'Heavy hitting' campaign for new Boyd novel

Bloomsbury has promised a “high profile and heavy hitting” marketing campaign for the global release of William Boyd’s new novel Sweet Caress next week (27th August).

The publisher said marketing plans include a “major” National Rail advertising campaign, third party partnerships, national television interviews and a six city speaking tour.

The National Rail campaign will begin on Monday (24th August) and include backlit posters at London’s Victoria and Euston train stations, statement panels at 10 key central London commuter stations, and posters at stations throughout the country.

The first global print interview with Boyd will feature in this Saturday’s (22nd August) Telegraph Magazine. This will be followed by a feature in the Guardian Review and an interview in The Sunday Times News Review. There will also be national television coverage with interviews on BBC Two’s ‘Newsnight’ and BBC Radio 2’s ‘Steve Wright’. Boyd will also be featured on BBC Radio 4 as part of their ‘Short Story Award’.

The six city tour includes festivals and events in Bristol, Oxford, Ely, St Andrews, Glasgow and London. The campaign will be supported by third-party promotions with Guardian online, Caboodle (National Book Tokens) and Mumsnet.  

Sweet Caress, published on 27th August, is the latest book from Boyd, the bestselling author of Restless and Any Human Heart. It has been described by Bloomsbury editor-in-chief Alexandra Pringle as being Boyd's most "beautiful, daring and enthralling novel to date."

The book tells the story of Amory Clay, a photographer whose ‘extraordinary’ career takes her from working for a fashionable magazine to photographing the Black-shirt riots in London, the Second World War and Vietnam in the 1960s. The novel is interwoven with photographs selected by Boyd to illustrate the Amory’s war photography. In an interview with The Bookseller's Benedicte Page, Boyd said that choosing the images was "a fascinating parallel creative exercise alongside the writing of the novel" which made the story "come alive in a strange way".