Steamy Book Gets Buzz From the Web
Viral Video Campaign
Gets Audience Quickly,
But Views Aren't Sales
By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG
March 28, 2007; Page B4
When Harper Perennial published Chad Kultgen's debut novel "The Average American Male" this month, it hoped to generate buzz cheaply -- with lots of stories in the press. Instead, Mr. Kultgen's salacious tale of how men daydream about women turned out to be too steamy for most newspaper and magazine editors to touch.
![[Photo]](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/MK-AJ187_ADVERT_20070327192022.gif)
They were nervous -- with reason -- that some readers would find the book juvenile, sexist and offensive. Even Penthouse, which ran a brief excerpt, called it "an appalling book we couldn't put down."
So Harper Perennial, a paperback imprint of News Corp.'s HarperCollins publishing unit, spent $10,000 to produce three risqué videos promoting the book. Initially placed on YouTube before spreading elsewhere on the Internet including MySpace, the videos have become a Web sensation, with more than one million verified views in the past two weeks. Since its March 13 publication date, the book has gone back to press three times, raising the total in print to 30,000 from 20,000.
Harper Perennial's experience is the latest example of how viral Web video is remaking marketing, giving companies with tiny ad budgets the ability to reach a big audience quickly and cheaply. It's particularly significant for book publishers, which prefer to rely on word-of-mouth chatter to drive sales more than conventional advertising.
Not every novel is suitable for YouTube promotion. But for titles like "The Average American Male," targeted at young men, Internet video can be a better marketing vehicle than traditional media outlets.
"We needed to go where the average American male readership would be: online, passing around funny quirky videos," says David Roth-Ey, editorial director of Harper Perennial, adding that he is talking about men under the age of 40. "If we were going to find them, it wouldn't be by advertising in the New Yorker."
Still, the limits of the strategy are clear. Only a fraction of the million views has so far turned into sales, likely because the people watching the videos aren't frequent book buyers. As Mr. Kultgen says, "Now we'll see if the views translate into book sales."
"The Average American Male" describes the fictional exploits of a narcissistic man obsessed with sex. Mr. Kultgen, a 30-year-old Los Angeles screenwriter, says the title was widely rejected by publishers who said they found the book hilarious but didn't think anyone would publish it because of its outré content. Even inside Harper Perennial, some saw it as lad-humor satire but others felt it was misogynistic.
After buying the manuscript, Harper Perennial bet that a series of short videos that reflect the over-the-top protagonist of the novel would prove irresistible to Web sites that in part cater to guys sitting in cubicles all day. "The best way to reach our audience was to go directly to them," says Mr. Kultgen.
The publisher hired New York director James Monohan, a friend of Mr. Kultgen, who created three videos from scripts that the two collaborated on. "The goal was to entertain potential readers, provide a brutally honest look at what guys think of women, and drive people to the book's Web site," says Mr. Monohan.
All three videos portray scenes between men and women, with the action suddenly stopping to reveal the guy's inner thoughts. Those aren't exactly about cuddling, or sharing feelings -- they're gross-out punch lines. Mr. Monohan says he worried that the publisher would censor the videos, but in the end Harper Perennial decided that the videos were a true reflection of the book's content and made only one cut, bleeping an offensive slang word.
Mr. Roth-Ey said that as soon as the first video was posted on YouTube.com, it began getting hits. Then they began appearing on other Web sites such as MySpace, FHM.com, Heavy.com and Maxim.com, in most cases posted by members of the public. "We didn't pay them, and they didn't pay us," he says. "If you post it on YouTube.com, you are making it available."
Mr. Roth-Ey notes that the majority of comments from women who have viewed the videos on MySpace.com indicate that they find the videos funny. Based on that reaction, Harper Perennial is looking for a woman to write a female counterpoint to "The Average American Male."
The publisher will likely launch other viral video campaigns in the future, Mr. Roth-Ey says, but it will pick the books carefully. "It's an audience issue," he says. "If the audience isn't right, it doesn't make sense to do video." There are so many videos being uploaded onto the Web every day, he adds, that only the right video for the right book aimed at the right viewers will break through.
"Even then you are competing with tens of thousands of other videos, so there is an element of luck as well," he adds.
One irony: Harper Perennial says it invested $2,500 in Web advertising intended to drive viewers to the book's Web site. But Mr. Roth-Ey estimates that only 1% of those who have seen the videos came from links for which the publisher paid.
Write to Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at jeffrey.trachtenberg@wsj.com
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