HarperCollins and MySpace are co-branding a young adult book on how to save the environment.
This effort is engineered to succeed, for the following reasons:
- By co-branding the book with MySpace, HC takes advantage of a built-in, impassioned audience looking for tools to help them make a difference;
- The message of the book is at the forefront of peoples' minds (and the media's);
- The book will capitalize on vanity by publishing the name of every single MySpace user who contributes a tip via the book's MySpace page.
I really like #3 -- it brings the phenomenon of user-generated media to the old-fashioned, prestigious world of publishing. Who doesn't want to see their name in a book? But one has to wonder if the resulting list will drive the page count to 1,000 (that's a lot of dead trees and plastic fiber, recycled or not).
HarperCollins is a subsidiary of NewsCorp, so this was inevitable, and, partnerships-wise, probably pretty painless. Nevertheless, it's exciting to see someone in publishing doing it right.
On a smaller scale, authors who've acquired a lot of Friends should be using MySpace, Facebook, Goodreads, Shelfari, LibraryThing and other social networking sites in a similar manner: as distribution channels for getting a message out to an audience that's already proven itself receptive. (And, in the case of bookshelf-cataloging sites, motivated to buy vs. borrow.)
As for co-branding books with social sites... in the era of product placement, it's an intriguing direction to take. If users weren't so fickle, it would seem smart for publishing companies to acquire some of these sites. But users are fickle, and publishing companies may not be comfortable owning social sites that allow readers to promote other publishers' titles. So... ay, there's the rub. Still, a trend to watch.
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