Saturday, January 30, 2010

Ben Schrank's Real Deal: When Everything Goes Right

All the factors that went into success of "13 Reasons Why" (Jay Asher's amazing YA debut, which has sold nearly half a million copies!)

Special Voice +
Concept that was strong =
They bought it

"Strong package" good image, nice tape branding of cover, great backcover copy

Jay the author is great, charming, with an enormous ability to promote himself

House - Ben's imprint, recognized word of mouth building and supported that with appropriate marketing.

Book hits the NYTimes list 20 weeks in... and stayed there.

Marketplace where issue of bullying very much in consciousness - this book came at it in a strange way - book and national consciousness hit at same time.

Even after you get everything right - the change of a book hitting at this level, where he feels the book with be the "Go Ask Alice" of it's generation, like "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson will be the book of its generation.

The odds of something like that happening are like 1 in 100,000.


--Posted by Lee Wind

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