Dec. 23, 2018 || NEW YORK TIMES
This year has been, much to everyone’s surprise, a blockbuster for the publishing industry. Despite the relentless news cycle, readers have bought books in droves. Hardcover sales are up, and unit sales at independent bookstores have risen 5 percent. Multiple titles — Bob Woodward’s “Fear,” Bill Clinton and James Patterson’s “The President Is Missing” and Michelle Obama’s “Becoming” — have passed the million-copy mark, while there is also a surprisingly strong appetite for literary fiction.
But what should be good news for publishers, agents and authors has created headaches during the crucial holiday sales season, as printing presses struggle to keep up with a surge in demand, creating a backlog that has led to stock shortages of popular titles.
Several of this year’s most critically acclaimed novels, including Lisa Halliday’s “Asymmetry,” Richard Powers’s “The Overstory” and Rebecca Makkai’s “The Great Believers,” were listed as out of stock on Amazon the week before Christmas after inventory ran low because publishers could not to reprint copies quickly enough. Best-selling and critically lauded nonfiction titles like David W. Blight’s biography of Frederick Douglass, Samin Nosrat’s cookbook “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” and Ben Reiter’s “Astroball” were also unavailable on Amazon, with some titles showing shipping dates of two to four weeks from now.
The industrywide paper jam has been building for months — a result of shrinking and consolidation among printing companies, the collapse of one of the major printers this summer, global paper shortages and a tightening job market that’s made it difficult for printers to hire additional seasonal workers. But it has become increasingly acute and visible at the industry’s peak sales season, when consumers are shopping for must-read titles to give as gifts, and finding that Amazon’s virtual shelves are bare.
The 10 x 12 red Wire-o bound book focuses on four imagineered brands in the growing health and wellness market: 1) Knetics Athleisure & Sportswear, 2) Pack Men’s Apothecary & Skincare, 3) Desert Mothers Spa, and 4) Odyssey Food Subscription Service. This tool is designed to provide ideas on how to: Get customers in the door, engage and excite customers, spread the word, and build a following.
When you look more closely, the Knetics brand is all about energy and movement and uses color to make an impact. Imperial Red is the star of this identity, and it appears here in three different textures, Stipple, Smooth, and Techweave. The hangtag embodies movement with grommeted combination of CLASSIC® Techweave, Imperial Red, CLASSIC CREST®, Windsor Blue, and CLASSIC® Linen, Chambray.
When you’re marketing to men, you’re also marketing to the women who buy for them. Here we see the Pack brand, a men’s skincare line features on-trend shades of gray and an exfoliant product cleverly boxed in CLASSIC® Stipple to offer a textural description of its contents.
This geometric, accordion-fold brochure uses dramatic diagonals, patterns, colors and images with the warm color and texture of CLASSIC CREST® Classic Natural White to invoke the essence of this event’s natural surroundings.
52% of consumers are likely to make repeat purchases from an online merchant that delivers premium packaging. The pairing of CLASSIC® Linen, lifestyle photography, blind embossing and raised UV gloss create an elegant brand presentation that customers will want to keep.
As so much of the world turns to digital, why is it that direct mail still works so well?
A look into the mind of the Gen Z-er…
