Creating Shelf Appeal
I
think many visitors to book sellers walk the aises and run their fingers over
the covers before majking a selection. Before Internet search engines, this was the
accepted means of reachi9ng prospective customers. When I
worked at the parent company of Funk & Wagnalls, I learned that about 10 percent
of the public visited book sellers. But
100 percent shopped at supermarkets for food, which is why F&W sold its
encyclopedia at supermarkets.
Platt
& Munk, publishers of Holling’s 1936 book Cowboys, may have attempted similar “shelf attraction” by changing
the cover of Cowboys at least three
times! It's not known whether the cover art was created by Holling or the advertising department.
Our
able researcher. Joan Hoffman, discovered this curiosity. She notes, “A visitor brought to the Museum a copy of
Holling's Coyboys to add to our
collection. It had a book jacket that
was different from what we had. The hard
cover beneath the jacket is the same. It looks like we have three
different Cowboys books.
It is similar situation
as with the three Holling Indians
books.” Sure ‘nuff, this is what the Indians covers look like from 1935.
