Books go pop for publishers

A venture that borrows from the world of pop music aims to give publishers a fresh way to market books beyond traditional audiences. The innovative project, Pop Promos for Books, has been launched by Scottish media company Screenbase in partnership with Edinburgh-based publisher Canongate.

Digital animators, graphic designers and music video producers have been commissioned to use Flash technology to create short films based on five Canongate titles. The two to five-minute films will then be accessible through Canongate's Website, Canongate.net, which was also created by Screenbase.

The creative directors have been given a free hand to interpret the books, which include Gil Scott-Heron's Now and Then and Gili Dolev's The Book of Genesis. Titles from Canongate's spring 2002 list to get the treatment include Robert Sabbag's Smokescreen, the sequel to the cocaine smuggling classic Snowblind, for which the publisher paid its highest-ever advance. Screenbase will take early demos of the films to the Frankfurt Book Fair next week.

Canongate plans an e-mail campaign, targeting registered users of its Website with short excerpts and links to an online streaming of the full films. The publisher hopes that awareness of the project will spread "virally" from these first viewers. A similar campaign to publicise the Edinburgh International Film Festival attracted 30,000 hits within nine hours from an initial mailshot of 3,000 people.

Peter Collingridge, Web producer at Screenbase, says Pop Promos for Books represents "a convergence between publishing and the Internet that has not happened before. It's using the Web in a way that publishers have not imagined."

Screenbase—which is also working on Websites for Serpent's Tail and the Scottish Book Trust—hopes the project will have advantages for publishers beyond initial marketing of titles. The films will drive traffic to Canongate.net, and screen stills can be used on book jackets or promotional material. Screenbase also believes the films can exist in their own artistic right. It hopes to persuade television stations, film festivals and arthouse cinemas to show some of the shorts.

Funding for the project has come from a Scottish Arts Council grant. If the early films are successful, more will be commissioned to promote new titles from Canongate. Screenbase intends to offer its service to other publishers.

Mr Collingridge is confident the videos will help publishers to reach new book buyers. "It's an exciting and adventurous way of marketing," he says. "It's an attractive market for publishers to reach, breaking out beyond normal reading circles."