• by Kevin Ransom , May 7, 2008

Summer's coming, and the time is right for ... reading on the beach?

Maybe beach reading isn't something Martha and the Vandellas would have sung about, but the "light summer reading" season is upon us. A leading publisher and a trendy handbag maker have joined forces to create a "novel" campaign designed to promote summer books and summer bags.

Avon A, an imprint of Harper-Collins Publishers, has teamed up with the fashion-forward handbag maker, The SAK, for "Book in a Bag"--a year-long giveaway of The SAK's chic bags filled with the newest "fashion fiction" by writers like Kerry Reichs, Marian Keyes and Jean Reynolds Page.

"We were looking for ways to expand our marketing approach, and the Internet is a great way to do that," says Jill Snowden, director of marketing and public relations for The SAK. "Obviously, our target customers are women, and many women are home during the day, and women do a lot of their shopping on the computer these days. So we thought this would be a great way not only to reach our existing customers but also to find new customers."

Starting May 15, consumers can register online--at either of the companies' web sites--to be one of 15 who will walk away with three of Avon A's new fiction titles--Page's The Space Between Before and After, Reichs' The Best Day of Someone Else's Life, and Elizabeth Noble's Things I Want My Daughter to Know -- tucked neatly into a Silverlake Canvas Convertible Satchel.

And in June, the giveaway will feature The SAK's Bennett Rope Small Tote, filled with Queen of Babble in the Big City by Meg Cabot; This Charming Man by Keyes and Not Another Bad Date by Rachel Gibson.

The promotion will be ongoing through next May.

"The bags we are given away aren't even on the market yet," says Snowden, "so the winners will essentially be able to carry around exclusive bags that no one else has yet--the bags given away this month, for example, won't even be available for purchase until the fall."