Book Marketing Society : Promotion

Objective:

To promote the concept and range of Audiobooks to as wide a potential audience as possible
To establish an annual profile-raising opportunity for Audiobooks in the retail & online calendar
To highlight the benefits and advantages of the audiobook platform, whether, as a physical product, or as an opportunity to interact with literature electronically by downloading.

Media Partner:

By working with The Guardian newspaper, we can leverage their editorial strengths and independent endorsement to help advise potential new consumers
A supplement will be inserted within the Saturday 28th June edition of the paper to reach a 650,000 circulation (it will either be 8pp A4 or 4pp A3/Berliner depending on insertion guidelines)
The supplement will be advertised in advance in the paper by Four G2 strip ads over the previous week
It will also be supported on the Guardian website with a debate over the selection and the format

Retail partners:

Buyers from Waterstones, Borders & Amazon are on the judging panel for the promotion.
It is anticipated that each will support the promotion instore and online. Waterstones in particular have decided to price promote and have asked for promotional FSDU's to be created and placed in 300 stores over the period: 26th June to 30th July
In addition, the promotion ideals have been communicated to the following in the anticipation that they will also support it instore/online: WHSmith, Blackwells, Play.com, Eason, Hughes & Hughes, Foyles.
Supermarkets have all been made aware of the exposure - Asda, Tesco, Sainsburys through their wholesalers including Entertainment UK.
It is hoped that the independent sector will see the eventual list as an essential or trial 'core stock range' and the wholesalers; Bertam & Gardners are both keen to support this sector. 1st - 8th July is in fact 'Indies week'
The library sector, have also been informed via The Reading Agency and they will be provided official pos for distribution.
Lovereading.com & the Leading Edge are both supportive of the promotional aims and will highlight the promotional period to their consumer and bookseller customers

Criteria for inclusion:

Key issue is to create a list of 40 titles which ably highlights the breadth of content available: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Comedy & Children's
The judging panel are making their selections based on excellence in several criteria: quality of literary content/story, abridgement, reading, production value, sound quality
The real objective is to create a list showcasing the very best audiobooks, rather than simply audiobook versions of the best books
Various commercial criteria such as; availability in CD format and at a price offering of not more than £15, were added to the submission instructions to ensure we had a standardisation of promoted titles in retail.
Each publisher was also limited to submitting not more than 15 titles and we set the publication deadline to up to end of Dec 07 to ensure the list was made up from back catalogue.
Over 160 titles were submitted.

Voting sponsorship:

To make the promotion as interactive as possible, we aim to ask the public to vote on their favourite audiobook of all time.
The vote will be made online and commences immediately after the supplement appears.
During July (around the 21st, but depending on PR opportunities) we will announce the TOP 10 titles and then finally the overall winner from the public vote.
As an inducement to vote, I have secured National Book Tokens as a Voting sponsor. They will contribute to the campaign funds and offer £500-worth of Book Tokens as a competition prize draw for all those that voted.

OFFICIAL POS

Each selected audiobook can be stickered with the official logo. This a/w can be distributed to all publishers once the final list is established and stickers will be distributed to participating retailers, before the 26th June
Independents and libraries will also be sent quantities of the official poster. Chains will have to use the official logo within their own exclusive pos material.
The supplement could be run-on at cost for distribution to retailers and libraries free to consumers, or it may be possible to re-size the supplement into a more consumer & display-friendly CD-sized guide.
The FSDU's will have official promotional headers and be made available to all retailing participants

Publicity campaign

Midas PR have been retained to build on the 40 best Audiobook idea and create press releases around the product during the promotional period of July.
They are progressing the idea of the first ever, online literary festival and will collate the endorsements about audio from celebrity readers.
The aspiration is to gain coverage on radio, TV & the national press about audio, downloading books and to centre on the key selected titles.

Ancillary potential promotional partners:

SONY DADC have suggested part-sponsoring a sampler CD for distribution instore or via e-tailer deliveries. The benefit to them is demonstrating the new technologies for data capture now available within CD. Online companies or publishers could obtain data lists for potential new customers by partnering with Sony DADC on this campaign and sharing the duplication costs of suitable content.
GO SPOKEN are offering free sample chapter downloads of the selected titles to all readers - direct to their mobile. Inevitably, this would aid them by directing consumers to their website. It does offer the consumers easy trial, but, may clash with stakeholder publishers who would wish to grow physical sales
MIVOX are attempting to offer mivox versions of each selected title and may advertise within the supplement.

Advertising opportunities:

There are opportunities to advertise within the supplement. Either within the inserted edition in the Guardian (reaching 650,000) or in the re-formatted run-on (available instore)
The reformatted guide, can be overprinted with retailer branding at cost.
Any other contributions in this form will reduce the publisher promotional title levy.

Success Assessment:

Success will be judged on ROI.
Nielsen Bookscan have offered to review the sales levels before and after and will present the findings at a post-promo steering group meeting.
Ultimately, without a headline sponsor in year one, it depends totally on the investment of the relevant audio publishers. Every effort is being made to keep costs tight and the resulting promotional title levy as low as possible

Judging Panel:

For more details please email:
Alastair Giles - alastair@agile-ideas.com
Jo Henry - johenry@publishingnews.co.uk