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Swag

• Standard Definition: plunder, booty; money, valuables.
• Recent Definition: confidence, style, carriage; related to swagger.

There's a saying going around the internet that “swag doesn’t pay the bills.” In Children’s Marketing, that is patently not true.  Swag totally pays the bills—or, at least it helps sell books, which is what keeps the lights (and air conditioning) on in this funky-shaped building. [Note: Much of Macmillan is housed in New York City’s Flatiron Building, an angular architectural wonder that is on the National Register of Historic Places and has a perfect five-star rating on Yelp. Swag.]

Kids book swag is kind of like a party favor—if your book had a birthday bash or a wedding, it would thank you for coming and hand you a little gift on your way out that looked like one of the following:

Bookmarks: Classic swag! A bookmark doesn’t stray too far from the world of ink and paper. Almost anything can be a bookmark, including smaller books—but do this too much and you get a Matryoshka doll effect with a couple of broken bindings. Better to pick up the real deal!

Poster: When you’re not reading your book, it can still beautify your world. A children’s book poster usually consists of a spread from the book with a tagline that is funny, telling or inspiring. Since they are often displayed in libraries and bookstores, these posters may have messages which encourage you to read. Consider yourself warned.

Class Activities: Sometimes class activities are on the back of a poster; sometimes they’re on their own. You can check out book pages on the Macmillan website to see if there are bonus activities! Is this type of swag a little like the carrot sticks that one of your neighbors gives out on Halloween instead of candy? Maybe. Did that person know what was best for you? Definitely. Some of these activities were created by interns, specifically this intern, and they are FUN—and good for you.

Buttons, Tote Bags, Pencils: This genre of swag is my favorite, as it’s a killer combination of practical and expressive. Plus, sometimes tote bags contain… more swag. And books.

Alternative Swag: Here’s where things get really creative. Did you know that Shadow and Bone has its own nail polish? And that the upcoming Crewel has its own swanky purple wristband? 52 Reasons to Hate My Father had a giveaway that included heiress sunglasses like the one in the book. Step aside, Duane Reade, because Mackids has this covered. These novelty items are a ton of fun to come up with in marketing meetings—it’s an interesting challenge to design a small object that both conveys something about a whole book and is useful or cool on its own.

Now you might be asking yourself: Where can I get my hands on some swag? Easy! To get a party favor, go to a party. Check out author signings and book festivals. Buddy up with your local librarian. Consider working in publishing! The whole floor may or may not have sampled custom Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group cookies to make sure they were OK for ALA. (They were, but it’s always good to check.) Turn your swag on, and happy reading!

 -Katherine

Trends in Children’s Literature (and some suggested variations)

Interning at MacKids has given me the opportunity to check out a lot of children’s books, and a few patterns have emerged. Here are some thoughts on what’s in! - Katherine Damm

Trend: Bears

Suggested Reading: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?; Bear Has A Story To Tell (September 2012); The Bear in the Book (October 2012) 

What is it about bears that make them such lovable children’s book characters? Is it their adorably awkward gait, fuzzy exterior, or just that “bear” rhymes with a lot of words? Whatever it is, I am a fan of this theme. I want to live in a world where bears are not dangerous wild animals, but are instead cuddly creatures who like to hang out with their forest friends—friends that they definitely don’t want to eat.

Variations I’d like to see: huggable sharks, whimsical scorpions, mischievous man o’ wars.

Trend: Bedtime

Suggested Reading: Bedtime for Monsters (July 2012), Lucy Can’t Sleep (August 2012)

This totally makes sense. Bedtime is contagious, like yawns. If a child sees a well-behaved peer getting down with sleepytimes, they’re much more likely to go to bed without a fuss. But books aren’t just for bedtime. They’re for all day, every day! That’s why I propose…

Variation I’d like to see: Wake up, surprise story-time! (This is best done between the hours of 12am and 4am.)

Trend: Grandparents

Suggested Reading: Grandpa Green, Grammy Lamby and the Secret Handshake

There are some great picture books about children and grandparents. The kids are sweet, the grandparents are role-models, and nobody ever says anything that has become politically incorrect within the past twenty years just a little too loudly for comfort while you’re out and about.

Variation I’d like to see: A picture book about my grandmother specifically. We call her Mimi, and she is a witty southern lady who pointedly compliments my “lingerie” when I wear shirts without sleeves.

Trend: Dystopian Fiction

Suggested Reading: Struck, Monument 14, Birthmarked, After the Snow, and more…

This tren

Hello, all! My name is Katherine and I’m the Marketing intern at Mackids for the summer. A bit about me: I’m entering my senior year at college. I like writing and singing and comedy, and I major in the wonderfully dense discipline of Comparative Literature. Sometimes when I talk about what I study, I see people’s eyes glaze over and I know all they’re hearing is, “Blah, blah, blah.” Other times, I meet someone who is excited to discuss literary theory with me in an intelligent manner. Unfortunately, when that happens, my eyes tend to glaze over and all I hear is “Blah, blah, blah.” Theory is funny like that.

So enough about that…. Let’s talk about books!

I was delighted the other day to read the super-talented Lane Smith’s It’s A Book, which shows a conversation between a bibliophile monkey and a techie jackass. The monkey explains again and again that what he’s reading is a book while the jackass bombards him with questions: does it have Wi-Fi? Can it text? Tweet?

Sadly, I found myself identifying with the jackass. As a Comp Lit student, you’d think I’d spend more time with books than I do — but I often use websites and printouts, photocopies and sometimes even audiobooks (set to 3x speed so I feel like I’m being serenaded by chipmunks).

When you do use a book in college, you get the least expensive version you can find. (If you’re lucky, you pick up a used copy from a slacker. Those are always in perfect condition.) Then you spend the money you saved on pizza and deodorant. The truth is, schoolbooks are often a means to an end. You get the information in whatever form is cheapest and easiest, because you cover it up in your own highlights and annotations anyway. (My annotations are usually along the lines of “?????”)

So one of the things I’ve loved most about this internship is getting back to real, honest-to-goodness books. And if there’s one type of book that is lovely and cannot be photocopied or texted or tweeted or annotated, it’s a children’s book. Here’s a secret I learned this summer that they don’t teach you in school: books without pictures are overrated. Here, I’m surrounded by children’s books with gorgeous artwork. There are some for an older crowd over at the graphic novel imprint, First Second, too. They’re the kind of books that make you want to read and keep and display them, and then find a kid so you can show them what’s up. If you ever forget why you love books, see if you can get your hands on a really beautiful one. (Don’t get me wrong, though—books without pictures are also great. And we have those, too!)

So that’s something of me and what I’m interested in! (You know, the objectified book as it fits into modern materialist theory and the complications which Derrida brings up regarding blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…) See you next week!

Read Rachael's previous posts!

I get asked one question a lot when the topic of my seasonal employment at Macmillan comes up: How is your internship going so far? Whenever I’m asked that, I’m a little stumped at how to answer. I mean, for the most part, it’s been really fantastic. But it gets a little more difficult when I’m asked to elaborate, because my lingering awe of MacKids seriously impedes my ability to articulate how exactly my internship is so fantastic.

But now, the halfway mark in the duration of my internship at Macmillan has come and passed, and I thought it’d be an appropriate time to pause, take a good look at what’s happened thus far, and really try to answer that question everyone wants answered.

How is my internship fantastic? Let me count the ways…

1. The books – A+

Okay, so this seems kind of obvious. MacKids produces a decent quantity¹ of great children’s books every year. Like the next person, I enjoy a fun picture book to read and smile over, especially if it has pictures of cute animals, but my favorite type of book to read is YA, or young adult.

As a privileged intern of MacKids Marketing, once in a while, I get some pretty exciting things.

Read Rachael's previous posts!

When I think of publishing, I think about books and words. After all, this industry is fueled by the publication of books, which are filled with words¹.

We already know how important words are, so let’s talk numbers for a change!

Numbers are just as important in the publishing industry as words. Numbers tell us many things such as the list price of a book, its announced first print run, and its marketing budget. Numbers can also be used to describe the hours that each Macmillan employee works a day, the quantity of advance copies of books allocated to each department, and how many books The Intern mails out each day².

I was personally a little curious about the numerical particulars of my mailings, so I started keeping track a couple of weeks ago. Here are some statistics:

• Total number of work days: 10
• Total number of books mailed: 428
• Total number of packages³ mailed: 276
• Mean⁴ number of books mailed per day: 42.8
• Mean number of packages mailed per day: 27.6

Now, what do these numbers really tell us? Let me briefly return to my days in AP Statistics from years ago . . .

In reality, these numbers really aren’t all that helpful, even though everyone loves averages. Because in all honesty, I’m not mailing out forty something books and twenty something packages a day. Let’s try looking at some numbers that are a tad more useful:

• Median⁵ number of books mailed per day: 12
• Median number of packages mailed per day: 11

That seems a little bit more reasonable, right? And it’s a little closer to the truth, because while I do mass mailings every once in a while (as in 50 or more books/packages at once), they don’t really happen every day or even every other day. More commonly, I mail up to 20 books a day.

Why bring up the mean at all then? Well, to point out some other interesting info of course…

• Number of days I mailed nothing: 3

It’s true, every once in a while, a day goes by where I don’t mail out a single book or package. Those days are certainly sad days, but they are balanced out nicely and provide some respite for the days where I mail out lots and lots of books. In the past two weeks, there were days that I mailed out 86, 102, and 194 books respectively. Now, that’s a lot of mailings!

Finally, I’ll leave you with one last statistic in my pseudo statistical analysis:

• Number of packages mailed containing no books: 2

I bet you’re wondering how I would mail packages without books from a publishing house. It’s actually pretty simple, as we do have other items on the 10^th floor of the Flatiron Building that occasionally need to be put in the mail. In the past two weeks, this has included a catalog, as well as a pair of glasses.

Now, to wrap up, what does all of these mean? Basically that there is a more technical (and numerical) side of publishing. (And that every once in a while, flashbacks to high school statistics courses can be helpful!)

Footnotes

¹and the occasional illustration

²of course, it always comes back to mailing books

³packages may contain one book, multiple books, or other materials

⁴for those of you who aren’t statistically inclined, “mean” is synonymous with “average,” which in this case is the total number of books/packages mailed over 2 weeks divided by the total number of work days in that time frame

⁵another statistical mini lesson:

Read Rachael's previous posts!

Once upon a time¹, there was a publishing house called Macmillan. Macmillan was located in the Flatiron Building, a mighty fortress amidst the frightening landscape of New York City. It was a haven meant to shield its inhabitants from the elements and the evil outside. But not all was well in the Fortress of Flatiron, for there was an Intern trapped on the tenth floor! They said it was for her protection, but all she wanted was to step outside for a little while. But alas, she could not, until one day, a young man noticed the Intern gazing longingly out a window and called, “Rachael, Rachael, let your hair down…”

Wait a second, that’s not quite right! There are no trapped princesses and castles in New York City. And I’m certainly no Rapunzel²!

So maybe the history of MacKids can’t really be spun into a fairytale, but that doesn’t mean that it’s boring!

As you may know, Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, or MacKids for short, is comprised of seven different children’s imprints: Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers, Feiwel and Friends, Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, Roaring Brook Press, First Second Books, Square Fish, and Priddy Books.

But what you may not know is that it hasn’t always been this way.