Post by Anna Hepworth
Over the years, I’ve picked up a lot of bookmarks – I get them at conventions (advertising books, or other conventions, or sometimes things that don’t appear to have any relation to the convention), I pick them up in book shops and libraries and government offices, I find them in second hand books, occasionally people give them to me (there are five ‘numerology’ bookmarks in my collection – for the numbers 6, 21 and 22. Go figure). I bring them home, I stash them, and I’m fairly confident of always being able to find one when I need one (even my kids can’t lose *that* many bookmarks), which is not always something I can say about other important trivialities in life, such as pens.
Occasionally I drag them out and look through them. I have been collecting new ones for 30+ years (although I know that at least one of the second hand ones is older than that – it has a six digit Perth hills phone number), so there is quite a range. And while it might be an exaggeration to say that every single con bag I’ve ever had had at least one bookmark in it, I suspect the truth isn’t far off.
If I look just at the ones that are SF/F/H related, I find that the bulk of them are advertising books from HarperCollins Voyager, and are glossy, brightly coloured, double sided and rather large as bookmarks go. The exception in the Voyager bookmarks dates back to approximately 1998 (based on the advertised books) which is coarse flecked card stock with single colour black printing.
Over some unspecified time, I intend to present a selection of these bookmarks (or even all of them, depending on how inspired I am).