The Bookseller.com

7th September 2008

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Octopus grows more with Klein

04.08.08 Catherine Neilan

Octopus imprint Mitchell Beazley is building on the runaway success of last year’s Grow Your Own Veg television tie-in with a trio of publications stretching into the start of 2009.

The original, which was the best-selling gardening book of 2007, is being succeeded by October’s launch of Cook Your Own Veg in hardback, priced at £16.99. The book features author Carol Klein teaching readers how to take the vegetables they have grown and use them in the kitchen. It is being released alongside the Grow Your Own Veg Journal, a £10 hardback, which has tips on growing and cultivating veg as well as space to record personal experiences of the garden or allotment.

The final instalment, again written by Klein in association with the Royal Horticultural Society, is called Grow Your Own Fruit, and is due to come out in hardback in January, priced at £16.99. It is hoped the books will again attract viewers of the series, which is currently being repeated on BBC2 on Wednesday evenings.

Jane Smith, marketing and publicity director at Octopus, said: “The Grow Your Own phenomenon just runs and runs and we are really excited about our plans to push what has been a hugely successful brand for us even Further.”

Sales, including exports, of the original volume hit 500,000 by November 2007 according to Ocotpus, having been launched in January. Nielsen BookScan, which excludes sales from overseas and some garden centres, records a figure of 89,000 for the calendar year.

The autumn titles will be promoted “on the high street in the run up to Christmas” Smith said, with Mitchell Beazley working alongside RHS to promote the Journal to its members. The firm has also secured crossover promotions into the gardening and cookery press, with features and
interviews in the BBC Good Food Magazine, Delicious Magazine and the Guardian.

The books will also be promoted online, both through existing partnerships with horticultural sites such as www.gardenadvice.co.uk and on the publisher’s website, www.octopusbooks.co.uk.

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