As publishers accept online marketing as a given, a divide is emerging between books presented under the umbrella of a publishing brand versus book titles or authors that are promoted as brands unto themselves. This parallels the long-time split between TV and movie promotion strategy: television primarily promotes the network brand while movie studios (with the notable exception of Disney), promote each film on its own merits. While the best approach is usually determined by the property itself, the online marketing issues remain the same: targeting the audience for a Web site, finding a way to draw visitors back to it repeatedly, and integrating the site into an overall branding and merchandising strategy.
What's in a Domain?
The most obvious way to break out a property online is to give it its own domain name. Film studios have been doing this for years, most recently with sites like www.shrek.com or www.manchuriancandidate.com. Of course there are instances where someone has beaten the studio to the punch: www.irobot.com belongs to a computerized vacuum company; the film site is www.irobotmovie.com. But the point is clear: a URL that incorporates the title is ideal.
Publishers, on the other hand, more often host book pages on corporate sites, in the same way that TV networks host sites for particular shows. Penguin, for example, hosts Sue Grafton's R Is for Ricochet at us.penguingroup.com/Book/BookFrame/ ?0399152288, leaving it to the author (or, if there's a movie in the works, to the film studio) to provide a more content-rich environment. HarperCollins is one of the few major houses to deviate from that strategy on its site, by offering a long list of links to author sites that run the gamut from fully developed standalone sites (www.MegCabot.com) to kitchen-table versions with basic text and photos (like Joe Haldeman's at home.earthlink.net/~haldeman/). However, clicking on a few clunkers may discourage further browsing.
In a few cases, publishers are starting to adopt Web strategies more typical of the film world. Type www.polarexpress.com into a Web browser, and you'll arrive at Houghton Mifflin's site for the book. "We wanted to make sure that the most obvious keyword led people back to our site," said Bridget Marmion, v-p, director of marketing for Houghton Mifflin's trade and reference division. Likewise, www.lemonysnicket.com is a book site engineered by HarperCollins. Both have been up for years, well in advance of the film adaptations. "When there's an author, series or property that readers recognize as a brand unto itself, we want to build it as its own standalone environment," explained HarperCollins marketing director Suzanne Daghlian.
Playing for Keeps
In order to attract fans' attention and keep them coming back, most standalone sites offer a wide variety of freebies, including games, screensavers, author interviews, backlist information and newsletter signups. "The ultimate goal is always to sell more books and build awareness" by wrapping the brand message in appealing collateral, and continually refreshing the content, said Julie Amitie, associate director of marketing at Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing.
It's a strategy that's similar to those used by TV networks. HBO's site (www.hbo.com), for example, has very distinct and sophisticated pages for each of its original shows that offer a wide variety of background information, diversions and bulletin boards that allow fans to "live" the brand. During the off-season, the show-branded newsletters even promote cast activities outside the show, like Six Feet Under star Peter Krause's current theatrical run in After the Fall in New York City.
Publishers with ongoing book series benefit from a similar long-term strategy. Lemonysnicket.com is a flexible promotional vehicle for any number of books, associated merchandise and activities precisely because it's not tied to any particular book, but to the larger brand identity. The 11th book in the series, The Grim Grotto, debuts September 21, followed by the movie in December. "And we just keep going," said Daghlian, referring to the DVD that's tentatively scheduled for April 2005, followed by A Series of Unfortunate Events #12 in September 2005. By staking out a strong online presence, HarperCollins has a good shot at maintaining the prominence of the books during the film marketing blitz. "We never lose sight of the fact that the Lemony Snicket books are at the heart of this, and there are more titles than the three books that the film is based on," said Daghlian.
Though studios don't often bother to link their promotional sites to publisher sites, the early strength of lemonysnicket. com inspired Paramount to play ball. The studio not only sought the publisher's input on creating appealing Web features but cross-linked its site (www.unfortunateeventsmovie.com) to HarperCollins's. That's something of a coup, given the overwhelming Hollywood marketing dollars that are primarily pushing the movie. The studio even urged fans to explore the book site by hiding one of its collectable "eyeball" game pieces there, causing a huge spike in traffic on HarperCollins's site within a matter of hours.
Even with studio cross-linking, however, a book site has to deliver the goods to ensure that fans stick around long enough to explore the backlist and/or other series. Polarexpress.com makes savvy use of the film's trailer, and tries to hang onto viewers by presenting it within a pop-up window instead of redirecting visitors to another site. (Clicking to view the film trailer launches it in a pop-up without navigation controls; when you're done watching, you close the window and you're right back at polarexpress.com.) Conversely, lemonysnicket.com and most others typically link to the movie site's trailer page, which increases the likelihood that fans will get sucked into the film site instead of coming back to the books.
When Is a Book a Brand?
There's no precise formula to determine when a book property has become a strong enough brand to justify the cost of creating a standalone site, though publishers clearly favor homegrown properties to which they control most rights. Simon & Schuster bought the domain www.oliviabooks.com in 2001, filling it with goodies that would be impossible to load onto a standard book detail sub-page, to promote the popular children's series by Ian Falconer. "We dedicate more resources to those properties because it's not content that's available elsewhere [from a competitor]," said Amitie. The publisher is also readying a dedicated site for its Spiderwick Chronicles (www.spiderwick.com) that will feature excerpts, a newsletter sign-up and "letters" from the protagonists, all wrapped in an animated interface, just as The Wrath of Mulgarath, book five by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, lands in stores in September.
By contrast, www.simonsayskids.com lists the Dora the Explorer books that tie into the Nickelodeon franchise, but doesn't break them out on their own page. "Nickelodeon already has so much Dora content online that it doesn't make sense for us to compete as a Dora destination site, so rather we aim to cross-promote and get our books featured on their site," Amitie explained. Still, S&S contributes book content to the Nick sites, like an upcoming storybook for Dora's Fairy Tale Adventure (Sept.), which will appear with a link back to the Simon site so visitors can see the whole catalogue.
Like most publishers, Houghton's Marmion stresses the need for "a critical mass of people who want material particular to a brand." An upcoming film adaptation often convinces publishers that a chain reaction is imminent. With polarexpress.com, for example, many new pages and features went up only last June, in anticipation of the film's marketing push, though the site originally was registered back in 1996. "We would've done this eventually, but with the movie coming, it seemed like the right time to gear up," said publicity manager Karen Walsh.
In some cases, publishers are integrating standalone sites into their publishing strategy from the beginning. HarperCollins is experimenting with building a site to promote a new franchise, the Septimus Heap trilogy, in advance of publication. While the first book, Septimus Heap: Magyk by Angie Sage, won't be published until March, the site (www.septimusheap.com) is already filled with activities and information. The book will be packaged with a CD that, along with the Web site, will "extend the experience of the book and bring the characters to life," said Daghlian.
Scholastic, meanwhile, is promoting its first Hispanic franchise, Maya and Miguel, on the Web, even though the series will originate on PBS before appearing in book form. However, much like a TV network, the house will promote the book within its corporate site, since Scholastic is committed to reinforcing its overall perceived brand value to teachers, parents, librarians and administrators. "By using Scholastic.com to promote everything that is available from Scholastic, we are able to fully leverage our selling and marketing infrastructure," said e-Scholastic president Donna Iucolano.
Reading Lists and Episode Guides
Publishers that have a well-developed readers' guide program on the Web might also choose to keep a big book title under the house umbrella. Houghton, for example, uses its increasingly popular readers' guides section (www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/readers_guides/) to cross-promote other titles in a constantly updated "featured" list. "It can be overwhelming for reading groups to figure out what to read next," said Marmion. "We're hoping they'll see our Web site as one-stop shopping." Random House and Penguin Books have extensive reader resources as well, though they present them in long alphabetical lists (available at www.randomhouse.com and us.penguingroup.com.).
groups Houghton's approach is more inviting to the casual browser, in that its page of titles recommended for reading is limited to six books (www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/readers_guides/). One current selection, Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, will soon have a link to a video in which the author answers frequently asked questions. The video, produced while Lahiri was unable to travel during her pregnancy, is a natural fit for the page.
The growth of online readers' guides mirrors HBO's experience with episode guides. "You'd think if someone had just seen the episode they wouldn't need to read the guide, but our highest traffic day is Monday, right after our shows premiere," said Mary Baumgartner Jones, HBO's v-p business development, Web marketing. Her colleague, Matt Young, executive producer of HBO Online, added that people log on to discuss the show within minutes of his opening a discussion thread.
This sort of activity validates what branding advocates have long claimed: that people are often looking not just for a product, but for a community. But it may be more sensible for publishers to reinforce the publishing brand, or perhaps create some sort of shared resource meta-site, for readers involved in book clubs. Houghton tries to have it both ways by posting readers' guides on its own home page and at www.marinerreadersguides.com.
Audience and Outreach
As publishers explore new approaches to online branding, they're learning more about their target audiences. "Our [corporate] site was built really with teachers, librarians, booksellers and the media in mind," said Marmion. The company is still angling for the right mix with branded sites like polarexpress.com and curiousgeorge.com, which Marmion described as "more consumer-oriented." For example, the menu at polarexpress.com offers the usual links about the author, the book series and the movie, but also includes areas for "teachers/librarians" and "media/booksellers." While some of the information in the media/booksellers area seems appropriate for consumers, such as a list of all the merchandise, the electronic press kit does not. Lemonysnicket.com, by contrast, is squarely aimed at consumers, as are the sites for Olivia and Spiderwick Chronicles.
Marmion believes that publishers should investigate their target audience before launching into the expense of any standalone Web effort. If the fanbase isn't already clamoring for more materials and information, devising a strategy for driving traffic to the site is crucial. Basic efforts involve advertising a site's URL on a book jacket and in marketing materials, while more adventurous publishers are using e-newsletters and even Google to develop a following. Some are also reaching out at special events. "At ComicCon, we can't sell the audience 85 books by J.R.R. Tolkien, but we can give them a URL that allows them to see how all of the books fit into the Tolkien world," Marmion explained.
No End in Site
Given the opportunities and risks of Web marketing, Marmion believes a book needs to have a major profile to have a chance of catching people's attention. "There's got to be a reason to believe that there is so much going on already around the book or category that people want a place to gather; you can't expect the site itself to drive the traffic," she said. Others, like Harper's Daghlian, put more faith in recruiting fans to their sites. In either case, no one has yet devised a way to quantify how any of these online efforts directly impact sales. (Then again, the same could be said for traditional marketing, though it's the elephant in the room that everyone has learned to live with.)
Even with an established franchise, there's no set formula for determining whether the main brand identity should be a book series, author or theme. The series site lemonysnicket.com is Harper Children's number-one destination, followed by the author site MegCabot.com. No matter what strategy a publisher undertakes, however, Amitie believes Web branding will continue: "As homegrown licenses continue to grow, I think you're going to see these standalone sites more often."
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