Bookstores Make Their Mark With Popular Customer Bookmark Contests

Bookmark contests create big community involvement, if The Village Book Store in Littleton, New Hampshire, and Village Books in Bellingham, Washington, are representative of other stores between the coasts. Nationally, many independents currently are gearing up for their annual bookmark contests to coincide with National Children's Book Week in November when winners are announced.

"You wouldn't believe how popular it is," said David Van Houten, owner of The Village Book Store, an 8,000-square-foot general independent with a stock of 25,000 children's books. "It's great for us and not much expenditure. Children are definitely our customers."

Valerie Tate, book buyer for the store, organizes the annual bookmark contest, now in its 16th year. She mails 4,000 entry forms to about 20 schools. "We start in September," she said, noting that the store needs the lead time to be ready for the winners' announcement party in November.

Under the contest rules, the designs must fit inside an entry form rectangle and must be executed in black and white. The four categories include grades kindergarten-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12. Three members of the community judge the entries. "Every year they're different," Tate said of the judges (who are never on the store staff). "One year, three librarians from the public library were judges. Sometimes, we end up inviting a lot of artists to judge."

Judges select first-, second-, and third-place winners, plus two honorable mentions in each category. "It's just too hard to choose one out of all of those entries!" Tate confessed.

Winners receive gift certificates for the Village Book Store. Each participating school gets a gift certificate, Tate said, "and if the school has a winner, they get a bigger prize."

Children's section at The Village Book Store in Littleton, New Hampshire

On Awards Night, all the winners come to the store, Tate explained: "We give them a little pep talk each and hand out their gift certificates. It's really a big crowd of people that comes. They're all very excited about it. The newspaper comes and takes photos."
The store used to print bookmarks of only the first-, second-, and third-place winners but last year started printing honorable mentions as well. Said Tate: "It's hard for me to tell them theirs are not going to be printed."

She sends each winner 50 bookmarks of their design and supplies each school with bookmarks of their contest winners. The bookmarks, with the names of the contest winners and their schools printed on them, are distributed at the store throughout the year. "Customers actually look for the winning designs," she said.

Occasionally, too, there have been unexpected problems. One year a female high school student "designed a woman and it was sort of like a naked woman," recalled Tate. "It wasn't real graphic, but we did have a complaint from an elementary school because we send them copies of all the winning designs. They didn't think that was appropriate for the elementary schools."

Overall, Tate added, the contest "is good public relations. It generates excitement. Of course, the winners are really very excited and think it's a really good thing that we do. We get a lot of positive feedback, and the schools continue to participate."

Village Books in Bellingham, Washington

At Village Books in Bellingham, Washington, where Dee Robinson is co-owner with Chuck Robinson, bookmark contests have been going on for 22 years, starting one year after the store opened. "We always use the theme of Children's Book Week," Robinson said, "and ask [students] to draw a bookmark compatible with that theme." Recent themes have been "Get Carried Away ... Read" and "Fuel Your Mind."

The theme for Children's Book Week this year November 18 - 24 is "Book Time."

The Village Books entry form has a narrow rectangular space for submissions, with simple instructions beside it: "Use you imagination to create a bookmark that to you most illustrates the theme 'Book Time.' Color in this blank bookmark, using pen, pencils (non-graphite), crayons, or paint. Entries will be judged on use of space and color and relevance to the theme. (Art by hand only—no computer or adult help, please)."

The entry form, Robinson said, "goes to our whole city school system," which includes a dozen elementary schools as well as private schools and pre-schools. The entry form is also distributed through the library system. The contest has five categories -- pre-school, kindergarten-1, 2-3, 4-5, and 6-8 grades.

"We get thousands, literally," Robinson said of the contest entries.

Three judges select the winners and five honorable mentions, and different judges serve each year. The judges select the winners on both artistic merit and also on how well the designs exemplify the theme of Children's Book Week. "We always try to find someone [to judge] who is an artist," Robinson pointed out, "someone involved with books like a children's librarian or a children's book author."

Awards Night makes "a nice party," Robinson noted, "because the kids and their families and their teachers and winners and honorable mentions all come. We make a big deal of it."

On party night, the store has the winning bookmarks individually framed and presented to the winners, who also get a chance to autograph their bookmarks. In addition, the store awards a gift certificate to the winners and honorable mentions. During Children's Book Week, Village Books donates 10 percent of all sales of children's books to the local libraries.

Village Books prints 5,000 copies of each winning bookmark in full color and distributes the bookmarks to schools and libraries, as well as making them available at the store. Winners' names, school, and grade are printed below their design, along with copy noting that the design is a "Village Books Bookmark Contest Winner." In addition, winning designs from previous years are grouped together in a large frame and displayed throughout the store.

Robinson mentioned the contest's printing expenses, but, other than this, she added, "I don't really see a downside. It's connecting the kids with the store…. They do look forward to the contest." As the contest moves into its 23rd year, she noted that "we have adults coming in and pointing out to their kids -- there's my bookmark!"--Steve Sherman