The Ad Man Answers #32

Thursday + Gregory Huffstutter = The Ad Man Answers

The past two columns, we covered author websites – the good, the bad, the eyesores. 

In a change of format, the Ad Man is bringing you a two-part interview with author Toby Barlow, whose debut from HarperCollins, “Sharp Teeth,” has been featured by the likes of NPR and The Bat Segundo Show.

Buzz, Balls & Hype approached Toby because his website breaks the mold for a book release. Of course, he’d have to be a fellow Ad Man… currently the Executive Creative Director at J.Walter Thompson in Detroit.

Without further ado…

Toby, before taking on the Ford Auto account, you previously worked on Kleenex, Diamond Trading Co., and Welch’s.  So you obviously understand how to run a brand campaign, right?

I don't know if it's true that I "understand how to run a brand campaign" but I have been thinking about it for a long time.

Digging a little further (i.e. looking at the bottom of your homepage), it appears you site was created by "Honest" who did Boredomhurts.com for Ford.  My Ad Man instincts tell me that you had a pre-existing relationship with Honest and tapped their designers to whip up your kick-ass site, probably calling in all kinds of favors to get it for peanuts. 

I did have a pre-existing relationship with Honest Design, but it actually preceded the work they did for Ford. I met them when I was starting the Plimpton Project and together we created that website. I have no idea why they helped me with it, we had no money, but Plimpton Project turned out to be an awesome site. We were even nominated for a Webby, competing in the fan category against the likes of The Grateful Dead and Harry Potter. Honest also had a pre-existing relationship with HarperCollins, as they had done the site for Michael Crichton's last book. So the opportunity seemed to be there.

What I love about your website is that it creates a whole mood -- an immersive experience -- around your book's world.  It strikes me as something you'd see in support of a feature film, not a hardback book.  What were your goals in creating the site?

The biggest question you have to ask when you're putting together a website for a book is honestly, why the hell do you need a website for a book? A book should be a pretty all encompassing universe of its own, so either you're going to do something that is redundant to the content of the book or it will be somewhat irrelevant. The only answer I could come up with was to use it to add some color to the book, bringing dimension to the tonality, which the web can do really well since it's such a visual medium. So creating animation and public service announcements and photography of the sorts of neighborhoods that inspired the book seemed to frame the book without revealing too much.

Did "Honest" create your website for you before or after you sold the novel to HarperCollins?

After.

Was this something that you funded on your own – or did your publisher end up footing the bill?

The publisher paid for it, but not a lot. So instead of money we gave Honest a mess of creative freedom. I find that if you give people material they think is fun, work they can use as portfolio pieces or work that might win awards, and you let them collaborate with you and come up with ideas they actually want to produce, then money recedes as an obstacle. You also have to be really appreciative and sincere and remember to say "thank you" a lot.

Speaking of the bill, are you comfortable giving a ballpark cost estimate of the site and video elements?

A-Less expensive than a Focus

B-Less Expensive than a Taurus

C-Less Expensive than an Explorer

D-More expensive than an F-150

As I said, it was really cheap. The Honest Guys did it 'cause they are true artists, the animators did it for much the same reason. I had worked with the animators before on another project (the Billy Collins action poetry series) and I think we were all really happy with the way that project had turned out. I just kept asking the animators "Who wants to do that again, only now with my book?” until I found a few who didn't say no.

By making the world of "Sharp Teeth" the focus, and not Toby Barlow the author, you're setting yourself up for creating unique websites to support all future novels.  Is that your intent, or are you planning to design a more catch-all, traditional author home page?

I'm not interested in creating a traditional author homepage. I don't know what the purpose of that would be unless it was to show off odd, unmarketable ideas (come to think of it, I have a lot of those). But I do think the web is better geared to bringing ideas to life and not as some sort of glamorous self-portrait project.

*      *      *

In part two of our interview, Toby will discuss how he shot his “Is Your Dog A Werewolf?” video, what kind of traditional advertising he did for his book launch, and how he reconciles being in advertising, while not branding himself.

What do you think about Toby’s website?  Go ahead and leave your feedback in the comments section.

 

Gregory Huffstutter has been punching Ad Agency timecards for the past decade, working on accounts like McDonald's, KIA Motors, and the San Diego Padres. He recently finished his first mystery, KATZ CRADLE and is currently on submission. The first 100 pages of his novel are linked here. For general advertising questions, leave a comment or send e-mail to katz @ gregoryhuffstutter dot com with 'Ask The Ad Man' in the subject line.

Comments

[Jeff]

It's a really cool site! But oddly, what grabbed my interest via that site in wanting to read the book was actually the Publishers Weekly review.

There's a lot of potential for enhancing a book web site through but a question that has to be asked: is a book's web site for fans of the book/author or for reaching new readers?

[sesgaia]

I can see how this type of site could be easily translatable to other books/projects that lend themselves to this tongue-in-cheek style. I can also see how certain elements (photographs, audio, video) could be incorporated in an interesting way for a more conventionally serious book. I do think however that if Toby is considering developing a long-term career as an author, he might consider at least one page devoted to a bio/pic- there is also no place to sign up for a newsletter, and no blog- so the wall between author and reader is firmly in place. But I guess that's the goal here?

[Amanda Stevens]

That website is great! I really want something like it for a project I'm currently working on. Cool, hip, a little offbeat. Yeah, I'm all over it. And it does make me want to read the book.

[Chris The Erotic eBooks Reader]

I think that its the cover of the ebook that really makes a difference to buying it. They are sort of like comic covers and that immediatley attracts me and many other ebook fans as well. So yes, the cover has to leap out and grab you! And this books cover does just that