Yasmin Butt is writing her first novel, titled Gunshot Glitter, and came to idea shop looking for ideas to publish her book.

An interesting personality with a rich past, Yasmin has worked as a journalist, was involved in marketing various bands and their music, and has written short stories and poems, she often performs readings at music events, but she has never published any of her work.

Gunshot Glitter is quite personal to her and she was finding difficult to think of ways to promote it. She briefed us not being sure if she wanted to target potential readers or publishers.

What we came up with:

We envisaged an integrated strategy aimed at potential readers. Aim of the strategy is to generate interest in the book by using the potential of viral buzz through on and off line means.

The book’s website will be at the centre of the strategy. Potential readers will be able to read / download one chapter for free from the site. All other chapters will also be available for download for a charge (via paypal). This would be the standard edition of the book.

Podcasts of book’s readings would be available for download too.

The book can also be ordered in print format via the site. This would be the premium edition of the book.

Site traffic is generated through posters and use of social media sites.

The posters would hero snippets of the book and the site URL. We told Yasmin to think carefully about the placement of these posters, where they’d get max visibility and impact.

Social media would be used to create a profile for the novel main character (a female professional killer) as if she was a real person.  Facebook and Twitter would be used to create this profile, so friends could be added, potential readers could then follow the character’s exploits periodically.

The Facebook profile could also be used to promote the real life events and book readings at. In turn these events could be used to drive site traffic (which is main aim).

The premium edition (print) version of the book should be carefully crafted, from the artwork to the actual materials used.

We briefly mention distributing press releases through trade press or webzines (flavorpill / boldtype) as well as magazines.

Tags: ambient, author, digital, Idea Shop Brixton, web