Marketing Harper
by Calvin Reid -- Publishers Weekly, 7/25/1997
HarperCollins may be immersed in the grim business of pruning titles, but you wouldn't be able to tell from its surging Internet Group. Since last September, it has added Daniel Blackman, director of Internet development, and Tom Turvey, associate director of online sales and marketing, and is aggressively integrating the Net into marketing and promotional plans for its titles. This month it has relaunched and redesigned (credit Oven Digital) the HarperCollins Web site (http://www.harpercollins.com), adding a 10,000-title searchable database, excerpts, listservs, audio clips and Shockwave games. Turvey told PW that using the Web to market has become "crucial." Advertising is "cheaper and stays up longer. We can license our content -- and you can buy the book to boot." HarperCollins is buying banner ads "all over the Web," Turvey said (Salon, ESPN, CBS Sportsline, Yahoo!, Excite, Lycos and Slate, among others) and at the same time negotiating site-specific online promotions, link-back deals and prepublication promotions on AOL's Book Central and Book Report. The HC site is attracting about 70,000 page views a week; coming soon is a new area for Harper's Access Travel Guides.
