Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Was 'tatvertising' the nadir of book marketing campaigns?

Plans to hype David Lagercrantz’s Girl With the Dragon Tattoo sequel by tattooing a volunteer reader, now mercifully cancelled, took branding a little too literally

Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara)
Do you really think this is a good idea? ... Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) looks on in horror. Photograph: © Col Pics/Everett/Rex
With Go Set a Watchman finally out, it’s time to move on to thinking about the summer’s next most-anticipated/hyped novel, which has got to be David Lagercrantz’s new Lisbeth Salander novel, The Girl in the Spider’s Web. The late Stieg Larsson’s trilogy of thrillers, starting with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, have sold 75m copies around the world, after all – so this is going to be big, and like Harper Lee’s second novel, is tightly embargoed until its 27 August launch.

The Australian publisher of the Lagercrantz follow-up, however, has already run into a spot of bother, after deciding that the best way to promote the book would be to launch a hunt for a female fan prepared to “donate” her back for three months. This would have involved being adorned with her very own Dragon Tattoo for advertising purposes. Hachette Australia, reported the Sydney Morning Herald last week, was calling it a “tatvertising campaign”, and asking for applications from those who could “handle the pain, just like Lisbeth Salander”.
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