10 Nov 2011
The 2012 B&C conference will be held on the morning of Thursday 29th March at One Birdcage Walk, London, SW1H 9JJ. Come along for your annual dose of book market facts and figures!
Bookings can be made online (click here) or by contacting Steve Bohme on email or 0207 832 1784.
26 Oct 2011
Louise Jones and Toby Clarke of Ebury are the winners in the Adult category for the Best Seasonal campaign awards, for their work on Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman, with the judging panel commending a "genuine 'everyone is talking about' campaign reflecting the freshness and uniqueness of the author's writing." Meanwhile in the Children's category, HarperCollins' Tom Stabb collected the seasonal award for Darren Shan's Ocean of Blood Facebook marketing campaign. The judges were impressed with the strong engagement generated with the specially designed Facebook application, which achieved over 1 million interactions among Shan's 100k+ fanbase.
The awards were announced as part of an Open meeting themed around 'Local Campaigns, Global Platforms. Speakers included Clare Somerville, General Manager, Mills & Boon India / UK, with an update on the emerging Indian market; Claire Round, Marketing Director, Random House with a perspective on the Australian market and Julia Kingsford, CEO, World Book Night, with the latest information on 2012 plans and the role of global partnerships. BML's Steve Bohme also offered fresh insight on how consumers respond in different global markets to a range of book marketing channels.
Click here for the other highly commended titles.
15 July 2011
Judges praised the marketing teams at Macmillan behind Emma Donoghue's hugely successful Room (led by Lee Dibble) for the fantastic return on investment, and The Gruffalo Red Nose Day Book for 'lifting the brand into new territory', as winners for the January-April campaign award winners were announced at the recent BMS Open Meeting on the 5th of July.
Although Room has dominated the charts with over 400,000 copies sold to date, the judges noted it was easy to forget that the book's success was far from guaranteed at the outset. The very difficult subject matter - about a boy who has spent all his five years confined to a single room with his mother, and then tries to escape - was in part overcome by setting up two very effective partnerships in the opening stages of the campaign.
An endorsement from Mumsnet, the hugely influential online community network for parents, was noted by the judges as a 'genuine first'. The second, one of the largest reading group book giveaways organised by the Reading Agency - also had a very strong impact on word of mouth. These two innovations then made way for the second stage of the campaign, which capitalised on the momentum generated through more traditional marketing channels.
A 'perfect pairing of Red Nose Day and Gruffalo' was how the winning campaign for the newly created BMS Children's category was described, and a 'great way to bring kids into a reading environment'. Excellent exposure was gained from just one event at Westfield, and the judges remarked the overall spirit of the campaign was a great match with Red Nose Day, pointing to videos made by the team with excellent use of celebrity and costume. The award was shared between Katharine Smales, Laura Burr and Hattie Adam-Smith.
30 May 2011
Commissioning Editor Bill Massey collected the prize for copywriting excellence with Justin Cronin's The Passage, with titles from Sceptre, Penguin and Headline achieving runner-up slots. It follows the title being awarded Best Marketing Campaign for the May-August period last year.
The new Blurb Award was launched in 2009 to recognise and promote the very best in copywriting, and acknowledge the work of those within the book industry who write the all-important book cover copy.
The judges - including Damian Horner, Dominic Gettins (creative director at global ad agency EurosRSCG and author of How to Write Great Copy/Kogan Page) and Rob Williams (ex-Penguin copywriter), plus consumers from BML's BookZone panel of booklovers - were looking for innovation and creativity, persuasive blurb reflecting the essence of the book, and effective communication with the target audience.
For full details, click here.
5 May 2011
The next BMS Open meeting will see winners for the second BMS Best Blurb Awards announced. There is once again stiff competition between entries, reflecting the high quality of contenders seen by the judging panel in 2010. Last year's winners included The Other Hand by Chris Cleave and, just edging out in joint second place, The Birthing House by Christopher Ransom and Hetty Feather by Jacqueline Wilson.
To attend the meeting RSVP to Jo Henry.
4 Mar 2011
Having overseen a campaign featuring 'great partnerships', and strong cross-marketing that 'supported the author brand', the team behind Stephen Fry's The Fry Chronicles have been awarded the prize for the Best Marketing Campaign for the period September-December 2010
Jessica Killingley and Ruth Spencer at Penguin received praise for delivering an exceptional return on investment, in one instance turning one appearance by Fry at the Royal Festival Hall into a huge nationwide event, via a collaboration with PictureHouse cinemas. The accompanying app was also singled out as 'genuinely innovative', managing to generate income in its own right.
For the other highly commended titles click here.
25 Feb 2011
The postponed Book Marketing Society Open Meeting will now take place on Thursday, 3rd March in the Hodder Headline boardroom, from 5-6.30pm, chaired by Martin Neild. Presentations include Marketing 3.0, a special report on Book-lovers and Downloading, the Best Marketing Campaign Awards for the period September-December 2010 and news of all the latest book marketing opportunities coming up.
The BMS Christmas drinks party was held on 1st December, at Club49, Greek Street in Soho, both to launch the festive season and to say a big thank you and goodbye to our Chair of the last five years, Jo Howard. Martin Neild, who was also at the party, will be taking over as the new Chairman from the first meeting of 2011.
A truly exceptional standard amongst the entries for the May-August Best Marketing Campaign Awards left the judges with no option but to name three joint winners. Campaigns designed to promote The Passage by Justin Cronin, The Help by Kathryn Stockett and the Puffin 70th Anniversary were acknowledged as brilliantly executed and extremely effective.
Claire Brett at Orion Books was responsible for the marketing of The Passage and her campaign was praised for stepping away from the vampire trend, with which this book could easily have been grouped, in favour of aiming for a more literary audience. The Help was marketed by Jane Rose at Penguin and the judges were particularly impressed with this campaign's effective use of readers' and reviewers' quotes on ads. The Puffin 70th Anniversary marketing campaign was undertaken by Kirsten Grant and it was acknowledged as being "highly visual and fun" and succeeding in tapping into the nostalgia market.
For the highly commended titles click here.
A campaign "executed with real gusto" to promote Operation Mincemeat by Ben MacIntyre has taken the top spot in the Book Marketing Campaign Awards, for the first seasonal award of 2010.
Among a large number of entries including four highly commended efforts, Bloomsbury's Penelope Beech won for her "innovative and focused" campaign, with a complete rethink in strategy required when a competing publication was announced, ultimately using the book's theme of secrecy to its advantage and achiving relatively high sales by ensuring all elements were in sync.
For the highly commended titles click here.
Newly restructured membership packages, including the introduction of a level tariff to encourage multiple memberships within companies, and a newly formed committee, have been announced as part of the 2010 drive for Book Marketing Society memberships.
For more information on joining click here.
The marketing campaign deployed for Stephen King's latest offering Under the Dome has been praised for its "genuinely innovative campaign" by judges, at the recent Book Marketing Campaign Awards for the final quarterly period in 2009.
Beating off stiff competition from a raft of strong campaigns, Under the Dome was supported by a complex and interactive game of literary hide-and-seek developed for fans. Judges described it as a "brave" effort, one highly focused and non-mass market for a brand-name author, which ultimately achieved huge ROI on a tight budget.
For the highly commended winners click here.
At the Book Marketing Society Open meeting on 20th Oct 09 The White Queen by Philippa Gregory and the Life of Pi (reissue) by Yann Martel were crowned winners of the Best Marketing Campaign Awards for the second period of 2009.
The Life of Pi (reissue) campaign by Sian Gibson and Andrea See at Canongate, was praised by all judges for beautifully reinvigorating a bestseller after nine years. The White Queen campaign, by Dawn Burnett and Ally Glynn at Simon & Schuster, was commended for successfully attracting a new, younger audience to Philippa Gregory.
The Book Marketing Society are pleased to announce that the winner of the Best Marketing Campaign Awards for the 1st period of 2009 is The Very Hungry Caterpillar's 40th Anniversary Campaign. The campaign (marketed by Kirsten Grant, Puffin Books) was praised for:
The UK has voted for its favourite audiobook - the classic science fiction tale The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Primary Phase. The winner came from a selection of forty audiobooks which appeared in a special supplement in The Guardian on 28th June. Members of the public were then invited to vote for their favourite selected title on a dedicated website, www.40bestaudiobooks.co.uk. Click into the site to view the top 5 audiobooks.
The 50 Best Film Books promotion has won the Hollis Sponsorship Special Award for Best Low Budget Sponsorship. The awards reward and recognise the very best work in the UK sponsorship industry - the most creative and the most effective, those campaigns which managed to ensure the best outcomes for both sponsor and partner.
The 50 Best Film Books promotion was commended for the way in which The Guardian created an editorial event from a marketing promotion, with sales of the featured titles up by around 20%.
BML's Books and Consumers survey is the key monitor of consumer book purchasing in Great Britain.
For details on how to subscribe to the survey, or to access any of BML's market reports, - including Book Facts Online, Quarterly Updates, and Genrefacts, click here to visit their site.
Book Marketing Society
St Andrew's House
18-20 St Andrew Street
London EC4A 3AG
Tel: 0207 832 1770
email: jo@bookmarketing.co.uk