Always dreamed of being a PR flack for a big New York publishing house? Sharpen up your HTML skills, then, because Bantam Doubleday Dell is awarding US$500 to the person who builds the best Web site devoted to its summer beach read, Meg. The judging of sites runs through the end of July.
While other media companies, like Paramount and Fox, have sought to prevent fans from using copyrighted material on "tribute" Web sites, Doubleday is encouraging readers to fashion their own paeans to Steve Alten's new book. Doubleday is even providing a trove of images, sound clips, and text excerpts for use as construction materials.
The book's premise is simple: One of the Jaws shark's prehistoric ancestors is lurking in the deep, and only a heroic paleontologist can prevent disaster. ("Meg" is short for megalodon.) Film execs at Disney, which bought the rights to the novel for nearly a million dollars before its publication, have condensed the plot thusly: "Jurassic Shark."
Jon Guttenberg, Doubleday's vice president of new media, says that the idea for the Web site contest came about as a result of the book's science-oriented theme and nerdy, Goldblum-esque hero. "This is not going to work for every type of book," Guttenberg says. "We're hoping that the enthusiasm of people who read the book and are excited about it spreads to other people, and the Web is one way to do that."
Guttenberg says he wasn't aware of any Meg fan sites that existed before the contest began, but he has received "dozens" of entries since the contest began in early June. He says the bounty is "a very cost-effective promotion," and that Doubleday will create links to most of the other Meg sites entered in the competition.
The budget for the contest is guppy-sized compared to the amount Doubleday will spend to promote the book - $500,000 earmarked for radio and newspaper ads, as well as "airplane rope tows" at beaches in Southern California, Cape Cod, and the Jersey Shore. The airborne message: "Don't even think about going in the water - Read Meg instead."
What accounts for Doubleday's encouragement of fan sites, as other media companies are threatening legal action? Adam Schoenfeld, an analyst at Jupiter Communications, asserts that it's all about brand value. "If you have a killer brand, you want to protect it, but if you want to build a killer brand, it's open season," Schoenfeld says. "Meg as a brand has no value until they get some heat on it. Paramount's Star Trek is an incredibly valuable brand that needs to be protected."
Alten's Web-savvy agent, Kenneth Atchity, has a site of his own, which covers the big-ticket deals Atchity negotiated for Meg's film, audio, hardcover, and paperback rights. The Beverly Hills-based agent couldn't be happier about Doubleday's Web-oriented promotional gambit. "An author who doesn't get promoted doesn't sell," he says. "And the Web is a great early buzz system for new books."
In May, St. Martin's published a paperback titled Extinct, by Charles Wilson, about a different kind of megalodon that haunts the Gulf of Mexico, not the Pacific. Extinct is being made into a miniseries for NBC.
