The University of Michigan Press today announced one of the shortest marketing campaigns in the history of new books: #NewBooksIn5Words, a Twitter hashtag that accompanies micro-previews of new scholarly and trade titles. You can see the first postings at the UM Press Twitter feed.
For example:
- Annie Finch’s A Poet’s Craft turns into: Be poet – now show it. #NewBooksIn5Words http://bit.ly/nguzLH
- Christopher Bigsby’s Arthur Miller: 1962–2005 is: After Marilyn: Miller, Act Two. #NewBooksIn5Words http://bit.ly/oQbCER
- And Theo Cateforis’ Are We Not New Wave? is: All Hail the Mighty Devo. #NewBooksIn5Words http://bit.ly/kz8qnw
The Press began posting teases for books marked with the new hashtag today. “We have a decent number of Twitter followers at @UofMPress, but there’s no way to thoroughly summarize a great book in 140 characters,” UM Press Trade Marketing Manager Heather Newman said. “So we’re not going to try. Instead, we’ll give readers the pithy, quirky, sometimes-funny headline and encourage them to click to find out more.”
UM Press has conducted other successful social media campaigns for its books this year, including its serialization of two novels on Facebook this summer (http://on.fb.me/qQBmVs), which doubled the number of Press fans in less than a week and spiked traditional print sales of the books.
“We encourage anyone to use the new Twitter hashtag to announce new titles they care about, as publishers or as readers,” Newman said. “It’s all about connecting readers with great books.”