Book trade feels the force of Star Wars

The UK book trade is preparing to feel the full force of "Star Wars: Episode One", released today (16th July), on sales of tie-in books from Dorling Kindersley, Random House and Scholastic, Joel Rickett writes.

DK has paid £60,000 to hire an entire London Underground platform to advertise its two titles, Incredible Cross-Sections and The Visual Dictionary. The 22-poster sequence of ads will be displayed over the westbound Piccadilly Line platform at Leicester Square for the next month.

DK has now spent £1m on the global marketing campaign for its Star Wars titles; Random House has spent £200,000 on marketing its novelisations and its title The Making of Star Wars. Scholastic, which has sold one million copies of its eight children's titles into the UK trade, has spent £150,000.

Eddie Gibson, senior product manager for books at Virgin Megastores, said that he was "quietly confident" that the books would dominate the trade. "We're waiting for the mass market to convert. There's a whole generation of 14 to 18-year-olds who've never seen a Star Wars film at the cinema—but as long as they come through the hype, the books will do brilliantly."

Mike Broderick, RH sales director, said the lifting of restrictions on in-store promotion meant "booksellers can now go out with all guns blazing. The books are going to take off."

See Marketing, page 32