Bookplate Demand Up; Suppliers Weary

Holy cow, people. We love you and everything — really, we do. But what’s happening with the demand for signed bookplates?

When we first offered to send a free bookplate to anyone who asked, we were surprised that any people would want them at all. In the beginning, there were a few hundred requests a week. You would input your mailing information into this form, which we’d then download into an Excel spreadsheet and format to be printed as labels. Then I’d sign a big stack of bookplates, ship them off to Levitt in Chicago, he’d sign them and send them back to me, and then my assistant Nicole (applause!) would take them down to HarperCollins and stuff the envelopes.

Sometimes it took us a while but we managed to keep up with demand.

These days, we aren’t doing so well. In November alone, we had 5,000 requests for bookplates. As problems go, this is obviously a great one: we are thrilled that so many people would bother to ask. But if you asked for a bookplate and haven’t received it yet, please hang in there. At least neither of us has a name this long to sign.