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Independent publisher Quercus Books is planning its biggest-ever marketing campaign, soaking up a quarter of next year’s marketing budget, for the second in the series of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. The Girl Who Played With Fire, which follows on from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, is due for hardback publication in January.
The promotions will focus on the trilogy’s heroine, Lisbeth Salander, aiming to "widen the existing fan-base by targeting a younger female audience”, as European and US territories have already done.
In January, Quercus will give away 75,000 paperback copies of Tattoo free with the Evening Standard to create "a word-of-mouth buzz" to "dramatically increase" hardback sales of the sequel. The hardback campaign will feature radio and digital advertising, and an "innovative" website by marketing agency Tangent Labs.
The firm is also planning its paperback campaign for July 2009, which will include adverts in major newspapers and magazines, nationwide consumer print advertising and “proximity ads”, to appear near major supermarket and book retailers.
Mark Smith, Quercus’s chief executive, said the aim was to sell one million copies across the trilogy. "With more than eight million copies of the Millennium trilogy sold throughout Europe, and the incredible reception the first title has received in English-speaking countries, we really feel it is time to raise the profile of these amazing books and we look forward to building on the success of our European colleagues," he said.
Tattoo has already sold 70,726 in the UK across hard and paperback editions, according to Nielsen BookScan, making it Quercus’s bestselling title for last year.
The hardback edition of The Girl Who Played With Fire will carry an r.r.p of £16.99, and goes on sale from 8th January.