There has been much talk recently about the demise of the book store, and there have been some big chains appointing administrators so there is something to the rumours. If you look at the way Lauren Kate’s new novel Passion is flying off the shelves it seems the rumours may be exaggerated. There is one copy of Passion sold every 23 seconds!
According to Bookscan there have been more than 16,000 copies of Passion sold through Australian stores in the first full week of sales. This makes Passion the #1 selling book and proves that books are still being bought in massive numbers, especially by teens. Innovative marketing and social media play a big part in getting fans into book stores and buying books.
Passion is the third book in the Fallen series, which is an enthralling and addictive story of forbidden love and fallen angels, the majority of whose readership is teenage girls. Random House Australia, the publisher, specially tailored the advertising campaign to this demographic by tapping into the social networks to draw teenage girls into stores.
The book trailers for the Fallen series have amassed over half a million views on YouTube and the Facebook page was 55,000 fans – a number that continues to rise and is more than many major companies.
Sales and Marketing Manager Justin Ratcliffe says ‘We use Facebook and YouTube to build anticipation, feed information and let fans share their excitement.’
An innovative new app has recently been launched which has helped boost the success of the Australian Fallen Books Facebook page. Webling Interactive, a Sydney digital agency, designed and developed an app in conjunction with the Random House marketing team that allows fans total immersion in the world of Fallen. The app allows fans to create their own Fallen book video trailer – using their favourite cover, storyline, soundtrack and friends to feature in the video. The app is interactive and customisable, allowing fans to write themselves and their friends into the storyline, and the Fallen books branding is deeply ingrained in the content so fans are engaging with the subject and sharing the Fallen brand!
Webling Interactive Managing Director Deniz Nalbantoglu adds, ‘The trailers on YouTube were wildly successful, so allowing users to customise their own and share via their social networks was the next logical step. The Fallen series is a match made in heaven – pardon the pun – for social media, given the connected nature of their Gen Z core audience.’
The Fallen trailers account for about 60% of the total views on the Random House YouTube page. Fallen, the first book in the series, has been watched over 200,000 times. Passion has grown to over 20,000 views in just a few short weeks. Random House now has the top views of any book trailer produced by a publisher in Australia.
And it’s not just trailers that the fans are creating. ‘Anything we post that is related to Fallen they comment on and share – they have also already created masses of user generated content from illustrations and photographs uploaded to the Facebook page to their own trailers on YouTube using our collateral,’ says Ractliffe.
Between July 30 and August 6 Lauren Kate will be touring the eastern states of Australia and Ratcliffe expects the strong sales figures to continue. Random House are building up the anticipation and fuelling the fan-fire in the lead up to the fans chance to meet Lauren Kate.
To get involved in the fantasy of Fallen head over and check them out at: http://www.fallenbooks.com & http://www.facebooks.com/fallenbooks
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I devour books, vampires and supernatural creatures are my genre of choice but over the past couple of years, I have broadened my horizons considerably. In a nutshell – I love to write! I love interacting with a diverse range of artists to bring you interviews. Perhaps we were perfect before – I LOVE WORDS!