Every month, we highlight a brand that we’re fans of and we think you should know about ‘em, too. For April 2017, our focus is on Litographs.

What is Litographs?

Litographs is an e-commerce company that produces t-shirts, posters, and tote bags created entirely from the text of books. Danny Fein started the business in 2012 on Kickstarter and 2,714 backers provided over $100k for the premise of “entire books on posters and t-shirts.” Myself included, courtesy a Facebook photo from 2013 as proof:

(Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is one of my favorite books!)

He also had a different approach to Kickstarter than made it a lot more palpable to back – “I made a conscious decision to only launch this Kickstarter campaign after the hardest work had been completed. I’ve created the designs, flown to Chicago to watch the first prototypes be printed, and am thrilled with the results. Our printers are on standby, waiting for me to give them the green light. If there are any risks that come with completing this project, they fall into the “when” rather than “if” category. That is, I am 100% confident that if this project is funded, we will deliver these t-shirts and posters.

That said, screen printing is a challenging, manual process, and there is always a risk that something can go wrong on any given run. This means that it’s possible that it might take longer than we expect to get these printed. However, all of our printers are confident that they will be able to deliver these rewards before the end of January.”

And they did. They delivered on that promise and other promises, to boot.

So what is Litographs doing with their marketing?

There are two things Litographs has been experimenting with that I think are amazing. The first is how they’re continually utilizing google searches for popular books to gauge what other prints they should be adding. For example, if you do a search for a popular book they don’t have (in this instance, Ender’s Game), here’s what the top search result looks like –

So if you do a search for a book that they don’t have a print of yet but it’s still a well-known work, they have a page reserved for you to sign up to receive information once it’s available. This way they can see what people are clamoring for the most, theoretically. It’s brilliant.

They’re also one of the few organizations I’ve seen use an email marketing survey effectively but they didn’t maintain the momentum.

On June 17th in 2016, I received this email: 

And then this follow-up:

With these beautiful results:

And then again, with another question – “From the subtle lessons of a children’s book to the twists of a recent thriller, what’s one scene you’ll never forget?”

But then I never heard the follow-up from Jack again. Litographs, as a fan of books and reading, you had me hooked! Let Jack keep asking his questions!

What else do they do that’s pretty cool?

They walk they talk with their mission. Their statement is at the bottom of their About page, “Litographs is committed to promoting literacy, both at home and abroad. Since 2012, we have donated over 200,000 books to communities in need through the International Book Bank.”

Being able to showcase that number and stick to their goals is a really fabulous thing. It’s also just very much in alignment with their offerings and their target market – bookworms like me.

As they’ve grown, they’ve also categorized their products more effectively by enabling search via Product vs. Book.

One major down-side? Their price point is pretty high. However, by supporting Litographs you’re supporting a locally made product and if you’ve ever done e-commerce – you know that shipping (unless you’re Amazon) can be a huge money sink.

Litographs, you’ve got at least one serious fan at Exothermic. <3

-Megan