By Sophie.
One of the more popular things we sell, across all three ABCs, are our Blind Book Dates, or BBDs, as we call them. (Technically they should of course be called “Blind Date with a Book”, but why use that when you can use a TLA, right?)
A BBD is a book wrapped up like a present, and then covered with clues about the story within, as well as what genre it is typically shelved in. For example: “Fantasy” + “Angels vs. Demons vs. Witches” + “Apocalyptic Horsepeople” + “Loyal Dog” = this book.
The idea is that you can’t be distracted by the cover that way – because while we all try not to judge books by their covers, when we’re honest, how often have we glossed over boring-looking books, or ignored the glaring color, or thought “I’m not reading a book by that author”? I know I personally can get quite selective/snobby about covers, and have missed some truly wonderful reads just because the book was marketed in a way unappealing to me.
Now, we didn’t invent BBDs. Libraries and other independent bookstores were there before us. But when Tiemen started making them in Amsterdam over 10 years ago, a picture of them all grouped on a shelf went a little viral on Reddit – and we can’t imagine our stores without them now. They are lots of fun to dream up: the best clues come when we’ve read the books, but when we haven’t, a bit of research across reviews from The Storygraph and elsewhere come in handy. And customers have also been known to help out, when they’ve read the book and think the clues can be sharpened a little more.
Nowadays, our Else, Jonna and Sigrid are on main BBD duty in Amsterdam. Else makes them for the Fantasy & Science Fiction section (ask her about her BBD spreadsheet, I dare you!), and Jonna and Sigrid for the general Fiction section. The BBDs there are still made much like Tiemen started them: covered in plain wrapping paper, with their clues printed out and pasted on. Often an actual sentence from the book is included as well.
In The Hague, our Iris is the BBD captain. She started making them a little while after Amsterdam began, and she also uses plain brown paper when possible. Rather than printing out the clues, however, she writes them on the paper instead. Our BBDs here range across most fiction genres: general Fiction, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Crime Fiction, YA, Horror, and Romance. You can find them in the Staff Choice section at the front of the store.
In our youngest and smallest store in Leidschendam, the BBDs are our biggest overall seller. Absolutely anyone with a decent handwriting is drafted in to make them because they can go so fast. The staff can get very creative with the covers, drawing on stars and hearts and space ships depending on the genre of the book. We also started wrapping themed BBDs there – so far we’ve done Halloween, Christmas, Valentine and Pride.
Fun fact about the The Hague and Leidschendam BBDs: we’ve had to start cross-referencing our books and BBD numbers because a customer that frequents both places has a whole bookcase full of them and wants to be sure he doesn’t buy doubles because the clues might be different in both places. Talk about hardcore fandom!
I’ve wrapped up, and thought up clues for, many hundreds of BBDs by now, since I work in Leidschendam two days a week. And I really love selling them, because I love the spirit of adventure and daring in which they’re always bought. We try to keep the price decent, so that if the Date turns out bad you won’t have wasted too much money on it. Also, if you think you know the book underneath the wrapping and want to make sure you’re not buying a double, you can always ask us to check for you. Tell us the title, we’ll look up the number in our file, and then can answer you “yes” or “no”.
Considering the amount of people that return and buy a new BBD we think that most ABC customers love this little jump into the unknown! Just another bit of proof that ABC customers are the best, most fun-loving, and adventurous folks in the book world.
