Look What’s Talking

Gregory Zura of comics publisher Fantagraphic Books writes about the imprint’s new line of shelftalkers, those “little cards with a quick reading description and maybe a couple quotes of praise” you’ll occasionally see hanging off the shelves, especially in chain bookstores (although staffers at indies often create their own for fave titles). Here’s a half-size reproduction of one Zura created for a flagship Fantagraphics book, Love and Rockets:

That’s a lot of information to process on one card which is, keep in mind, twice the size you see here&#8212but, Zura says, the retailers tell him it works. And it makes sense that Fantagraphics would need to put out some extra info to get a potential graphic novel buyer to break down and make the purchase. But when you don’t have to do quite as much convincing, you can make your talkers a lot simpler, like the National Book Foundation does (and, of course, they have the advantage of not having to deal with specific titles):

There’s bound to be a happy medium somewhere between these two examples. If you’re marketing books someplace, and you’ve got a GIF or JPG of a shelftalker you’re especially proud of, show me! NOTE: Let’s try to watch the file sizes, people. We much prefer things measured in Ks to those measured in MBs…

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