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Hodder & Stoughton is launching an interactive Christmas gift guide to help buyers find the perfect books for friends and family, while Hachette stablemate Headline has put together an advent calendar of giveaways.
The Christmas gift guide from Hodder will be officially launched and promoted from this Friday 28th November, which has been designated Black Friday by retailers.
Customers using the guide are asked a series of questions, starting with what kind of person they are buying for – young person, bookworm, homebody or busy bee. Once all the questions have been answered, the guide recommends a number of books, from the frontlist and backlist, with links taking customers through to the Amazon listing for each title.
The guide will be promoted with paid advertising on Google AdWords, run-of-site advertising across GoodReads and on its email newsletter to 750,000 people, video advertising on Facebook and via YouTube adverts. Hodder & Stoughton will also promote the guide through banner ads on its Christmas-themed general newsletter, on its website, and on its social media networks.
Jessica Killingley, Hodder & Stoughton’s marketing director, said that “one of the wonderful things about the whole Hodder & Stoughton list is its diversity” but that diversity could sometimes make the company’s “messaging a little complicated – it would be an awfully long Christmas newsletter”.
“So we wanted to have a bit of fun in helping people pick a book based on the recipient’s tastes and preferences,” she said. “It features a number of our current bestsellers and top brands such as Jodi Picoult, David Nicholls, Graham Norton and Lynda Bellingham but also backlist from throughout the year, language and business brands like Teach Yourself and The Secrets series and titles like classic SF novel Dune by Frank Herbert.”
Headline will launch its online advent calendar on Monday 1st December, with a different giveaway going live each day in the run up to Christmas Day.
Each day will have a different theme, ranging from author specific days where people will be able to win signed copies of books by authors including Martina Cole and Victoria Hislop, to TV tie-in days where bundles of “Downton Abbey” DVDs and calendars will be given away with copies of Headline’s “Downton Abbey” books, A Year in the Life of Downton Abbey by Jessica Fellowes, and The Downtown Abbey Rules for Household Staff.
It is the second time the publisher has run the advent calendar.
Tom Noble, Headline’s digital marketing co-ordinator, said: “It's a great way to stretch out this activity across the whole festive season, and to show off the breadth of brilliant books we've published this year and how we've got something for everyone this Christmas. We had thousands of entries last year, and over 50,000 page views, so we're really hoping to beat that this year.”