Category marketing:

I’m always interested to see what Ooligan Press, the student-run publishing house of Portland State University’s master’s in publishing program, is up to. One of its current projects is the launch of Classroom Publishing: A Practical Guide for Teachers. Though the book will not be available in bookstores until March 2010, the marketing for it has been underway for quite some time. This is a good lesson for us here at Thomas Riggs & Company, as it teaches us it’s never too early to start publicizing a book.

Translation is a funny business. With a novel it’s important not only to maintain the meaning of the original text but to express that meaning in a way that can be understood and appreciated by people conditioned in another culture. For commercial publishers there’s another concern: how best to attract potential buyers.

In 1951 Catcher in the Rye became an instant best seller in the United States. Soon it started to spread across the globe, contorting itself into different languages. Although in some countries the title kept its literal referents (catcher, rye), elsewhere publishers chose titles that presumably better expressed the intended meaning, or would be more interesting or understandable to their readers, than a literal translation. In Swedish it became Raddaren i noden (”Savior in a Crisis”); in Hungarian, Zabhegyezõ (“A Sharpener of Oats”); and in Polish, Buszujący w zbożu (”Rummage Around in the Corn”).

In France J.D. Salinger’s classic became L’attrape-coeurs (”The Catcher of Hearts”). Why didn’t the French choose a more literal translation? I’ve read several explanations.

The holidays are a great time for giving books, but sometimes we need a little help coming up with book ideas. You might want to take a look at Books = Gifts for some book recommendations. The campaign is sponsored by Random House, but that doesn’t mean all the book suggestions are for Random House books. The website has book recommendations broken down by category and also provides links to other sites. If that’s not enough, Books = Gifts has a Facebook page, and you can also follow them on Twitter (use hashtag #booksgifts).

I’ve always been a sucker for the whole “gift with purchase” thing. Offer me something for free, and I will most likely purchase something I don’t need or even want just so I can score the free item. I am a marketer’s dream. But really, who doesn’t like to get something for free or for a good deal?

Japanese marketers caught on to incentive marketing long, long ago. I remember visiting Japan during Japan’s prosperous years, and it seemed like every time I bought something, no matter how inexpensive the item, I would get a little gift (”omake”) or a raffle type of ticket that could be reimbursed for a “prize” of some sort. Nowadays Japanese companies aren’t as willing to dole out freebies, but the phenomenon certainly is not extinct. I recently visited Japan, and I received plenty of goodies, including gift socks at one hotel chain for making online reservations.

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