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HarperCollins is joining forces with commercial radio station Heart and bed retailer Dreams on a ‘Bedtime Book Club’ scheme.
Each month throughout 2018, Heart and Dreams will select a different HarperCollins title to discuss, encouraging listeners to set aside some time for themselves to read a book before they go to sleep and “fall back in love with bed again”. The ‘Bedtime Book Club’ will exclusively feature HarperCollins’ books across a range of themes and genres as part of the deal with specialist bed company Dreams.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, the Costa First Novel-winning debut by Gail Honeyman, will be the first title broadcast on Wednesday evening (10th January) to around 9.5 million listeners each week across the UK.
The Bedtime Book Club will be promoted across Heart’s national network through author interviews, on-air trails featuring HarperCollins audiobook material, live readings by presenters, an online competition page and Heart social and CRM channels.
The news follows HarperCollins “A Summer of Walliams” with talkRADIO which launched in June.
"The Story Hour" ran throughout the summer on talkRADIO in association with HarperCollins Children’s Booksevery Sunday, and promoted "the best children’s audiobooks, targeting family audiences". The publisher and talkRADIO share the same parent company; the latter is owned by the Wireless Group which was bought by News Corp last year.
Jen Callahan-Packer, HarperCollins’ director of brand strategy, said: “This is a great example of using different brands’ synergies to promote reading – is there a better combination than a comfy bed, some good tunes playing and a great book?”
She added: “We are really pleased to be the only publisher working exclusively with Heart and Dreams on the Bedtime Book Club, and can’t wait for the first episode.”
Honeyman’s debut was scooped by HarperCollins in a deal, worth "a high six-figure sum" made on the eve of the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2015, following a fierce eight-way auction.