{"id":66,"date":"2008-06-24T08:10:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-24T08:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbicmsblog.reedbusiness.com\/elogic_660000266\/2008\/06\/24\/making-reading-appear-fashionable\/"},"modified":"2008-06-24T08:10:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-24T08:10:00","slug":"making-reading-appear-fashionable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=66","title":{"rendered":"Making Reading Appear Fashionable"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"While I don’t exactly live on an Anthropologie-friendly budget, I do sometimes browse the sale rack of the retailer known for its off-beat, elegant clothing inspired by vintage wear, and I do thumb through their mail order catalog whenever one arrives. Their May catalog<\/a> took me by surprise this year because several pages of it had a "Summer Classics" theme in which EVERY photo showed a female model doing what? READING! And one page in each of five reading-themed spreads includes a quote from some famous work of literature (Breakfast at Tiffany’s<\/em>, The Awakening<\/em>, Mrs. Dalloway<\/em>, Wuthering Heights<\/em>, Ethan Frome<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I think it’s refreshing to see a clothing retailer showing reading in such a fashionable, sexy light, let alone showing reading at all. (I also thought it couldn’t hurt the reputation of models to be seen doing such a thing…) I wish more print ads, television commercials, music videos, mail order catalogs and the like would show MORE images of people with a book in their hands.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

From the standpoint of someone wanting to promote the "coolness" of reading, this could only be a good thing. And for publishers these avenues seem like a potential gold mine for product placement.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I know, I know… Those music video and feature film spots are probably only affordable to companies with advertisting budgets the size of Coca-Cola’s, and devoted only to books with print runs in the millions. But surely some clever marketing guru could finagle a way to sneak in a superb book by a midlist author every now and again?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In any case, this Anthropologie catalog strikes me as a missed opportunity for some publisher, as the book this model is reading in every photo is one called The Color of Green<\/em>. (I can just make out the words in the photo at the bottom of page 24.) Written by Lenard Kaufman and published in 1956, it’s a crime novel that’s now long out of print<\/a>. But, hey? If any of you used or rare book sellers out there have noticed a sudden interest in this title, this could just be the reason for that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While I don’t exactly live on an Anthropologie-friendly budget, I do sometimes browse the sale rack of the retailer known for its off-beat, elegant clothing inspired by vintage wear, and I do thumb through their mail order catalog whenever one arrives. Their May catalog took me by surprise this year because several pages of it had a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}