Publishing - On the same page

Content can be repurposed, reformatted and overprinted to create a bespoke book tailored to the brand's image. It is possible to pay an author to come up with some puzzles for a crossword book, but if you want to give away a beach read as a covermount, you'll need to source an established novel by a known author. The covers for all of these options need to fit with the brand.

Another potential option is striking a deal with the marketing arm of a publisher to create a sampler based on a bigger book and using it as both an added-value giveaway and as a marketing tool for the publisher to upsell the full title. But Christine Jones, the national sales director at Simon & Schuster UK, says this rarely happens. "Book publishing marketing budgets are tiny and they rarely have the luxury of this scale of activity," she says. "The best we can usually do with this kind of marketing opportunity is sell to magazines for tiny amounts of money. The typical magazine budget is around 25p for the book. We can't even print many of our books for 25p."

For the promotional market, publishers tend to require a fee-based deal, based on the unit cost of the number of books given away, plus any fixed costs, such as origination and author royalties. For a more bespoke product, publishers will treat the deal as a contract publishing arrangement.

A publishing promotion needn't break the bank, as £2,000 to £3,000 will furnish a brand with 2,000 customised, modest non-fiction books - enough for a small-scale promotion. But you won't get something for nothing: publishers aren't in the business of giving away their wares. Here we go through four scenarios in which books can be used in promotions.

THE BESTSELLER

A high-profile magazine wants to do a covermount of the summer's red-hot read - but will this cannibalise sales? Not necessarily. "The crossover of consumers who come to the book via retail and those who come via the covermount will be very small," says Christine Jones, UK sales director at Simon & Schuster UK.

The benefit for the publisher is the chance of developing a wider audience for the author's next book, or for their back catalogue. Book retailers, however, can object to such arrangements. The result? "If our book trade customers are unhappy with us giving away something they are relying on to sell, then we won't," says Jones. Often promotions are delayed until six months after publication to prevent any problems.

When it comes to the design, a publisher will usually want to keep it much the same. "We strive to create brand looks for our authors and as far as possible we'd want the covermount to reflect that," says Jones. "Most magazines prefer this too, because it underscores the fact that they are giving away something that costs £7.99 in the shops."

But there is flexibility. When Simon & Schuster ran with a covermount on She magazine of Lynda La Plante's bestselling Red Dahlia, the magazine thought the cover artwork was too dark. The edition was repackaged in a brighter, fresher cover that met with the approval of both publisher and author.

The best deal in this case is for the client to pay for the stock and any design changes, together with a royalty for the author.

THE SUPERMARKET

A big supermarket chain wants to publicise its green credentials with a suitably branded promotion of a cookbook using local and seasonal produce. Will this lead to any clashes of interest?

Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, it's better to find a cookery book that's already been published, according to Polly Ernest, owner of The Bookshop Partnership. An obvious first choice is a celebrity chef tie-in, but that can bring problems.

"Publishers will bend over backwards to produce something appropriate for a client, but with a celebrity there's another ego involved," she says. Back-to-nature advocate Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall would be an ideal choice to push seasonal food, for example, but Ernest thinks it would be very unlikely for him to link with a supermarket.

Instead, she suggests building links with existing ethical or green organisations. "It's important to include the supermarket's ethical message, but it mustn't look as if it's jumping on the bandwagon," she says. "The stance must come before the book offer - the offer can't sell a new ethical position."

Ernest also stresses the importance of avoiding over-branding. "The brand can get overenthusiastic about pushing their logo - there's a danger of devaluing the product," she warns. Instead, she advises that the client should be guided by the publisher. Often a discreet logo on the cover and a couple of pages with a specific message from the client inside are more than enough.

A sensible strategy would be to agree an all-in-one price based on unit cost, with cancellation contingency to cover origination.

THE ODD COUPLE

A petrol forecourt retailer wants to target a promotional kids' book at families on the road during the summer holidays. But in these carbon-conscious times, is this an appropriate fit?

"There are always issues with taking intellectual property and manipulating it," says Dicken Goodwin, head of special sales at Your Logo Our Book, the branded books division of Anova Publishing, which publishes National Trust titles. Goodwin acknowledges there could be a brand clash between the Trust and a big oil company, particularly one that had suffered negative press coverage. "It's much better to work with material you own outright," he says.

It's also easier and cheaper to work with existing material and tailor it to the client. The company publishes a motoring-themed kids book called Car Games that would be suitable in this case. "Within reason, we can reflow and repackage to meet the format and price point they want," says Goodwin.

Your Logo Our Book provides a full repackaging service, but any such rebranding means the stock is effectively unsaleable anywhere else. For any such branded promotion, therefore, the publisher requires the client to buy stock outright.

The most suitable deal in this instance would be money upfront for branded stock.