Thursday + Gregory Huffstutter = The Ad Man Answers
This week we continue our Advertising Q&A series with Stephen
Parrish, long-time blogger and debut author of THE TAVERNIER STONES (Midnight Ink).
For his novel, Stephen married his love of foreign travel –- he currently lives abroad in Germany -– with cryptology, cartography, and gemology. And to promote his book launch, Stephen incorporated those elements into an online, armchair Treasure Hunt… with the Grand Prize of a real life 1-carat diamond.
Show us the bling, Stephen!
When asked about your marketing philosophy, you’ve previously quoted the Ries/Trout Theorem: “History teaches that the only thing that works in advertising is the single, bold stroke.” Clearly that played out in your decision to give away a diamond. So, has that hidden stone been found yet?
No, but it will be found within the next couple of months, because
I'm
going to begin releasing additional information on my blog. The diamond was to be awarded to the
first person who deciphered and ordered a sequence of clues. The clues reveal a web address where an
image of a diamond is hidden.
Contest participants have been emailing me, telling me of their
progress, and as of now all clues have been solved---just not by the same
person. I want to wrap this up and
take advantage of any remaining publicity while my book is still in the stores.
How has the response been to your contest? Do you feel like it also energized folks outside your core readers: publisher, booksellers, librarians, etc?
The response was perhaps a little disappointing. I'd always planned on increasing the size of the diamond incrementally, making it as large as I could. However, doing so would have required corporate sponsorship, or a large advance on a second novel, or some other windfall that didn't happen. I planned for all scenarios, though, so I'm not personally disappointed. Most of the reason I designed the treasure hunt was for fun. Did it energize industry folks? Not that I could tell. But again, no regrets. If you're not failing, you're not trying.
Do you have statistics of how
many readers got involved in the armchair treasure hunt? What kind of lift in book sales /
website traffic did you observe after the contest launch?
My best guess, interpreting site visit stats, is a few thousand people worked on it, mostly in the U.S., England, and France. Unfortunately I'm not able to identify any correlation between their activity and book sales. Whenever I see the Amazon rank bump up, or Borders or B&N restock one of their stores, I wonder who's buying the book, and why. I haven't yet received a royalty statement so I'm still pretty much in the dark.
Who funded the diamond and contest microsite – you or your publisher? Without getting into specific dollar amounts, did the entire contest cost more or less than a used Toyota Yaris? Based on estimated ROI, would you repeat a similar strategy in the future?
I funded everything.
My total expenses, diamond included, far exceeded my advance. But again no regrets. I don't think a first novel is about
making money, I think it's about establishing a presence. Would I do this kind of thing
again? Yes, if someone else funded
the prize. Designing treasure hunts
is a blast.
I notice that you did several blog interviews and sponsored a short-fiction contest (Clarity of Night) around The Tavernier Stones. What other advertising efforts did you attempt during your book launch?
This interview represents my 40th online appearance promoting the novel (Tavernier was published May 1st). In addition I participated in the Goodreads giveaway and recommend everyone do so. It's pleasant to watch a thousand or more people sign up for a copy of your book. My friends put together an online launch party, which was a lot of fun. Guest posts, interviews, solicited reviews, discussions, I tried everything. Anecdotal evidence suggests some things worked better than others, but in general I just wanted to plant seeds as widely as possible and hope at least one of them sprouted. Hollywood called, so maybe one did.
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Stay tuned next time for Tarp Wot
(that’s an elaborate word scramble) of our conversation with Stephen, where we
discuss Time Sucks and his love of Miss Snark.
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