21/07/06

McCrum on Londonstani

Robert McCrum, literary editor of The Observer, posted an article on the Guardian blog this week, about HarperCollins’ expensive TV advertising campaign for the £350,000 novel, Londonstani.

The expensive TV campaign for Londonstani may pay dividends, but it’s unlikely to become established practice for other first novels.

Unfortunately, there is no TV campaign for Londonstani, and as well as spelling the author’s name wrong, McCrum gets a few other facts a little muddled.

Here’s what he said:

It’s a nice irony that Gautan Malkani’s overhyped novel Londonstani should attract more attention for its pioneering use of TV trailers than for its qualities as a first novel.

On this occasion the publisher’s investment in an expensive video package may have paid off, but I rather doubt that we will see many other first novels promoted this way.

If 4th Estate had not paid something close to £350,000 for this book they would never have been able to justify the investment. Big name authors like Robert Harris, John Le Carré or Ian McEwen can probably expect TV trailer treatment, asssuming of course that the publishers can come up with imaginative ways to blurb a novel on air in 40 seconds.

Put like that, of course, it’s reminiscent of Monty Python’s “Summarise Proust” competition, and only a bit less ridiculous. My bet is that TV trails for books will be a passing fad - like tube advertising.

The awkward truth is that this sort of thing only works if you spend a lot of money - and that’s just what British publishers don’t have.

The post generated a lot of comments, which are all worth reading, but below is the one I posted, which was done just before checking my facts with 4th Estate: none of the staff I spoke to knew of any TV advertising being commissioned as yet.

Is 4th Estate doing an ”expensive TV campaign’ for Londonstani? I think that the campaign he’s referring to is mentioned in an article from the Observer this Sunday about HarperCollins Canada doing some *online* advertising rather than TV (link).

The article refers to HC Canada’s “internet-based ‘book trailer” and the only mention of the cinema is Patrick Neate’s diss of the loading time of the animation and hypothesising that the ad might be bearable in cinemas. The trailer is visible here (link) and personally I don’t really think it’s very good at all. I am however really enjoying Londonstani at the moment.

Maybe Mr McCrum should check the facts. Not only does he get the author’s name wrong, he gets the publisher and territory and medium of advertising wrong. As Mr McCrum is also the literary editor of the Observer, one might imagine that he could read the articles he edits, and be fairly expected to remember the core details correctly.

I may add to this that in May Mr McCrum also said of Londonstani, ‘everything about its short life has been a disaster…. Londonstani is already being airbrushed from history.’ (Link) He seems to be wrong about that too.

Forgive the aggrandisement, but in terms of full disclosure, I will also point out that whilst I had nothing to do with the HC Canada promo, I produced an online campaign for 4th Estate in the UK, highlighting their UK titles this summer, of which Londonstani is one (link). It was neither expensive nor broadcast on TV or cinemas but was put on DVD and sent to key contacts.

I have also produced a number of book promos over the past 7 years, of which one (for Life of Pi) has had over a million views and won numerous awards. All the others have been highly successful and continue to receive lots of views years after original publication (link)

Finally, there have been two other articles in GNL sites proclaiming promos the ‘future of book advertising’ (link from October 2003 and from November 2002).

Posted by Peter Collingridge in Publishing.