Raven launches its 'biggest ever campaign' for Clark-Platts' The Flower Girls

The marketing campaign for The Flower Girls by Alice Clark-Platts will be Raven Books’ largest to date.

To accompany the thriller’s publication on 24th January, there will be a Nationwide National Rail and London Underground poster campaign, with two colour-reverse designs, projecting an impact of almost 5 million across the fortnight campaign. Raven has also installed a 48-sheet billboard in London Waterloo, and advertorial with true-crime podcast "They Walk Among Us” with the audiobook is narrated by the Emilia Fox, of BBC’s "Silent Witness”.

The Flower Girls, the third novel from former human rights lawyer Clark-Platts went for six-figures after being the subject of a five-publisher bidding war, and the campaign is Raven's “biggest to date”, the publisher said.

The campaign accompanies the two-year anniversary of Raven Books, the imprint launched by Bloomsbury Publishing in January 2017, for those who enjoy books "with a touch of the dark side”.

Curated by editorial director, Alison Hennessey, the imprint has gone on to win awards with Stuart Turton’s genre-bending debut The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton has been riding high in the charts, having sold 70,911 in paperback and 14,272 in hardback, according to Nielsen BookScan. Another hit, credited for helping boost the interest in horror fiction is The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell, one of Raven Books’ first acquisitions while Alex Reeve’s historical fiction debut The House on Half Moon Street is a current Richard and Judy Book Club. 

Next on the horizon is Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson, described a cat and mouse game between two women, which starts as a game at a bookclub but soon spirals out of control, following a deal revealed last month. After this will come after the publication of Impossible Causes by Julie Mayhew, billed by Raven as The Crucible meets "The Craft".

Hennessey, who was previously senior commissioning editor for the Harvill Secker crime list, said: "I couldn’t be happier with the launch of Raven Books so far – or more excited about what is to come this year. It has been an absolute delight to see our authors in bookshops, on  bestseller charts, and on prize listings, and with the publication of The Flower Girls, our 10th title at Raven Books, we plan to unnerve and unsettle even more readers."