Book Posters for the Ages
Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists blogged about a great idea today: book posters. Really groovy, beautifully designed book posters like the ones bands use to promote their gigs.
Yah! Imagine teenagers pinning up glossy posters of their favourite books in bedrooms across the land. Collectible book posters, framed or mounted, as sophisticated decor in boardrooms. Book posters hanging from the walls as funky conversation pieces in living rooms, restaurants, and art galleries.
Can you envision the marvellous artworks we’d have today if publishers had been creating book posters in the 1920s and ’30s? Promotions for Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway splashed across a canvas more expansive than a dust jacket. If the travel and advertising posters from this era on anything to go on, we’d have some truly outstanding artifacts from publishing’s history.
Heck, for some books they could even have used a larger version of the dust jacket. The first edition jacket for Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night is as beautiful as a travel poster already.
So why aren’t we doing it today? Phenix & Phenix were talking about having e-posters to put on blogs and websites:
I think these posters work very effectively. So much more exciting than a plain email that says, “Hi blogger, my author has a reading at this place on this day…mind posting something about it??” No. Let’s rockstar it up a bit. Give the blogger some bling to post.
But there’s no reason that limited edition prints couldn’t also be made available. If print books are on their way to becoming the collectible version of an e-book, why couldn’t a poster become an additional collectible, in addition to serving a marketing purpose?
What’s your take? How might you use a book or author poster, if you had one? Or if you think a poster wouldn’t work for your book, why not?
Tags: book posters, collectible posters