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Bookshops from London to Edinburgh are gearing up to mark the publication of the new Haruki Murakami novel on 12th August.
Foyles new flagship branch on London’s Charing Cross Road will host a midnight opening party selling exclusive black cover limited edition copies of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (Harvil Secker).
Other bookshops, including Waterstones Piccadilly, Blackwell’s in Edinburgh and Oxford and City Books in Hove will open early in the morning for a breakfast Murakami parties to mark the new book, which sold one million copies in its first week on sale in Japan in April last year.
Meanwhile The Big Green Bookshop in London’s Wood Green will sell the new Murakami novel and midnight and Waterstones branches in Deansgate, Glasgow and Leeds will also host out-of-hours events to boost sales of the new book.
Harvill Secker has provided a special sheet of stickers designed by five Japanese illustrators, commissioned by Creative Director Suzanne Dean included in the first edition copies of the book.
A spokesperson for the publisher said: “Tsukuru means ‘to make’ or ‘to build’, and the concept behind the stickers is to encourage the reader to decorate the novel themselves.”
Vintage will also host a competition on its website inviting people to share images of their personalised front covers.
E-book version of the novel will feature an animated front cover where the circles of the front cover design move to guide the reader into the novel, complete with a link to download the cover as a screensaver, while an outdoor marketing campaign to alert readers to the publication will run from 25th July to 22nd August in two stages in key cities across the UK, including London, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow.
Beyond the UK, promotional activity is also taking place in Penguin Random House Group companies in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India, as well as in Europe and Asia. Fans in Australia and New Zealand are set to take part in a ‘Very Short Film Festival’ via Instagram (@murakami_film) where their entries give them the chance to win a travel voucher to embark on their own pilgrimage. In India there will be a "significant" online advertising campaign, and limited edition prints of the front cover are being given away via retailers and social media channels around the world.