HC Turning Sour Review into Ad Copy

by Rachel Deahl, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 1/19/2007

The phrase "written in a droning monotone" isn't one you'd expect to see in an ad for a book. But HarperCollins is hoping to turn sour words into singing ad copy by putting that blip from Washington Post reviewer Jonathan Yardley in a full-page ad for Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games. The ad, which ran in today's Washington Post, sets Yardley's scathing critique of Chandra's Indian mafia opus against a ringing endorsement from staffers at the Washington, D.C., indie, Politics & Prose, who say they "beg to differ" with the critic, and found the book "vastly entertaining."

The booksellers' sentiment, which was first expressed on Politics & Prose's Web site, struck a chord with HC's Jonathan Burnham and his co-workers. "We felt there were two very divergent points of view here, and that was noteworthy in itself," he said. That Chandra is en route to the nation's capital for a signing helped as well. (The ad closes with a tagline about Chandra appearing at Politics & Prose on Tuesday.) Burnham added that HC "also wanted to spread the word on behalf of the bookstore."

This article originally appeared in the January 19, 2007 issue of PW Daily. For more information about PW Daily, including a sample and subscription information, click here »

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