Viral Issue: Sharing Is Caring

Viral Campaigns

This is an exciting time for the publishing world. While none of us may know precisely how best to publish, market and sell in the digital space, social networking online has given us an unprecedented opportunity to experiment and to extend the one thing that has always worked for us: word-of-mouth.

Capitalizing on readers’ basic desire to share has helped us develop new, successful viral strategies for many Hyperion and Voice titles. For example, in preparation for the launch of Kelly Corrigan’s memoir, The Middle Place, our digital media team produced a video of Kelly reading a heartfelt essay to the women who came together to support her while she was being treated for breast cancer. To date, the video has been viewed more than 4.5 million times, and the book has over 360,000 copies in print and spent 27 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. This viral campaign achieved such dramatic success because women all over the world shared it with one another, just as they do with their favorite books.

Digital strategies that launch several months in advance of publication can play a significant role in positioning a book for success. In the past 12 months, we have developed viral components for many titles that went on to become bestsellers. We created a widget for Michael J. Fox’s Always Looking Up, a “Witchipedia” for The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane and a series of healthy cooking tips for our #1 bestselling cookbook, Cook Yourself Thin. For the forthcoming And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer, we’ve produced a Twitter-based promotion and a viral video game. These viral campaigns have reached hundreds of thousands of potential book buyers—and they have done so through people they know and trust, which increases the likelihood that they will buy the book.

Hyperion’s most innovative viral concept is our new e-imprint: Kernl. In May, we launched the JobKernl in partnership with career expert Tory Johnson and our corporate partners at Good Morning America. The JobKernl combines short videos and text with interactive components to help job seekers with every aspect of the search, from writing a résumé and preparing for an interview to using social networks to land a job. Since its launch, over 35,000 people have shared the JobKernl, with the total number of views now well over 800,000. In July, we unveiled the NewsKernl with Brian Ross, a peek behind the headlines of the Bernard Madoff scandal. Later this fall, we will introduce a third version: the FoodKernl, a key element of our marketing campaign for Jamie Oliver’s new cookbook, Jamie’s Food Revolution.

Our goal with these viral digital products is to make bite-sized pieces of information available to the digital generation—and to let them share it with their friends. We also think of the Kernl as a book incubator. Since we are able to track views to the Kernl, we can identify topics that might be viable as longer print and e-books. After all, people want to share what they’re thinking about the books they read, at work, over dinner and, of course, in book clubs. Why not harness that power? In my 25 years in publishing, I can’t think of a more interesting moment for the business we all love.

More articles from PW's Viral Issue:The Viral Loop

by Adam L. Penenberg

The Networked Agent by Kate LeeThe Listening Game by Megan ZabelVirtual Book Tours by Kevin Smokler and Chris AndersonCreating Your Viral Loop on Twitter by Rachel SterneBlogging as Multiplier Effect by Adam L. PenenbergSoapbox: Where Ideas Go to Die, Not Spread by Seth Godin