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January 2007 - Strategy Magazine
Who to watch

Jumping off the page: HarperCollinsCanada's Steve Osgoode
HarperCollinsCanada's Steve Osgoode adds a cyber plot twist to book marketing

by Annette Bourdeau
page 19

The book publishing industry isn't exactly renowned as a marketing leader. But, that is changing, and HarperCollinsCanada's Steve Osgoode, 32, is one of the marketers leading the charge, testing new online media initiatives and partnerships.

In 2006, the director of online marketing and new media spearheaded development of "book trailers," crafted book-related podcasts and began offering sample tracks of audio books for purchase on Puretracks.

"I feel we're in a leadership position because of Steve's expertise," says Tom Best, VP sales and marketing at Harper. "He's a fantastic lateral thinker. He finds intriguing ways to work in the Internet sphere - that is priceless to us."

One such display of lateral thinking was Osgoode's contribution to the launch of book trailers for titles like Londonstani and The Weather Makers. While the book trailer concept was very much a group effort at HarperCollins, Best credits Osgoode with pushing to test the format. "He feels strongly that we've got to be more visually oriented," says Best, adding that Osgoode not only worked hard at seeding the trailers online on sites like YouTube, but also sussing out offline homes for the pieces, like bookstores and at Toronto's Harbourfront, as well as in cinemas and on diginet BookTelevision. "He's found great venues to play them."

Osgoode says it's a challenge to offer visuals without stepping on readers' imaginations. "Our guiding principle is: Let's make something with the feel and the spirit of the book without imposing the setting and the look of the characters on the readers," he says.

In another effort to generate buzz, Osgoode orchestrated the 2005 launch of the First Look program, which selects readers to see galleys of books before they're published, and invites them to submit reviews. Readers sign up online for a chance to be selected, and many participants have posted their advance reviews on their own blogs.

"We do try to make sure that all of our members receive books at some point...it's really nice to reward superfans," says Osgoode, adding that the program is growing an impressive 10%-12% per month. "When I talk about it being our golden child, it really is."

He also teamed up with Flare for a special version of the program which offers several books to the magazine's subscribers every two months. He describes the program as "highly cost-effective," ringing in at just hundreds of dollars a month which is really key in this category, and why online's ability to cheaply harness fan power is triggering such a revolution in book marketing. "We publish thousands of titles a year...our marketing budget gets sliced so thin," says Osgoode, adding that around 10% is allotted for online efforts.

He saw the advent of podcasting as another potentially cost-effective way to engage readers. Last January, HarperCollins did a podcast with author/TV host Jay Ingram to promote his book, Theatre of the Mind. It was so successful, Osgoode began exploring how to further leverage podcasting to promote other titles. He decided to do a summer reading series, with six episodes of radio-style author interviews by Kathy Bond, former host of CBC's Definitely Not The Opera. The response was so positive (even landing in the top five downloads on iTunes in the arts and lit category) another "season" of podcasts is set to launch this month. "We got a lot of kudos from different blogs, which was gratifying," says Osgoode.

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