You can’t miss it. What looks like a 46-foot-long, 12-foot-high mural, on West 112th Street in New York City, on the side wall and surrounding the front window of the Bank Street Bookstore, is actually a ginormous sticker announcing publication of the next Diary of a Wimpy Kid installment, Cabin Fever, due on November 15 with a whopping six-million-copy first printing.
Wimpy Kid publisher Abrams commissioned National Media Services to "wrap" six bookstores (for the sixth Wimpy Kid novel) across the country: Children’s Book World in Los Angeles; Anderson’s in Naperville, Ill.; Children’s Book World in Haverford, Pa.; the Bookstore in the Grove in Miami; and One More Page in Arlington, Va., in addition to Bank Street. The "mural" is printed on self-adhesive plastic film with the graphics provided by Abrams and cost only "a few thousand dollars per store," according to Jason Wells, publicity director for Abrams Books for Young Readers. Once the promotion is over, around December 1, the film will be peeled off and thrown away (it’s not biodegradable).
This is the second wrap promotion Abrams has done. Last year, with Diary of a Wimpy Kid #5, the publisher did a test with two stores: Children’s Book World in Haverford and Anderson’s. It was so successful that Children’s Book World kept the wrap up for an extra month.
Beth Puffer, manager of the Bank Street Bookstore, said children passing by see the Wimpy Kid image, but don’t notice the publication date. "Kids’ eyes light up when they see the wrap,"she said. "They come into the store wanting to buy the book right away."
