Friday Short Post--Custom "Signed by the Author" Labels.

When I worked at the Harry W. Schwartz downtown in the 1980s, one of the things I found amusing was that our assistant manager was obsessed with the Schwaab stamp store on Michigan Street. Every month he thought of some new thing we should stamp with a new message. We had a lot of stamps! Schwaab is still still in business, on West Burleigh. One day I'll drive out there and figure out something I need to stamp.

What my ex-colleague was to stamps, I am to labels. Kenco Label and Tag is another local business, and they do our orange bargain and green second-hand labels. They do our embossed silver labels we put on wrapped packages and the one inch white labels that go on our gift card envelopes. I experimented with a markdown label, but it just didn't seem necessary, plus we don't use it that much.

That said, we've been buying standard autographed copy labels since we've been open. About a year ago, I started thinking we should have our own, and half-designed it. One of my pet peeves is that I think people say "signed copy", not "autographed." We probably had room for the Boswell logo or Bos, the James Boswell image, but not both. In the end, I decided on Bos alone. 

I also contemplated having a colored logo, picking a shade of purple I never see on books--this way it would contrast with everything. In the end, I saved a little money and solved the problem of whether to use white or black type. Most folks the black better but I thought the white had better contrast.

The rolls came in today, just after I reordered the stock labels (that's ok, we go through a lot) and I showed Jason, wondering out loud if there was a custom Schwartz label at one point. In fact there was; Jason had just processed a second-hand book with a autograph label on it. If anyone had asked me, I would have said the name of the store is too small, but that's my typical hindsight.