It may not be enough to make publishers forget about Hollywood yet, but some online marketing companies are getting closer to producing low-cost book-marketing vehicles that have the visceral impact of a studio film trailer. In fact, Little, Brown got more than it bargained for when it commissioned VidLit.com to develop a Flash animation trailer for Yiddish with Dick and Jane (Sept.) by Ellis Weiner and Barbara Davilman. The trailer got more than two million hits in two months, sending the book into Amazon. com's top 50 for about two weeks. It also attracted the attention of Pearson, publisher of the Dick and Jane primers, which served Little, Brown and VidLit founder Liz Dubelman with a lawsuit for copyright infringement (News, Jan. 24).
While VidLit's ambitious project represents a leap forward in book marketing, other online marketing companies have also been steadily advancing the options available to publishers, from short behind-the-scenes documentaries similar to the ones that appear on DVDs to Web sites with dazzling animation and elaborate interactive features.
Branding That Tells a Story
At a time when many publishers still use the Web as a bulletin board for standard book-and-author info, VidLit is one of the few companies to grasp the significance of pure entertainment value in marketing books online. And unlike other Web developers—who tend to rely on author video clips with all the bookish austerity of a college lecture—VidLit has managed to create a clever online diversion that doesn't strike viewers as an obvious marketing tool. Backed by a sprightly soundtrack, the two-and-a-half-minute trailer for Yiddish with Dick and Jane juxtaposes the book's humorous illustrations with a fresh narrative framework that ends with a pitch to buy the book.
VidLit drove traffic to the trailer (www.vidlit.com/yidlit) by e-mailing an alert to the 7,000 people on its own list and placing an item in a Flash animation newsletter that reaches about 80,000 techies. Though only about 2,000 viewers have bought copies of the book through VidLit since the trailer was first posted on November 9, hundreds of thousands more immediately forwarded the link to friends, effectively creating a viral marketing campaign that helped raise overall awareness of the title. By the week ending November 21, the book's sales had jumped from between 1,500 and 2,500 copies a week to roughly 3,000—4,000, according to Little, Brown v-p Terry Adams, who added that front-of-store positioning may also have been a factor in the increase.
Though VidLit trailers don't come cheap—the cost to the publisher is comparable to the cost of a major print ad or an author tour—the campaign for Yiddish with Dick and Jane revealed their potential to deliver a greater marketing bang for the buck.
The Meta Model
VidLit is one of a handful of small companies that are using multimedia techniques to market books on the Web. Another significant innovator is Teachingbooks.net, one of a new breed of book metasites that has positioned itself as a central resource for parents and educators looking for material related to children's books. In addition to cataloguing nearly 10,000 resources, from author interviews to publishers' reading guides, the three-year-old site produces book-related videos and Flash slideshows with audio. "I want everyone to have access to materials that excite them about books," founder Nick Glass said.
When developing original multimedia content, Glass approaches it as a window into the book and the author, focusing on a particular theme or the artistic process involved in making a book. Rather than just showing a talking head, Teachingbooks.net's short features use a mixture of narration and live-action footage that resemble the "making-of" extras often found on feature film DVDs. Because the slideshows are dynamic, they can be adapted to a variety of classroom conditions and learning styles (e.g., with or without audio, in chronological or nonlinear format, etc.).
Teachingbooks generates revenue by selling licenses to its videos to school districts, which in turn make the information available to parents and educators. In the year since the company began registering school districts, it has signed up the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Boston Public Schools and others, representing more than 2.5 million k—12 students. Though the International Reading Association recently announced that only around 17% of teachers are using the Internet to connect kids to materials, Glass made inroads by pursuing educational technology staffers who are charged with promoting literacy and equal access to new technology.
All of this allows Teachingbooks.net to offer more than a traditional book site and to help publishers marshal their resources. For example, when Amherst Reads, a One Book/One Community program, brought thousands of families together to celebrate The Spiderwick Chronicles, Glass was able to persuade Simon & Schuster to let him film the activities so that the event could be shared with fans across the country. On another project, he worked with Houghton Mifflin to repurpose a film it had commissioned to promote Toni Morrison's Remember: The Journey to School Integration, so that portions could be viewed on the Web.
As broadband makes it easier for the home Web user to download multimedia features, the line between marketing and entertainment—not to mention books and film—will continue to blur. Multimedia trailers won't all work, but the trend could help sustain readership and develop new readers. "You have to learn and invest in the technology," said Glass. "The more multimedia is out there, the more interactivity people can have with a book. All of us in the industry need to figure out how to create and share it."
Maas runs the communications company Darbyfilms.com.
The Players
| Company | Core Business | Key Clients/Campaigns |
 VidLitwww.vidlit.com Founded 2004 by Liz Dubelman | Creates entertaining audiovisual book trailers posted on the Internet that allow viewers to purchase books online. Top clip got two million hits in two months. | Little, Brown/Yiddish with Dick and Jane (www.vidlit.com/yidlit) |
 Teachingbooks.net Founded 2001 by Nick Glass | Produces streaming video mini-docs on the making of particular books that school districts can buy on a subscription basis; also aggregates book info from publishers and others. | S&S Children's Books/Spiderwick Chronicles, Houghton Mifflin/Toni Morrison's Remember: The Journey to School Integration (see teachingbooks.net) |
 Bookstream, Inc.www.bookwrapcentral.com Founded in 2001 by Charles Halpin | Combines author video clips with tour info and chapter excerpts and distributes them through 300 e-retailers as well as book sites. Has produced 250 Bookwraps to date, with 100 more to come this year. Top clip got 53,000 hits in 2004. | Tor/Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series; Bookspan/Harlan Coban's No Second Chance (see www.bookwrapcentral.com) |
 Marketorialwww.marketorial.com Founded in 1998 by Regina Kahney | Designs intensely interactive Web sites using animation and other features aimed at keeping interest in books and characters alive. | Disney (www.peterandthestar catchers.com); Miramax (bartimaeustrilogy.com); Hyperion (www.hyperionbooks forchildren.com) |
 Clotho Advanced Mediawww.clotho.com Founded in 1996 by Preston Austin | Designs Web sites equipped with multimedia interfaces and e-commerce components that aim to stimulate powerful word of mouth. | Built sites for Teachingbooks.net and AmericanGirl.com |
 FSB Associateswww.fsbassociates.com Founded in 1995; principals: Fauzia Burke, John Burke | Well-established Web site design and Web PR firm helps individual authors (and some publishers) increase their fan base through interactive features. | Sue Grafton (www.suegrafton.com); Mitch Albom (www.albomfivepeople.com); Jonathan Franzen (www.jonathanfranzen.com) |
