BRING YOUR BOOKS TO LIFE ON THE WEB

Building Long-Term
‘Companions’

The concept applies to other book categories as well. For the self-help title, “The Flip Side,” published in May by Hachette Book Group, the goal was to build relationships with readers by playing off author Flip Flippen’s strengths as a motivator and communicator.

The site (TheFlipSideBook.com) prominently features large photos of Flippen with videos of TV appearances and celebrity endorsements. Kris Basala, director of marketing and communications at Flippen’s consulting firm, the Flippen Group, expects the site to take on a community-
support role as time goes on, hosting reader forums and blogs for those interested in developing the book’s personal growth strategies and sharing them with others.

“We built the site to support what’s coming down the road,” he says. “We want to be a sounding place for this community of people who have been touched by the book. The site is going to evolve into something that is hopefully very, very powerful.”

In the short term, the site’s ability to instantly add news reports and post videos has helped to build momentum. “We found in our marketing and presale strategy that having the site done early was very important to us,” Basala says.

The ultimate goal for the Web site is a seamless integration of the book with the programs and sense of connectivity that are central to its message, a sort of closed-loop synergy made possible by the medium of the Internet as a powerful marketing, communications and multimedia tool.

Palgrave Macmillan’s Marshall articulates a similar idea.

“I think this idea of a companion Web site will, in the end, [go by the wayside] and what you’ll have is a kind of blended-media complete package … [with] print and digital in a ratio commensurate with the technology available out there in the world,” he says.