When You Care Enough to Give the Very Best With Your Galley
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT INSIDE.COM (6/2/01)
CHICAGO — According to a recent survey, interest in e-books is minimal, and recent figures suggest that retail sales of books are flat. But that hasn’t stopped publishers from hyping their new books, whatever it takes.
And what it takes, these days, is a diamond. Or a tie pin. Those are the gifts from Walker & Co. as it promotes the new books, Diamond, and Sputnik about, you guessed it, the worlds of diamonds and the history of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik satellites.
Columbia University Press is going one better. It’s giving away a diamond ring to promote Living It Up: Our Love Affair With Luxury. OK, so it’s not a real diamond, but when was the last time a university press went for kitsch?
Johns Hopkins is giving away a house — a miniature one — to celebrate its publication of My House Is Killing Me!
There was a time when bound galleys were the coin of the book-fair realm, with publishers piling up heaps of them for booksellers to grab at their will, while they kept the hottest books behind locked cabinets until their best customers appeared.
This year there is a bounty of bound galleys heaped on the floors, but the most promoted promotions are the tchotchkes on the counters. There are the candies and the tote bags, for sure, and the posters and scratch pads that booksellers swipe with abandon. In this, a year of the flat sales and e-book ennui, it’s the quality of the booty that matters.
Outside magazine has a cool Swiss Army knife that it gives to special visitors. Rodale gives away chocolate-covered espresso beans to promote its books about ”psychic delicacies.” Newmarket Press wins the award for best packaging — of tea bags, given away to promote success@life, by Ron Rubin and Stuart Avery Gold, ”ministers” of the Republic of Tea. Harcourt has a packet of flower seeds urging us to ”Wing Into Spring,” on behalf of its children’s book line. Even staid Norton has matches to promote smoldering Sebastian Junger and his new book, Fire.
And then, for thingamajig overload, there’s Crown’s ”Prescription for Hot Summer Sales,” the vial of little white pills that smell suspiciously like mints, and are promoting Rae Lawrence’s steamy Jackie Susann homage, Shadow of the Dolls. The label recommends ”unlimited reorders,” and suggests that ”Transfer … to other booksellers is highly recommended.”
Oh, and pick up a galley while you’re at it.
