The Ultimate market campaign for a book

Jun 2, 2023
3 min read

But how would you market a book which is based on video games?

By Making an actual video game on the book! They actually did that.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, is a novel by Gabrielle Zevin, pitched as “Not a Romance but a story about Love." It’s about how three friends united by their love for video game bootstrap and become successful by making a video game. They face the challenges that comes after success. It is about young artist, people with ambition and love.

Here are the Marketing campaigns used for the publicity of the book Tomorrow x3:

1. Retargeting the audience:

The main challenge of the book was it was the story of video gamers, a entirely different set of audience. So, there are readers and gamers, which can be seen as an opposite set of market. To tackle this challenge, the marketers finds the common link between the two and it was the Escapism, for both, gaming and books acts like an way to escape from reality, so they market this book as we all are gamers and everyone plays their different game so it can appeal to a massive market and makes it a book on art, creativity, love, storytelling, ambitions, which I should say is a brilliant idea.

2. They made an actual video game on it:

How commonly do you see an arcade game in a bookstore? Obviously it’s very rare, so it gained mass attraction and became a hot topic. With that they created a whole spotify playlist and instagram filters to bring their A-game!

(The author, Gabrielle Zevin and the Tomorrowx3 arcade machine in a bookstore)

3. The first limited edition:

They also launched the first limited edition book with a unique book design in the form of an actual DVD player with a white box. The book definetly gives the feel of an video game itself.

(The first limited edition of the book)

4. The Webpage with Mini Games, Character cards, Game Avatars:

To level up their game, there is also a webpage here, designed for the novel, which gives a nostalgic retro vibe with characters popped up and 90’s based colour theme used. On the webpage they have multiple mini games and the description cards of each character to get the readers interested into the book, and it really does its job. Also, you can make your own game avatar on webpage https://shop.penguin.co.uk/pages/tomorrowx3#avatar

(Create your avatar from the webpage)

(The character card on the webpage)

5. Animation competitions:

There was also a competition to make 30 second animation themed on the book itself. This is the smartest move, I would say as it indirectly targetting the young designer students who most likely will like the book, and thus created a buzz among the youth for the book.

6. Influencer Marketing:

Every marketer knows how important is it to have an organic growth on social media for the book, so they identify the creators in readers community on social media who will probably enjoy the book and sent them the special proofs for the organic reactions.

“What is a game?” Marx said. “It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”

(Please go through this Reading guide of the book, The graphics and the idea behind having a guide to the book which includes the main theme, discussion question, plot and game links and a few verse from the book, it is actually every reader’s dream to have a guide like this and the way it has been designed is just insane!)