Preorder Swag

November 2, 2017     erinthebooknut     Discussion, Uncategorized

 

If you’e a bookworm these days you probably have a pile of swag laying around. Sometimes its from author events and cons, other times from bookstores, but the newest trend in swag is the introduction of preorder swag as a main component of marketing books to teens.

Preorder swag is a weird thing for me, and its something that’s become much more prevalent in the industry. I kind of see it as a bit of a bribe from the publisher. “Hey, preorder our book so it can make the NYT Bestseller list on release week and you get a cool piece of plastic or metal.” And sure I’ve sent in for them, the tactic totally works.

I definitely want that colorful map on that silk paper you guys printed out or that bookwrap for a series I hadn’t yet started. And I totally need that enamel pin for a book I might not even read, so I preorder it and let the thing sit on my shelf because I want the pin. Yes, I do this. Because yes, preorder swag works as a marketing tool.

And it doesn’t matter that I know that this stuff is exactly that, or that a lot of the stuff isn’t that great quality. (Looking at you Tower of Dawn pouch). It’s stuff that I want, because I’m a crazy collector of stuff. I know I’m not the only one.

So we preorder and we trade or swag around the community to get all the things we want but do we do anything with half of this stuff? Sometimes yes, but mostly no.

Like I said I have a complicated relationship with preorder swag. It’s just one of those things, and it seems like it’s starting to be so overdone now that it’s hardly even special anymore.

But here I am looking at preorder incentives trying to decide which ones I want for my preorder this each month.

I’m pathetic.

How do you feel about preorder swag? Share in the comments.

From my shelf to yours,

Erin

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.