Even Harry Potter couldn’t save the publishing industry from a precipitous decline in sales that has severely impacted the publishing world’s ability to perpetuate the type of success it has experienced in recent years (if not decades).
As a result of desperation, some of the largest publishing houses in the world are looking into mobile marketing as a new way to introduce books and projects to the penny-pinched consumer.
Publisher HarperCollins is leading the way.
This week, the publishing giant announced a partnership with mobile marketing firm QMCodes to “introduce a 2D barcode scanning promotion.”
The promotion is designed, in particular, to push the upcoming title called L.A. Candy by Lauren Conrad, star of MTV’s The Hills.
The campaign will let consumers access L.A. Candy related content, such as video clips by downloading an application from HarperCollins’ mobile site (or by scanning a barcode on the novel, which was just released).
“Teens use their mobile phones for everything from texting to updating their Facebook pages,” Harper Collin’s Children’s Books president Susan Katz said.
“This is one more way we can offer them content to share with their friends.”
HC is already planning multiple mobile marketing campaigns for other hyped books later this summer.