19/02/07

Londonstani Paperback Campaign - More

So, as I was saying. We’re doing work with HarperPress on the paperback of Gautam Malkani’s novel Londonstani.

Here’s what we knew at the beginning:

The hardback didn’t sell well.
Mainstream media pretty much hated it.
But, the book had a lot going for it: it was well written, the buzz around it - and internationally - was great, and the author had credentials in all the right places.

We did some basic research online, and among the blogs and reviews on sites - including the asian cultural sites - found that Londonstani, as a book, was well thought of by the people, online, who either blogged or reviewed it. At a guess, 7-8 articles out of 10 were positive. Most of these were written by younger readers who had got their hands on the book, and had got through it. This was wildly at odds with the review coverage and some of the readers were really passionate about the book and how it spoke to them.

So, we proposed a route that kind took advantage of this, and which went beyond the usual way of promoting books (i.e. broadsheet review coverage, bookshop promotions, PR) and instead went straight to readers. We suggested that - given the responses we saw online - if we made the content of the book available for people to read, and make up their own minds about, they were likely to actually enjoy it.

The first part of the campaign was to print up as many “samplers” (over 100,000 in this case) as possible. The sampler would extract the first four chapters of the book, and be distributed via the Don’t Panic network, which hands out packages outside clubs and in other yout’ hotspots, and also in bars, record shops and so on. The sampler would cross-promote the book, and would also promote a MySpace page.

The MySpace page would also ‘blog’ the book. Written in character (but absolutely, definitely, not pretending to be a ‘real’ person), the first 80 pages of the book or so would be released over time. A bit like a serialisation, but with a little less hoo-hah, and for free.

What we really wanted to do, was to put a voucher - redeemable online and in bookshops - in the back of the sampler, allowing the reader to get the book a lot cheaper, and of course allowing us to trace how effecive the campaign had been. Sadly, it didn’t work out this time (it never has, yet!).

So, that’s the thinking behind the beginning of the campaign, and the samplers hit the streets in the next couple of weeks.

The MySpace page (which has been designed, built, and populated by Hyper Launch, who come from a pedigree in music and film) will go live at around the same time (well, it is live, but just not properly at the moment) and then an advertising campaign will kick in, with some fun visual elements I’ll report back on in a couple of days…

Posted by Peter Collingridge in Apt Studio work, Design, Londonstani, Publishing.