Games as Book Marketing

The NY Times has an interesting article today about games being used to market books.  I checked out one of the games mentioned -- man, the author put a fair chunk of change into his game.  Based on what I've seen of book trailers on YouTube, I was expecting it to look cheesy.  But the look and feel is like a video game, not like a cheesy promo of a book.  The artwork looks professional.  The player can only continue to play if s/he answers questions from the book.

I did a little digging around and found out that the author/game maker (PJ Haarsma) has a small production company, has made a film, and makes a living shooting corporate spots.  Ah-ha!  I sensed a visual creative when I looked at his game and now I know why.  He also designed the van remote on Dr. Horrible. :-)

He's a real pro when it comes to marketing.  His site is gorgeous.  He sells messenger bags in his store, along with his books.  And he has a packed schedule of events.  I'd love to know the results of his marketing.  Amazon ranks his books at #385,237 and #124,807.  His forum (of course he has one) has 744 users registered with over 35,000 posts.  His third book is coming out soon and the NYT article sure couldn't hurt.  But he's obviously made a big investment on his marketing and I'd love to know if and when it pays off.  Based on his rankings and number of registered users on his forum, I'm guessing it hasn't yet.  Games can take a lot of money to publish.  I believe it's comparable to making a film.  If nothing else, it sure raises the bar for the rest of us.

It's interesting to compare his numbers to another author's game.  Random House also commissioned a game for the “Inheritance” fantasy series by Christopher Paolini (which I hate -- I couldn't find a single aspect about his first novel that wasn't regurgitated from every other dragon fantasy book out there).  About 51,000 people have signed up since June.  But his books are bestsellers and his latest book is #1 on Amazon right now.  So it's hard to say how much the game has helped his sales.  Also, Random House paid for the game.  I'm sure that in the vast majority of cases, it would be the author who commissions his/her own game.  That makes the economics a whole lot tougher. 

Part of my interest is that the premise of Haarsma's book is very close to mine -- a pre-teen novel about a gamer who fights aliens in a computer game.  Beyond that, the execution of the story seems quite different.  (Confession time:  this whole blog entry is just a way to avoid pinging agents again... I might be too indie to go through agents and publishers, but that's another blog entry...)

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com