Some clever author out there is capitalizing on this reputation, posting pages of a new mystery novel across the East Village on lamp posts. Though interviewees in a recent New York Post article on the lamp post book argue that this is an inefficient way to read a book, the marketer in me sees a kind of genius here: get them hooked with randomly placed pages, and then draw them into the book as a whole. It's guerrilla marketing to the core. It's kind of fun.
It's a small-scale effort, but I'm curious if anyone else has seen or heard about this. Things like this do make me miss the "only-in-NYC" nature of that city.
Haha that is a pretty fantastic idea to market your book.
ReplyDeleteI was so disappointed to read some of the novel (you know, about a paragraph) in a photo and find that...i'm pretty ehh about the writing. But I love the idea of this sort of writing, way more than that shelley jackson thing with writing a story and then tattooing just one word from it on however many people and only giving them the full story. (that was a few years ago? also, what an awkward sentence i just wrote.) this is so much better because people can, you know, actually READ the work, and i love the idea of happening across it on the way to work or something and then being able to go on a treasure hunt to find the other pages.
ReplyDeletewhen i read this it reminded me of how here in macedonia, when someone dies, notices are plastered up on all the light posts--"SAD NEWS." i don't see this where i live because it's an albanian town, but i still like the idea of using public places to announce news or, in the case of this novel, to share stories. we should do more of this.
-- ellen
Though I don't know how effective such marketing may be, I have to admit that the idea is nice. There's a cozy lamp-post association... furthering this by dropping book "clues" to lead readers to your novel is a rather charming idea.
ReplyDeleteRed - It is pretty clever, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteEllen - I hadn't heard about the tattoo book, but you're right, that seems... like overkill. I like that the lamp posts are public and can be read by anyone. It's like a scavenger hunt for books. Although many people think reading is a solitary activity, I'd argue that it really is a public one; this is a fun way to represent that.
Bibliobio - Definitely not the most effective (especially as paper comes off lamp posts easily by grabbing hands and/or weather elements). I liked the lamp post association, too. They really are iconic in mystery novels. Can't you just see someone leaning against the page of the book, smoking a pipe under the light?