJosie and her partner\u00a0took a chance on four of these unknown books and were delighted with their choices. They’ve read three of the four so far and all,\u00a0Josie reported, “were right on target.” One was a\u00a0short story collection her partner said she wouldn’t have picked up on her own, and she LOVED it.
\n
\nI love this clever idea to get books into the hands\u00a0 ofreaders. Many bookstores have been doing these mystery book promotions, and we can’t wait to try it, too.
\nWhat books are right for a mystery date?
\nFirst requirement: they have to be good! No booksellers in their\u00a0right minds would put a dud in a wrapper and try to pass it off as a great read; that would be a\u00a0quick path to your customers losing faith in their recommendations fast. They also should be discoveries; unwrapping a common bestseller would not only be a bit of a disappointment, but it risks being a duplicate of a book the\u00a0customer has already read.
\nMy bookseller friends who have\u00a0created\u00a0mystery date displays choose amazing books that, for whatever reason, aren’t\u00a0quite reaching their potential\u00a0audience. Either the author isn’t well-known enough to have a wide readership (yet), or the cover and\/or title don’t do justice to the content, or they’ve ordered too many copies of a favorite title.
\nBuying one of these mystery books requires a sense of adventure and a leap of faith, but since indies excel at choosing exceptional books and knowing\u00a0how to recommend them\u00a0so they’ll reach the readers who will\u00a0love them, it’s a small leap.
\nWe’re going to do a Mystery Date with a Book display\u00a0with our Valentine’s Day books, and I already have ideas for which titles I want to include. I’d tell you here, but, you know, mystery!\u00a0We’ll post some of our choices in a few weeks and invite guesses for prizes.
\nWhat book would you<\/em>\u00a0wrap up for some lucky reader to discover, and how would you entice the perfect reader for that book without giving too much away?
\nAnd can you guess the mystery book at the top of this post?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This Valentine’s Day, why not give a friend or sweetheart a literary blind date?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28468","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\/28468","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\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}