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Book Craft Kit Production, Marketing and Vending

book kit concept

Beyond print books, there are various book products including multiples of book art, manuscript works and book craft kits. At the University of Iowa we currently produce four kinds of book craft kits. The classical uncovered Ethiopian book kit is produced in three sizes, a case bound Journal is produced in two sizes, and there is also a edition sewn board type book kit and a double fan, transfer tape binding. Each of these kits produces an attractive hand made book ready for use by its maker.

The kit concept, providing all the various materials in precut dimensions immediately eliminates the beginner’s struggle to assemble and prepare the materials. This means that a person can immediately consider the steps of assembly and the overall structure of the hand made book.

A particular challenge for the kit producer is the composition of clear instructions. All terms used must be defined, preferably with a diagrammatic illustration. Occasionally innovations of component preparation are needed to eliminate risk of mis-assembly. Contact adhesive may be used and parts need to be stamped to indicate top and inside. Innovations outside book production convention, such as prepared text gatherings with the head colored and fold bolt at the tail, can diminish risk and error. It is also helpful to provide an exterior labeling of estimated assembly time and any comments on adult assistance for assembly by children.

Another important consideration peculiar to kit design is the packaged appearance of the various components. Colored filler card and colored instruction sheets are attractive. Smaller components such as carefully coiled thread, endbands or label should be attractively positioned on the exterior of larger components. Arrays of decorated board papers, covering cloth and text gatherings should also be carefully positioned for visual effect. Finally, logo and product name labels should be attractive and well positioned.

book kit marketing

Book craft kits are easy to sell. They appeal to individuals without any previous bookbinding experience and they appeal to experienced book workers as well. Book craft kits converge easily with the large and successful on-line sales genre of printed books. An on-line sales site is easily located with search terms such as “book kit” or “book craft”. Portals and blog sites of the library and book art communities will also quickly provide links. Special communities such as the immense home schooling community also have resource portals with curricular pages such as crafts or book history.

Beyond sales to individual, there is also a market in support of book art course work involving bulk orders for entire classes. These orders should be supplemented by an Instructor’s packet providing set up and instructional assistance and appropriate narratives of related book history or book craft. Advanced instructors may also place orders for custom kits to produce equivalents of their own inventive and artistic book forms. Kits can also be produced as acessories to published book craft texts. The many innovative designs published by accomplished book artists, from Philip Smith to Keith Smith, await the production of their book kit accessories.

a scrapbook enthusiast

Finally, kits can be retailed through established venders. These include huge national chains such as Hobby Lobby or small independent shops providing supplies and workshops for scrapbook enthusiasts. There is the possibility of mechanized book kit production for mass market retailing. Such retailing is provided by chain art supply and fabric stores. In this market book craft kit products related to scrapbooks and Asian style binding are already apparent. A very complete production base for kit production would be required, though this already exists in paper converter and custom publishing industries.

Another option is to decouple the stand-alone book-on-demand scenario back into its more traditional components. Specifically, the suggestion is to separate the retail interface using conventional snack vending machines and maintain a distribution threshold between this retail mechanism and that of the print-on-demand technologies and publishing infrastructure. As Jason Epstein says; “The marketplace for digital book printed on demand requires that thousands of machines be maintained at remote locations.” (“Reading: The Digital Future”, New York Review of Books, July 2001)

Some advantages of this seeming reversion to the independent vending machine are its amazing adaptability to any variety of book and book-like products and its great adaptability to al kinds of retail environments. It also offers pricing flexibility based on the proven bill and coin negotiating equipment. And, the vending machine has a very flexible array or assortment of display views and machine panel graphics.

book vending in a library lobby

The vending machine also inserts books and book products into contexts of community life. The situations of transactions are part of the charm of machine book vending; books in bars, books in hair salons, books in coffee shops, books in bus stations. Vending machines and their refined technologies provide the instant gratification of an exchange for money, a bit of gravity and the possession of different narrates, concepts and shared consciousness. The vending machine for books fulfills the paradox of the physical object that conveys concepts.