Trade runs pro and 'anti'-Valentine's Day campaigns

The book trade is aiming to put books at the heart of Valentine's Day, with publishers unveiling a range of campaigns reflecting that there is a light and a dark side to the day.

Bookshops have been wrapping books as potential gifts, with both Foyles and Waterstones creating Valentine's-themed displays and tables. Waterstones' offering consists of books, non-book gifts and Valentine’s Day Cards, all supported by "beautiful Valentine’s POS”, the company said. Meanwhile Foyles is running a “literary lovers” promotion, contributed to online by authors such as Helen Dunmore, and featuring “bundles” of books "hand-picked from some of the most famous (and infamous) couples in history, at a special price for Valentine's Day".

Indie shops are also packaging books prettily, with many advertising their wares under the hashtag #blinddatebooks. The books are more difficult to judge by their covers since they are carefully gift-wrapped in plain paper, but on that paper will be an enticing hint as to what tome lies hidden inside. Independent bookshop owner, Richard Drake,

of a table of carefully wrapped books in his store in Stockton, encouraging: "Come on gents you don't even need to wrap it!”

Other promotions and campaigns from indies include a "Retro Romance" campaign from Ink@84 bookshop, selling £25 gift bags containing three books of "iconic fiction" and love poems, and a Divine chocolate bar. Valentines has also inspired The National Theatre Bookshop to run a promotion on Twitter encouraging visitors to retweet a photo of a CD of Benedict Cumberbatch reading Casanova to win the CD, and Oxfam Books to host a more serendipitous "Valentine’s Lottery" with a month’s supply of Skinade products and Beverley Racecourse vouchers up for grabs.

Acknowledging there is more than one side to Valentines Day, online bookseller Warm Vellum Bookshop is selling both a "Valentine’s Day Book Bundle" and an "anti-Valentine’s Day Book Bundle" - the latter packaged and including books for those not feeling the warm-and-fuzzy romantic vibe. It is also giving a 10% discount on all book subscriptions and bundles with the code "WVB10".

Along similar lines, independent publisher Accent Press has also decided to run an “Anti-Valentine’s Day” campaign, launching a trio of "unsentimental Valentine’s reads" as the "antidote to traditional chick-lit”. As part of this it is highlighting “empowering women’s fiction" novels, including those by leading authors Kate Glanville, Laura Wilkinson and Jenny Harper. It is promoting this on social media with bespoke artwork, setting up author press interviews and creating a themed Pinterest board, as well as running Instagram giveaways. The company has also produced a video trailer to mark the campaign.

 

 

Other publishers spreading the "reader love" include Orion Book Group which, again under the #Blinddatebook hashtag, has been running a special programme of activity this week on Twitter. It is giving away five copies of a different book every day (from Monday 8th to Sunday 14th February) in a #BlindBookDate competition. For this it has wrapped up a mixture of backlist and frontlist titles and written "lonely hearts” cryptic clues on them asking for "some reader love”. Picking books that have an appeal outside their genre, Orion said it hoped that readers might be surprised by "how much they enjoy a book they may not have picked up on their own”. The entrants will have no information about the book they are entering to win apart from the hint written on the front with some easier than others to guess. 

For those who enjoy a cryptic quiz, hints include: "Dramatic Russian power-seeker who loves being on top (in more ways than one!)"; "Think it’s the end of the world? I can save the day!"; and "Quirky woman with GSOH seeks man (or woman) who loves people to pieces (literally)". The book they have won will be revealed the following day. As well as entering the competition to win a book, readers can get involved in guessing the titles and by coming up with their own "lonely hearts” using the #BlindBookDate hashtag. The campaign is being run across Orion Book Group imprints, including @orionbooks, @onebooklane, @WNbooks and @gollancz.

Hodder's women’s fiction community Bookends is asking authors to share their worst Valentine’s Day dates in an article. Meanwhile Hodder's SFF community, Hodderscape, is hosting a quiz asking fans to identify romantic lines from SFF; and crime community CrimeFiles has commissioned a feature on the best "Crime Fighting Couples", sourced from authors and crime reviewers. It will also be issuing a Valentine’s themed Hodder newsletter and blog post on the Hodder site.

HarperFiction, meanwhile, is running a Killer Reads “Killer Dates" Twitter campaign, in which some of its crime authors have created dating profiles for their detectives that HarperFiction has worked up into graphics (below).

A special Vintage Love Podcast goes live tomorrow (12th February), described as "a celebration of the many aspects of love". It features Lucy Kalanithi, Louis de Bernieres and his new love poetry collection, along with a general discussion about the "books we’ve read that have formed our concept of love". The monthly Vintage Books podcast is hosted by Alex Clark and Will Rycroft.

Also speaking the language of love through multimedia, Pan Macmillan is creating content for its consumer-facing book-based video brand, Book Break, around How to Find a Partner by Susan Quilliam, part of the "smart-thinking" School of Life series. Leena Normington will be discussing some of Susan Quilliam’s sharpest tips on "how to choose the one". The video will be uploaded at 5.30pm this evening (11th February). The content is described as the "perfect match" for Book Break’s predominantly 18 to 34-year-old audience.

Pan Macmillan will also be doing a Valentine’s push for one of its fiction titles Miss You by Kate Eberlen (coming out in August 2016). Activity will include an internal desk drop of heart-shaped lollipops with special "Miss You notes" to all employees. Staff will be encouraged to tweet their favourite famous fictional couples, such as Romeo & Juliet, using the campaign hashtag #TessAndGus (the book’s protagonists) to receive a proof. This will be extended externally with a special mail-out to "key influencers" with special Valentine’s Day packs, including a copy of the new book to start spreading the word.

Bonnier Zaffre is mailing 5,000 Valentine’s Day cards to “movers, shakers and heartbreakers across the publishing industry in the UK and beyond”,  “signed" by Judith Rashleigh, heroine of L.S. Hilton’s Maestra (out in hardback and digital on 10th March). Bonnier Zaffre is welcoming people to tweet in their suggestions of who should receive a card to @zaffreBooks with the hashtag #Maestra. 

Blink is putting out Vines on Twitter and Instagram as part of a Valentine's Day campaign for Tuna, "the underdog with the overbite". Tuna will be tagged in all the posts, used to promote the book Tuna Melts My Heart.

Mills & Boon ran a nationwide Man of the Year competition to select a man to grace the cover of it’s Valentine’s Day “ blockbuster", It Had to Be You, which contains two “irresistibly romantic and page-turning” stories by authors Barbara Hannay and Nikki Logan.

Meanwhile The Emma Press has released an expanded edition of The Emma Press Anthology of Mildly Erotic Verse (2013), including twice as many poems as the first edition, in time for Valentine’s Day. It was edited by Rachel Piercey and Emma Wright, and features more than twice as many poems as the first edition. 

A Vintage Wedding (Vintage) by Katie Fforde is out in paperback today, along with Fforde's new novel A Summer at Sea in hardback. To celebrate, Vintage has partnered with clothing chain Joules. It is running a competition to win a weekend away at the Manor House Hotel in the Cotswolds, along with a bag full of Joules goodies and Katie Fforde books. The competition went live last week and will be running until 26th February, as hosted on both Katie Fforde’s and Joules Facebook pages. To enter, participants are invited to build their own escape by choosing a Katie Fforde book, a location and a Joules product to submit with their details.