Adventures in marketing bullshit

So I've caught a really strong whiff of the buzz that Doubleday, especially editor Jason Kaufman, is trying to drum up for its Next Big Thing. THE TRAVELER, the "debut thriller" by John Twelve Hawks, will hit bookstores at the end of this month with an alleged first print run of 180,000 copies.

And the louder Kaufman and the rest of the brass protests that this is not, they repeat, not, a publicity stunt, my bullshit detector goes just as far off the grid as the author allegedly claims to be.

First of all, "off the grid"? That's so Matrix which is so, well, 1999. Second, Twelve Hawks' agent, Joe Regal -- who, btw, doesn't even list Twelve Hawks as a client on his website -- was quoted as saying that the "reclusive" author took his current nom de plume after "a major life-altering experience."

Like, hmmm, being a hopelessly midlist writer who was blackballed by evil forces of low sales figures and found a creative, albeit annoying, way to resurrect his (or her) career with a super high-concept idea? Which of course, then sold for a boatload of cash?

I'm not even sure why this pisses me off as much as it does. After all, Elizabeth Kostova's THE HISTORIAN is getting an almost equal marketing push and I not only loved the book, but felt it was worth all the hype. So what is it? Maybe it's because I feel like the actual contents of the book got lost in the midst of all this marketing hubbub. Or maybe because when I tried reading a galley, all I could think of was that damn marketing campaign and the excess noise made me put the book down. Which didn't bode well for judging the book's contents.

Or maybe I just don't like being manipulated, and everything to do with Twelve Hawks has as much spontanaiety as a relationship between Tom Cruise and any female.

But I have to hand it to the publishers, as they have devised quite an ingenious marketing strategy that I can't seem to get away from (hell, there was an article in my soon-to-be-ex-local paper about it over the weekend. That shows you how far the buzz carries)  That said, how "underground" are the websites described if they are only reported after the fact as being related to the book instead of serving their original purpose, to drum up interest months in advance?

The full campaign, which Publishers Weekly wrote about in April, appears after the jump.

What's a publisher  to do when it bets big on a book it believes could be the next The Da Vinci Code —but the author refuses to promote the title and bookseller reaction is not all that could be hoped for?

Doubleday's answer is to look outside of publishing, to the aggressive tactics of movie and record companies, for inspiration for a Web and street-marketing campaign that will surround the June 28 publication of   The Traveler , a debut novel by John Twelve Hawks.

 

The Traveler , which is projected to be the first book in a trilogy, came to Doubleday editor Jason Kaufman in March 2004, a full year into the amazing run of his book, The Da Vinci Code . At the time, Kaufman was being deluged with pitches for authors who promised to be the next Dan Brown. Behind every letter there lurked an ancient code or a mysterious work of art. Although he did buy a quirky serial killer novel (Jeff Lindsay's Darkly Dreaming Dexter ), Kaufman remained on the hunt for the next big thing.

Then independent literary agent Joe Regal, who was riding high with Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife   (MacAdam/Cage), sent Kaufman The Traveler , a cinematic adventure novel by a recluse who had communicated with Regal only via a satellite phone with a voice scrambler.

The novel is set in a familiar 21st-century consumer society dubbed "the Vast Machine," where most people live under the surveillance of millions of closed-circuit cameras, distracted by trendy fashions and high-tech gizmos from noticing that ATM and credit card transactions record their every decision and movement. But under the surface, there's a centuries-old struggle between prophetic "Travelers," who can communicate with a civilization beyond the quantum divide and are protected by a dying breed of warriors called "Harlequins," and the "Tabula," a cabal of grim-lipped old white men.

In the house's biggest gamble on an unknown author since publishing The Da Vinci Code , Kaufman struck a low seven-figure deal for world rights to the trilogy within a week. A few days later, The Traveler set off a buying frenzy at the 2004 London Book Fair that rights director Carol Lazare found extraordinary because she'd never before made three-book deals for an untested author. A film deal with Steven Spielberg directing for Universal, backed by the legendary production team Kennedy/Marshall, soon followed.

With publishing deals now in place in 18 countries, Doubleday has more than doubled its initial investment in the book. That puts the company in a strong position with the marketing budget—which is "right behind John Grisham's," according to marketing director John Pitts. But there's a hitch: Twelve Hawks has refused to grant so much as an e-mail interview to the media. He explained his decision to Regal by saying, "The culture of celebrity has undermined the power of ideas," making it clear he preferred to let the book speak for itself.

A Show of Force on DVD

Doubleday, on the other hand, is not so reticent. In lieu of a pre-pub tour, the house has taken the unusual step of creating 3,000 elaborately packaged DVDs with an original score as a sort of trailer for the book. In it, a parade of Random House staffers earnestly testify to the book's appeal between passages from the novel narrated by Twelve Hawks in a garbled baritone that makes him sound like Darth Vader's nephew, while trippy illustrations leak across the screen. Packaged in a jewel-case that also includes a CD-ROM full of marketing materials, the whole thing comes across as a money-drenched show of force. Whether anyone in the trade or media will actually spend half an hour watching it, let alone register the irony in such a slick promotion for a novel that critiques the shiny distractions of our consumer society, remains to be seen.

Despite a mailing of 9,000 galleys that began in February, early reaction from booksellers is not even close to what it was for The Da Vinci Code . Still, many found it a well-crafted thriller. At Barnes & Noble, mystery buyer James Killen found its focus on "conspiracies, the control of power, privacy and information and a secret history of the world" reminiscent of The Matrix , Highlander   andThe X-Files . It will be one of the summer's biggest make-books at the chain. Independent booksellers, too, are signing on, though some, like Karl Pohrt, owner of Shaman Drum in Ann Arbor, Mich., hesitated to use the word "original" to describe a book in which you can so clearly see the actress "Jennifer Garner playing the lead, and Christopher Walken as her father, with his hair pomped up like in Zoolander ."

Since Doubleday is looking for a younger, more male market than it typically attracts, playing up the cool factor with an aggressive street promotion in college markets is also crucial. "We were thinking about how to reach the people standing in line to watch movies like The Matrix , or who go to rock concerts, with materials that would help drive traffic to the Web sites," said Pitts. So he decided to hire teams of people who usually work for record labels to post "snipes" of the book jacket, along with stickers and decals related to the book, in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Madison, Wis.; Seattle; Portland, Ore.; and New York. "That kind of approach worked well with Chuck Palahniuk, and we hope The Traveler   has that same kind of audience," he added.

A Web Game Worth 1,000 Words

The riskiest and most inspired part of the campaign is Doubleday's multi-pronged Web strategy, which picks up where the house's popular campaign at www.davincicode.com left off. That site tapped into the popularity of Web quests by creating an online scavenger hunt that drew thousands of participants after the launch of The Da Vinci Code   in late spring 2003. As the book's popularity grew, the house devised a second quest that was featured on TheToday Show and involved clues that Brown and Kaufman had hidden on the book cover from the very beginning. After a total of 514,319 visits to the site over two months in late 2003, 40,000 people solved the puzzle and entered the contest for a trip to Paris—undoubtedly a benchmark for that kind of online book promotion.

Since the quest motif worked so well for The Da Vinci Code , the house enlisted the same Web developer, Jeff Rabb, to create a game with a similar structure that will go live at www.traveler-book.com in June. Playing on the surveillance theme, it will allow viewers to track a character—via closed-circuit camera images or by following the person's credit-card transactions, for example—with the aim of appealing to avid puzzle-solvers as well as Web surfers who are just poking around.

But Doubleday isn't stopping there. For those who gravitate to blogs, it has also created a home page for the book's heroine (under her alias as an ordinary citizen) at www.geocities. com/judithstrand/, which links to a blog at www.judithstrand.blogspot.com .

Even more elaborate is the under-the-radar campaign aimed at the book's core audience: the community of gamers who make a sport of breaking into Web sites, actively communicate via online forums and who are already paranoid about the dangers of modern surveillance. For them, there's a challenge that involves hacking a Web site to find hidden dossiers on the book's characters and coverups indirectly related to the plot, based on clues that can be found on two other sites.

Why spend the entire year before publication creating games and content that scrupulously avoid repeating the material in the book? "People like to be challenged on the Web. They want something interactive—they want an experience," said Lauren Chinn, who worked at Miramax building Web sites to market movies before she became Doubleday's Internet marketing manager.

Last spring, the house enlisted Web site designer Sam Frank to begin building the site for Judith Strand, in addition to three sites for the book's hacker audience. The additional sites are www.evergreen-foundation.com , the official site of the Tabula's scientific research arm; www.resurrectionautoparts.com , a front for a Harlequin forum; and hollismartialarts. com, which hosts a blog by one of the book's secondary characters. "For something this elaborate, you need that much time to develop it, to give it the sense that it's been around," said Chinn.

While it remains to be seen how successful Doubleday's various efforts to connect with the gamers and to push the book into the mainsteam will be, there's no doubt their pioneering Web campaign will be regarded as a bellwether. For now, Kaufman said, "My feeling about the DVD and Web sites is that it's amazing we produced them. How else are publishers going to compete with other media in 2005? Besides, it wouldn't be as much fun to be an editor if there weren't things like this every now and then."

Comments

[Karen Olson]

Wow. I got tired just reading that. Can the book be THAT good? And it is a publicity stunt, that the writer won't reveal himself other than his name. Come on, a voice scrambler? I have a very strong urge to boycott.

[lena]

Not trying to be snotty but didn't you just help the publishing campaign by mentioning it here on your blog? I for one haven't heard of it before. Oh well, worse things have happened.
Lena

[Dave Worsley]

What Karen said above. The voice scanner, the oddball communication, the life changing event? Oh brother, Theodore Kaczynski's cobbled together a novel. I have a very strong urge to yawn.

[Kevin Wignall]

As one of the few people who haven't read The DV Code, I can safely say I'll be immune to this nonsense.
However, I'm outraged by your insinuation that Tom Cruise's relationships with females are anything but genuine examples of mutual physical attraction. Please study the "A" List for the full story of his heterosexuality and retract immediately. ;-)

[Tom Cruise]

What Kevin said, or I'll sue your ass off.

[Mimi, Nicole, Penelope, etc]

Hey Tom - you're late with this month's payment.

[Clair Lamb]

Up here in Maine we know about people who live off the grid, and what we know can be summed up in three words: No. Indoor. Plumbing.

In which case, _I_ wouldn't go see the man...

[Bill Peschel]

This has got some funny lines in it:

"In the house's biggest gamble on an unknown author since publishing The Da Vinci Code..." Dan Brown was hardly an "unknown author" as he had a few books out and his sales was getting better with each book. In the early '90s, Hyperion spent buckets of money on "The Big Picture" by Douglas Kennedy. That was a high-concept book (Yuppie kills to flee repressive life, moves to Montana, is found out. Does he kill again?) and a ton of money was spent promoting it, with only modest returns.

"That kind of approach worked well with Chuck Palahniuk, and we hope The Traveler has that same kind of audience," he added. Yeah, I can see the similarity between guys who love "Fight Club" and those who want to read "THX Logan's Matrix."

"from noticing that ATM and credit card transactions record their every decision and movement." Every decision? What I want to eat? Who I vote for? Must be a gold card.

For my money, in a contest between a group of dying warriors named after a romance line and the "grim-lipped old white men," I'll side with the Rumsfelds.

[Guyot]

Guarantee: "Twelve Hawks" is not a first-time author.

This is - as Sarah said - someone trying to get a better deal, who devised a Hollywoodesque campaign, and thanks to the sad fact that the publishing world is becoming a little more Hollywood everyday and a little less intelligent, cashed in.

From what I've seen and heard of the book it IS the freaking Matrix trilogy.

And I disagree that Sarah posting here has helped it. Sarah's blog is not Katie Couric (God forbid) - it is a source of reality - something lacking more and more in our world. I'm glad you posted this - I was already as turned off by this blatant bullshit, but hopefully others will learn about this and not get sucked in.

I'm sad for the future of the Pub world...

[Susan Tasaki]

So, I clicked over to the excerpt and read it. The author may be previously published, but it's amateur-hour writing. As to the future of the pub world...this has been riding toward us for years now, as the aggregation of mainstreaam media outlets has accelerated and the notion of a free and independent press has become almost laughable (at least, the traditional notion--the web seems to offer hope). The blatant manipulation is definitely insulting--a remote location, voice-scrambler--my god, give me a break!

[Dave Zeltserman]

I had a life altering experience reading this. Tomorrow I'm picking up my satelite phone and changing my name to Thirteen Woodpecker.

[Otis Twelve (really)]

I have contacted my lawyer and instructed her to file suit against Mr. Twelve Hawks for soiling my nom de plume.

With an addendum to the action citing Mr. Twelve Hawks for misuse of Albrecht Dürer.

(Just wait until some Arsenal thugs find out which bookstore is expecting Mr. Hawks for a signing.)

[Sarah]

Lena -- you bring up an excellent point and I did think of it when I wrote up the post, but in the end, I felt that all the pre-pub buzz had to have some holes poked through. And while I was perfectly willing to give the book a fair shake, all I could think of was that damn marketing plan. And when marketing affects reading in a negative fashion, that's awfully telling. At least in my book.

Paul -- I can't be Katie Couric. She's too damn perky in the mornings...

[Jake]

I like that the way to hack into the evergreen foundation website is to "view source."

Forget the sanctioned challenge, I hope the elusive hacker community uses their ingenuity to hack Random House and figure out what mid-list author is pretending to be Twelve Hawkes. Now THAT would be marketing.

[Dean]

Sarah, thanks for an entertaining and enlightening read.

I don't necessarily agree that talking critically about a marketing campaign is adding to it. I think that when criticism is as pointed and on-target as the criticism in this article (entry? column?) is, the net effect is to diminish the buzz. And that's a good thing.

I too read the excerpt, and I was underwhelmed.

[smithfield]

I don't normally post messages on websites, but today in the Guardian (10.06.05) there is a particularly good article by Oliver Burkeman about how difficult it is to write a book, sell it, and market it. After reading that, it's a bit depressing to go on this site and read harsh remarks about an author that no one knows and a book that no one has read.

Now, granted, I'm not in the States and I would probably resent some overwhelming media campaign as well but, here in the UK, Bantam Press has not done anything unusual to push The Traveller -- except send out the usual bound proofs.

All I know is that I HAVE read The Traveller. I help run a bookshop in London and, although it's part of a chain, most of us do actually like to read. Bound proofs are dumped into a cardboard box in the stock room and The Traveller has definitely passed the "box test." It's been taken out and read -- in fact, nearly everyone in the shop has read it and have recommended it to others.

And why is that? Well, it's exciting to read and there is a great woman character in it (named Maya), but I think all of us have responded to the fact that Mr. Hawks (or whoever he is) has a VERY large vision -- he's tried to write a book that sums up the way we live now. So many modern novels are basically "bedsitter fiction" -- little rooms, small minds.

I am curious about the author (which is why I did a Google search), but now I've decided that -- if he wants to be left alone -- that's his choice.

[Joseph Regal]

Dear Sarah Weinman:

I understand how hip it is to decry marketing – I mean, how dare a publisher promote a book! And since they usually don’t, most of the time there isn’t reason for it to become "a distraction" for you. Sadly, I could list a dozen books by my writers you’ve never heard of, though they’re fantastic and real and delightful and, as one reviewer said, “what a novel should be.” So the attention being given THE TRAVELER is pretty rare, and for me to defend it is probably pointless: without having read the book (all that “buzz” is too distracting), you’ve nonetheless convicted it of being "marketing bullshit," a complete publicity ploy.

Before I say anything else in response, I do want to clear up one bit of fact: because I’m in the business of working for my authors as opposed to promoting myself, our website is frequently out of date. First, contrary to your implication, we don’t even list clients; we only put on books that have actually been published. Second, here is a list of books that have been or are about to be published that aren’t yet there: DECADE OF THE WOLF, by Dr. Douglas Smith and Gary Ferguson, TOWELHEAD by Alicia Erian, A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND by Mitch Cullin, AMERICAN TRAVELER by James Zug, THE PARIS REVIEW BOOK OF PROBLEMS, DRIVE LIKE HELL by Dallas Hudgens, THE WU-TANG MANUAL by the RZA, EINSTEIN’S HEROES by Robyn Arianrhod, and THE TRAVELER by John Twelve Hawks. If you know anyone who wants to work on the website for not a ton of money to get us caught up, please send them our way – I do hate being four months behind all the time. Anyway, this is all to say that there is nothing to deduce from the absence of the book on our website except that we’re overworked and behind.

As for the book itself, I stand behind it completely. I think it’s great, and if I hadn’t thought so I wouldn’t have plucked it off the slush pile, weird author or not. I responded to it for the same reasons I respond to all the other books I handle: it moved me, and it changed my perception of the world and my place in it. How much more do you want from a novel? The writing is good (if you looked at our website, you will have seen we don’t handle commercial junk), and the characters are, at least to me, compelling. Most importantly, you might find it told you something about the world you live in – if you could get past the "excess noise" of its promotion.

The thing that’s most frustrating is that the very people who might be inspired to do something if they read the book are being turned off only because the publisher is working hard to promote it. When I first took on the novel, John told me “it will take another month or so to finish the endnotes.” I explained that novels have to succeed on story, character, and writing, and no one would care whether it reflected current events. But I sort of regret that decision now, because I bet you aren’t aware that your email is being read by the NSA, your phone calls can now be randomly tapped, as of 2008 your passports will be encoded with “skimmer chips” that can be downloaded from as far away as 10 feet, or that the city of Chicago recently bought the facial scanning algorithms from the UK to allow them to analyze random faces in the crowd with their network of surveillance cameras. It sounds like science-fiction, but it’s all true, and it’s all in John’s book. Will anyone hear it over the “buzz?” But the threats to our privacy are very real and pernicious, and if you don’t think that’s a big deal, then you ought to reconsider the effect of the constant misinformation in this country: actors hired to play reporters at Presidential press conferences, laws that are named absolutely contrary to their intentions (the “Clear Skies Act”), the immediate defamation on Fox of anyone who challenges the war in Iraq, etc. This does matter, and ignorance and inaction are not arguments against it.

Personally, I don’t care who wrote the book –- but most of the time, people do care, because Hawks is completely right: Americans would rather read PEOPLE magazine than talk about ideas. Does it really matter if the author is a first-timer, a midlist author of another name, or Bill Gates? Does it make the book better or worse? No. And yet because Hawks doesn’t want to be part of the machine, you decide that makes him a target for derision, even though it's not his responsibility how he is promoted when he explicitly said he didn't want to promote the book. How much better it would be if he were like all my other writers, eager to go on the road and speak to 6 people in a bookstore in Arkansas and sell two or three copies of a novel that may, if they’re lucky, be read by 10,000 people. Yes, that’s much better. That is where real nobility lies.

I do wish John had not allowed Doubleday to use “John Twelve Hawks lives off the grid” as his author bio – it has the ring of challenge to it. But it’s a complicated novel, with Tibetan cosmology, quantum physics, the modern surveillance state, Knights Templar – elements of very recognizable touchstones such as, yes, even the Matrix, but combined in a completely original and organic way. And the fact is, in a culture where it’s difficult to get any attention for books or ideas, it’s hard to fault Doubleday for seizing on something less complicated to communicate: Hawks’ resistance to the machine.

So kudos for having the courage to condemn what you haven’t read. Kudos for railing against a book that tries as hard to enlighten as entertain, and congratulations as well for doing your best to destroy an author’s career because you don’t like the attention he (or she) is getting. I think it’s great that you’re making it clear it’s OK to judge something without reading it, that the cool kids are always justified in deciding something is lame because it might reach a big audience. You’re doing a great service to fiction writers everywhere. In keeping with this historical moment, it’s what makes this country what it is.

My favorite response to your column so far is “From what I’ve heard…” Yep, don’t actually read the book and decide for yourself – that would be buying into the hype....

Joe Regal

[Marianthe]

I'm reading an ARC of the book right now, and so far it reads pretty much like the Da Vinci Code (which I hated).
It's slightly better written, but it still feels like the author is more interested in telling us something he wants us to know about rather than involving us in a good story.
The writing and characters are flat, and the plot feels forced, but it's not so bad that I don't want to finish it.
Basically it makes me want to tie the guy down and force-feed him Twinkies while making him watch American Idol.

[seth]

hi... i'm a bookstore asst. mgr. (clerk) that read the Traveller and, uh, my own fanboy tendencies aside, I thought it was ok. Not like, life changing but made my bus ride palatable (this is saying a lot in 310).

I would imagine that non-fanboy types (eg: women) might find the cheddar factor a little high... (the female character is a tad cheesy).

I want to give the publisher some props for the web marketing. It goes way beyond the usual grist- mill effort we usually get (idiot dust jacket quotes, glossy promos, etc.) ...also, i'm not talking about the 'official' site for the book (traveller-book.com) which isn't so hot.

Getting the fans, or perspective fans, to be aware + talk about the book in the same way that the plot devices work in the book is a step ahead. Obviously the author relates to his idea of the audience (to whatever degree) but it's another thing for the marketing department to at least try (risk?) to engage the audience this way.

I'm not saying this is the greatest thing ever, just to give a call-out when a company tries something a little different and less crappy. We see a lot of the same crappy stuff for a TON of other titles.

...if anyone wants to force feed me twinkies I'm in s. monica. thanks all.

[Shanasta]

Go Joe!!

[Mark]

I read it. It kicks ass. deserves all the hype it gets.

Go Joe!

[Eddie]

I felt that the Traveller was a tightly written story that did make you think about the balance between security and Big Brother. The story flowed well frombeginning to end and I cannot wait for the second book - the fourth realm