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The new Bridget Jones novel Mad About the Boy, which launched with a bang at the weekend with the revelation that hero Mark Darcy is no more, saw 15,000 tweets, 800 pieces of news coverage and over 200 blogs within 24 hours, according to Jonathan Cape.
Coverage for Mad About the Boy included a piece by BBC News arts editor Will Gompertz on the 6pm and 10pm evening news, as well as a piece on Channel 5 News.
Author Helen Fielding is writing a piece for the Mail on Sunday (6th October), is interviewed in Vogue (November issue, out 7th October), and features in an interview syndicated across Grazia, Heat and Mother & Baby magazine. She will also appear on chat shows in the week of publication (10th October) including BBC's "The One Show", "Lorraine", ITV's "Loose Women" and, in November, Ireland's "Late Late Show". Radio interviews will include BBC Radio 4's "Woman's Hour", Radio 5 Live's Richard Bacon show, and Radio 2's Simon Mayo Bookclub show.
On publication day, Fielding will do signings of Mad About the Boy at Foyles and the Primrose Hill Bookshop, before appearing at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in an event that will be live streamed by the Times to subscribers, and the Manchester Literature Festival.
A nationwide Bridget poster campaign will target motorways billboards and rail stations, with a backlit display at Manchester Piccadilly. A poster campaign on the London Underground after publication will incorporate tweets from fans of the book, and promote the @MadAboutBridget account.
The Random House office on Vauxhall Bridge Road has also been fitted with a banner for the first time, announcing the new book.
Cape's social media campaign, run by digital agency Think Jam, features a Bridget Jones Facebook page (now with 122,000 likes). The post which revealed that Darcy had been killed off received 18,000 likes and 4,000 comments, with Bridget Jones trending on Facebook. More than 15,000 tweets mentioned the revelation, reaching 80m Twitter users.
Since an extract of the Mad About the Boy appeared on Sunday, the book has risen to the number one spot in the Amazon books chart, and the number three spot in the Kindle chart.