Expanded Banned Books Week Promotion Launches August 20

The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) and Ingram Content Group have announced an expansion of the “Banned Books Week in a Box” promotion, which makes it simple for booksellers to order books and celebrate Banned Books Week, this year from September 21 – 27.

From August 20 through October 3, booksellers can view a list of more than 450 banned and challenged titles via Ingram’s ipage®. Orders of 30 or more books per store entitle purchasers to a Banned Books Week display kit and additional discounts on initial and subsequent orders.

In response to the popularity of last year’s promotion (150 kits were snapped up by booksellers just days after Ingram began taking orders), the number of kits has been doubled this year.

“We were knocked out by the response to Banned Books Week in a Box,” said ABFFE President Chris Finan. “We are very grateful to Ingram for its support in expanding the promotion.” Shawn Everson, Ingram’s chief commercial officer, added that the company was pleased to support ABFFE’s efforts “to make more books available to more readers nationwide.”

The 2014 Banned Books Week in a Box kit includes a full-sized Banned Books Week poster, 25 feet of “Caution” tape, 200 bookmarks, 100 “I Read Banned Books” and 50 “I Sell Banned Books” stickers, 10 large “Freadom” buttons, 10 “Freadom” bumper stickers, and a flier with detailed information about last year’s book challenges.

For more information about the promotion or to place an order, booksellers should contact their Ingram sales rep or Ingram Customer Care at (800) 937-8200 or [email protected].

An expanded list of banned and challenged books is also available on Edelweiss, the interactive catalog system from Above the Treeline. Booksellers can search the list by author, title, and publisher to find banned or challenged books that are already on their store shelves. Anyone can access the list, and subscribers to Treeline Analytics can also determine how many of the titles they have in stock and how well they are selling.

This year’s Banned Books Week celebration will focus on challenges to graphic novels and comics. Graphic novels regularly appear on the American Library Association’s list of the 10 most frequently challenged books. Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants (Scholastic) occupied the top spot last year, and Jeff Smith’s Bone series (Graphix) was in 10th place. Recently, the acclaimed memoir Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (Mariner) was the flashpoint in a university funding controversy in South Carolina, and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (Pantheon) was briefly banned by the Chicago Public Schools.        

A virtual read-out of banned and challenged titles will once again be part of Banned Books Week celebrations. In the past, booksellers have participated by uploading videos of their customers and authors reading short excerpts from their favorite books. The videos appear on the Banned Books Week website, bannedbooksweek.org. Detailed instructions for booksellers are available on the ABFFE website, abffe.org.

The ABFFE site also features a Banned Books Week Handbook that includes many suggestions for easy and inexpensive ways to participate, including posters that can be downloaded for free. The American Library Association also provides Banned Books Week resources.

ABFFE’s promotional products are currently on sale. Freadom T-shirts have been marked down 40 percent and additional discounts will be applied to orders of 10 or more shirts. Sale prices are available on this special order form.

For more information, e-mail [email protected] or called ABFFE at (212) 587-4025, ext. 6.