Free Twilight Book: Generous Giveaway or Masterful Marketing?

Yesterday it was announced that Stephenie Meyer is going to release a fifth Twilight book, but it's not what you'd expect. Let's get the facts first: this is not Midnight Sun, it is a completely different book, a novella actually*, about Bree Tanner. Don't know who Bree is? You're not alone, I didn't remember her at first either**. Cut for spoilers: She is one of the (spoilers!) newborn vampires created by Victoria in the 4th book, the only one to escape the Cullens, and was later killed by the Volturi.

What I find particularly interesting about this book, though, is the way it's being marketed & distributed. First, starting on June 7th, the entire book will be available free online. Sounds generous, right? Well, it is—but only for a month. After that it will be printed in book form, $1 of which is going to be donated to the Red Cross. Still pretty generous, but it's also very clever.

The first clever marketing tactic here is offering the book free online, for a limited time only. Putting a book online gains readers you might not get otherwise, makes the book easily accessible, and the more people who read it, the more people who like it, the more people who are likely to purchase it later. The New York Times recently printed an article on this, about how offering an ebook for free can not only gain readers, but put your book on the bestseller's list, something that attracts even more attention.

So you tell all your friends to hurry up and read it online, creating a sense of immediate need, but what if you don't get it on time? What if you don't finish reading before it goes offline? How will you keep up with your fellow Twilight obsessed friends? No worries, you can buy the book in print! And a true fan will likely buy the book anyway, regardless of reading it online, so they can own it and reread it whenever they want***. The added bonus here is that you're doing a good thing, because $1 of your purchase goes to helping people through the Red Cross! Why is this important? It has to do with embedded giving, which I won't pretend to be the expert on, but here's the bottom line: By tacking on that donation, you are more likely to buy the book. You feel good about yourself, because you helped people, but you don't need to go out of your way to do it. You get to support change by doing something you were going to do already! When I think about this (thanks to one of my professors), I think about Product RED. You were going to buy that shirt or that laptop or that book anyway, but now you get the added bonus of feeling good about the purchase. It takes away some of the hesitation we might have for spending the money. What I'm saying here is that by putting that sticker on there that proceeds will go to the Red Cross, readers are more likely to pick it up. It's not as deceptive as this argument may first suggest, but it is clever.

An argument that's been raised over the past two days regarding this (largely by anti-Twilight people) is that Meyer is only printing a fifth book as a way to milk more money out of her fans. I don't think that's true. Surely she'll be making more money, but she's not making any thing off the free copies and honestly, I think she's sincere in saying that she wants to do something for her fans. True Twilight fans have been begging for a 5th book since the 4th one come out. If JK Rowling put out an 8th book, wouldn't you want to read it? Didn't you want to check out The Tales of Beedle the Bard when it came out? It's the same thing. There is a demand by the fans for more to read in the Twilight world, and Meyer's fulfilling those wishes. If she only wanted to milk the fans, she would have released Midnight Sun despite the leak.

Will I be reading the book? Probably not, but I'm not the biggest fan of the books. For the people who are, I can understand their excitement at having something more to read, I would feel the same way. And I really do think that Little, Brown is being rather clever here with the way they're marketing it.

*Although 197 pgs hardly sounds like a novella.
**actually, still don't, but I am trusting some of my friends who are die hard fans.
***This reminds me very much of another post I need to make, on the ethics & arguments behind downloading ebooks. I will get to that soon, I hope.

Book Review: Peeps

This is my 101st post! :)
This semester I've been writing book reviews for my school newspaper, The Blazer. I've been waiting to put them up on here so that I could link you all to read them on the newspaper's webpage, but it doesn't appear that anyone over there is updating the page anymore.


Peeps by Scott Westerfeld
Young Adult

This year vampires are popular in literature, but with all the hype over Twilight, other vampire novels are lost in the shuffle. One such brilliant novel is Peeps by Scott Westerfeld. In his book Westerfeld puts a new spin on the classic vampire story. Forget all the folklore about crosses and silver bullets, this isn’t a mythological kind of story, this is about a parasite. The parasite works a little bit like an STD, no biting of necks necessary. Some of the old tales about vampires are explained by Westerfeld in that the parasite changes a person’s perceptions of the world & causes them to hate the things that they liked in their pre-peep days, such as crosses if they were religious.

The main character, Cal, is a carrier for the parasite--someone who has it, but isn't affected by it, except for increased strength and heightened senses. It's Cal's job to find other “peeps” and capture them before they cause any more harm or spread the disease farther. His main target is Morgan, the woman who gave him the parasite, but along the way he meets Lace, a girl who begins to involve herself in the investigations with him. But it’s a little hard to concentrate on the mission when the parasite wants Lace too, adding a little romantic conflict to the story.

The plot is well thought out, interesting, and on occasion suspenseful. And for the life science geeks out there, the even numbered chapters are about real life parasites. These chapters add to the story & make things easier to understand, but if you have a weak stomach it is advised that you skip these chapters as they can get a little disturbing and are not integral to the plot.

Part science fiction, part non-fiction this book will make you rethink everything you’ve known about vampires up until now and make you fall in love with them all over again. Scott Westerfeld has a great writing style and creates characters you’ll remember and relate to. This book is recommended to those who love vampires, science fiction, or just want a good, quick read.

If you liked Peeps, try the companion novel, The Last Days by Scott Westerfeld. New characters, new perspectives, same old parasites.