A Wiz of a Shelf-Talker

Gary Frank's accomplishments during his 30 years building The Booksmith into a San Francisco Bay Area institution were many. However, last year, when Frank sold the store to Christin Evans and Praveen Madan and went into semi-retirement, there was still one thing that he felt he could have done better -- shelf-talkers. "It always bothered me that we had shelf-talkers all over the store that were torn up and hard to read," he recently explained. Freed up from full-time retailing, Frank set out to develop a solution. The result is Shelfwiz, an ingenious and very tidy shelf-talker holder that clips to bookshelves and features a Plexiglass frame.

"I always prided myself on the neatness of the store," Frank said. And though he found that shelf-talkers did wonders for backlist books, their presentation didn't always match his standard of orderliness. "We needed something to put them in."

Included in each Shelfwiz order are perforated paper sheets on which booksellers can easily print shelf-talkers using custom-made templates that fit the holder exactly. Frank also designed Shelfwiz to easily accommodate the monthly Indie Next List Notables shelf-talkers. The holder, available for 3/4" and 1" shelves, with additional sizes on the way, clips to shelves, is easily moved, and flips up so books behind it are easily accessible.

Shelfwiz was created with the help of a Booksmith customer who is an industrial designer. "We played around with some concepts and developed a prototype that would work," Frank explained. "I always wanted this exact thing. It solves a lot of problems."

With very little marketing, about 115 stores have already begun using the clear plastic holders, Frank said. "It's particularly gratifying when I go into a store and see that they're using them." One such store is Los Angeles' Skylight Books, where staff picks are displayed in Shelfwiz along with a picture of the recommending bookseller.

"Almost universally I hear that booksellers have always been looking for just this sort of thing, but haven't been able to find it," said Frank. "The best evidence of how well it works is the numbers of stores who've ordered a dozen, used them, and then ordered a few dozen more." To learn more, visit shelfwiz.com. --Karen Schechner