An eye-catching window display at Dorothy Butler’s Children’s Bookshop in Auckland has won them the North Island prize and $500 in book tokens in a competition co-ordinated by Booksellers NZ and the NZ Book Awards Trust to encourage and reward bookstores that used point of sale material to promote the 2020 NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, winners of which were announced earlier this month.

The judging panel was impressed by the use of a specially printed super-size poster and a kiwiana backdrop along with other point of sale material and the finalist books, that would have caught the attention of many a potential customer on the store’s busy Jervois Road frontage.

The unusual use of the collateral provided and other props on a well-stocked table display at Petronella's Gallery and Bookstore in Tekapo won them the South Island prize, also of $500 in Book Tokens.

Two nationwide runners-up were chosen to receive a free pizza lunch courtesy of NZCYA sponsors Hell Pizza: UBIQ in Auckland and Children’s Bookshop in Kilbirnie.

While the competition rules required that bookstores email images of their displays to the organisers, thanks also go to the many other stores who put their point of sale material to good use. Sales of the 2020 NZCYA finalist and winning books tracked by Nielsen have shown almost double the revenue of the same period last year, which just goes to show that good displays sell books.