My Favorite Piece of Book Swag in the History of Book Swag

I’m not here today to blow your mind with some list of outrageous list of promotional items that sometimes arrive with books. A Fuse #8 Production has that corner well covered. Very well covered.

I am here today to say that for all the pomp and circumstance that surrounds the release of some books, the most powerful promotions have one thing in common – usefulness after the fact. This once again was proven by the promo item I want to talk about today. Get ready to not have your mind blown (and rather give one of those squinty slow nods of appreciation), because here it is, my favorite piece of swag ever:

My humble Kokila canvas zipper pouch (click here to learn about Kokila – a new imprint doing great things). This little bag is the best for these reasons.

1. It’s canvas, and not some other synthetic fabric or (god forbid) plastic.
2. A sturdy zipper that works.
3. It looks nice. The logo is cool – bold but not gaudy (click here to see how the logo was created – it’s a really cool post). The pattern on the other side is a nice touch.
4. It’s not a tote bag. No offense to tote bags, but – wait, you know what? OFFENSE TO TOTE BAGS. MAJOR OFFENSE.
5. It’s useful. When books come in fancy boxes and have lots of glossy cardboard and trap doors and stuff, it’s fun for a moment, but then that moment passes and you’re putting that packaging in the recycle bin thinking “That’s pretty wasteful”.

Here’s to useful swag.

Bonus! Here’s what’s in my great Kokila zipper pouch:

From top to bottom, left to right:

• Unopened package of Blackwing pencil erasers.
• Blackwing Palomino pencil. I’d always seen people using and raving about these, so I put them on my Christmas list last year and Santa brought them. I love them!
• Pencil sharpener.
• Papermate Inkjoy Gel 0.7 pens. As a lefty, I end up smearing a lot of pen ink on may hand. The package for these pens said the ink dried super fast, so I tried them out and it was true – no smearing on my hand.
• Extra ink cartridges for Pentel Pocket Brush pen.
• Pentel Pocket Brush pen. Illustrator Lisa Brown recommended this on Twitter a while back and I got it and have a lot of fun using it.
• Mitsubishi Blue/Red pencil. This was a gift from an illustrator I saw at Nerd Camp. A guy who uses the Blue/Red pencil to great effect on Instagram.