Pixie Dust
at Stationery Show
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (JUNE 2002)
The
message from last week’s gargantuan National Stationery
Show — all 270,000 square feet of it, sprawled over
New York’s Javits Center from May 19-22 — was a gold-embossed,
watermarked greeting card carrying that shopworn mantra:
content is king. Well, this time around content was
king, as an estimated 15,000 buyers seemed to breeze
right by acres of blank books, journals, diaries, and
calendars as they dove into the booths of traditional
publishers such as Workman, Chronicle,
Random House, Penguin Putnam, Sourcebooks,
and relative book newcomer Blue Mountain Arts.
Amid the madding (and maddening) crowds, order pads
were said to be smoking, and buyers were breathing heavily
over Random’s new Potter Style line, for example,
which launched at the show. Aimed at special markets,
these titles consist of mainly recycled material from
artwork in the Potter files, spruced up with clever
designs such as the popular Ina Garten vertical
cards, which extend the franchise of that East Hampton
shrine to gourmandise, Barefoot Contessa.
Perhaps the most ballyhooed book of the fair, however,
could be glimpsed over at Candlewick’s booth:
Fairie-ality, from the Irish House of Ellwand,
with drawings by fashion illustrator David Downton.
This 130-page, full-color concoction of 150 designs
was the brainchild of publisher Karen Lotz, and
is packed with miniature couture designs for elves and
fairies created entirely from organic materials — feathers,
flowers, leaves, and nuts, plus a witty accompanying
text. Like much of the sculpture of Andy Goldsworthy,
the designs are preserved through photography (in this
case, though, the target audience includes fashion gurus
and design hounds). PR maven Jane Lahr, hired
for her work on Dinotopia, is setting her sights
on FAO Schwarz, Madame Alexander, Zany
Brainy, and other outlets. The $40 book has a 50,000
first printing, with major licensing opportunities in
the offing for both book (foreign rights) and non-book
categories. Watch out for this one at Frankfurt.
Beyond fairies, other items flying high at the fair
included Sourcebooks’ five-year-old romantic “coupon”
book series, just updated with the popular title Love
Checks — the checks come either blank or imprinted
with promissory notes entitling the bearer to, say,
a foot massage or a month’s worth of dishes. Meanwhile,
much ado was brewing for Blue Mountain Arts, published
by SPS Studios (it was the online card company
sold to Excite@home by Susan and Mike
Shutz, subsequently purchased by American Greetings).
Now under the direction of Helene Steinbuck and
Mike Levine, Blue Mountain has been producing
gift books to go with their printed cards, and sales
of the Language of... series have reportedly
topped 2.5 million copies. And for what it’s worth,
“Bookmark Gems,” a Canadian company showing elegant
bookmarks of chains with crystal and metal beads, appeared
to be selling up a storm.
The strong book presence this time around may owe itself
to a noticeably fresher design sense than in years past.
Garborg’s — the inspirational publisher of books
and paper goods — has produced a very stylish line under
the Max Lucado imprint, worthy of Chronicle
Books. The same goes for Publications International,
whose stand featured only their four-year-old paper
goods line and not a single book, including an inspirational
Silver Linings series with a handsome Prayer
of Jabez knockoff. And Pantone has cleverly
entered the market with a brightly covered and well-received
line of its own. None of these smart designs could compete
with the likes of Constance Kay, however, whose
stand showing handmade art cards was jammed — as opposed
to the deserted Kate Spade booth, where it seemed
her fashion sense wouldn’t quite fly in fairie-land.
©2002
Publishing Trends
