Starbucks has been book bombed! All across North America, more than 135 books were hidden inside of Starbucks stores! I organized a street team of people who volunteered to hide Tales of the Siren: A StarbucksMelody in their local Starbucks stores.
This ended up being super fun! I wanted Tales of the Siren: A StarbucksMelody to wind up in the hands of store managers who might then, in turn, share it with their teams. Much to my delight, I got tons of feedback from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram of partners who thoroughly enjoyed finding the book in their lobby. Each book had a handwritten message inside indicating that the book was left intentionally for the store manager to find. And I did get a ton of feedback that some stores were indeed circulating their “store copy” around from partner to partner.
I accomplished pretty much what I wanted. I wanted to get the book into the hands of lots of new people who might really enjoy it. And the feedback I got was terrific. Copies of Tales of the Siren ended up in Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Idaho, Ohio, Hawaii, Georgia, Illinois, and also Canada.
It was much easier to “book bomb” Starbucks than I thought it would be. When I started this project, I worried that there would be so many lobby slides that it would be hard to “hide” things inside a Starbucks store. My guess turned out to be totally wrong. In fact, it’s quite easy. By the end of the project, I realized that anyone could do this. While I was hiding a book about Starbucks, it occurred to me that the next group could be hiding bibles, Scientology books, or whatever. Some of the books stayed planted in the store’s lobby for hours upon hours before being found. In one case, I myself hid a book in a store, drove away, and returned six hours later, only to find the book untouched, and still laying atop of a number K-Cups boxes.
There were more books hidden than just in the photogrids below. Once in a while, I didn’t get photos for hidden books.
I want to call attention to a few favorite book hides:
This is the Starbucks at 328 – 15th Avenue East in Seattle. A number of the scenes in Tales of the Siren happen inside this Starbucks, so that’s why I wanted to call attention to it. This store was once an experimental store called “15th Avenue Coffee and Tea”:
And I’ll point out a few of my favorites from below. This is the Starbucks actually inside the headquarters. The “SODO 8” Starbucks is not open to the public, so getting a book hidden in it was a little bit tricky!
I got so many great pics, but this few stood out to me. I really liked this Blythe, California book hide. Very few of the hidden books ended up chilled! 😉
This Starbucks in Hurst, Texas is a striking building!
This Austin, Texas store is gorgeous too:
I want to thank the many people who signed up for the Tales of the Siren street team. There’s no way I could have done this without them. It took a lot of people to make this work! Thank you to every single person who hid a book!
Look through all the photos! It’s a tour of many Starbucks stores and see if you can spot all the hidden books! A few of the books are hard to find. I promise every photogrid below has a Tales of the Siren book in it! 🙂
(By the way, shortly after this book hiding project ended, I changed the cover of the book. It’s the spine of the book that’s new and different – the orientation of the words is now much more standard. It’s funny because I’ve had people joke with me that all these hidden books are now special editions. 😉 LOL – If you buy Tales of the Siren now, it will come with the cover shown as the top book in the photo with the two books)
For a review of Tales of the Siren, I suggest reading the review written by Portland Book Review.
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I had so much fun doing this project! I also enjoyed seeing the pictures of the various Starbucks stores around the U.S. It was fun to read everyone’s comments on FB about the book hides, too. Thank you @Melody for allowing me to be part of such an amazing project!
That is an innovative idea! It sounds like it was a lot of fun and not to mention the promotional opportunity from this endeavor. You are so clever. Congratulations on a successful campaign!
Very nice. It would have been nice to have known about this. I am trying to recognize some of the stores as I might have been in them. Melody can you identify the pics by location for some of the other stores? Thanks.
@IzzyJ – Thank you for your help!! You may have been the only person from New York on the team!
@Deborah – The idea came from brainstorming with my editor about publicity ideas. She’s left bookmarks of her books behind in coffeehouses that she’s been to. I read a blog post once about a travel author who self-published a travel book, and then went around hiding it inside B & N stores, in the travel section of course!
@Purple1 – Anyone could join, but you had to have an active Facebook profile. I didn’t post about what we were actually doing because I wanted this final article to be a surprise. The Street Team came from many people who read the “Join the Tales of the Siren” street team link at the top of this blog. I appreciate that you wanted to help! I appreciate your support!
This is a positive idea and fun to read about.
@Judy – Thank you Judy! 🙂 See you soon!
I had so much fun being a part of this!
@purple In really small print on each photo grid, Melody put the location of the store. I can’t really read it on my iPad, but you can probably read it on a computer.
So fun! I’m sorry I missed this, I would have loved to spread your word here in California. 🙂 Well done Mel!!
@Leslee – If there’s ever a second round, I hope you’ll sign up. But do you use Facebook? And thank you for your comment.
So much fun! I enjoyed “visiting” so many Starbucks stores via the photo grids!!!
@Kathy Jackson – Yay! I had secretly hoped that even if people had no interest in the book (of course I don’t want that to be the case) that just flipping through the photogrids from start to finish would be entertaining! Glad you enjoyed them!
My district would call this a sighting of a Secret Siren gifting books. Love how clever some of these are! Hopefully everyone enjoys the book. 🙂
Melody, marketing, you’re getting it right.
Aahahahha Melody you are genius. I haven’t seen such creative marketing since I worked in the Record Industry with Pop Promotion. Brilliant JOB! As you know, another way to get it in the hands of a store manager is for the manager to break his arm. Have his whole team sign the book (and indicate their favorite stories) and then deliver it. Instant captive reader. lol The only signature missing is yours. WAY TO GO Melody.
I found all 4 of my hiding collages. 🙂 I had so much fun doing this Melody!! It was a great project for an amazing book! Thank you so much!!
Creative marketing and fun post to read! I recognized a couple of those locations. 🙂
@Patrick the Coffee Master – LOL – I feel like I should reach around and pat my own back. 😉 It was a good and fun marketing idea. Who knows if it worked (I hope I can get people talking about it even from the perspective as a very unique marketing idea for a self-published book) but hey, mission accomplished: Lots of fun and a few more readers.
@Kristina – Glad you liked!
@Elizabeth – Thank you for your help!
I found the picture from my store and the sneaky spot that book was hidden in! If I hadn’t been connecting with a customer on my lobby slide I probably wouldn’t have seen it. So fun!