Before turning her talents to fiction, M.J. Rose was once a creative director at an ad agency; so was fellow thriller writer Chris Grabenstein. Between the two of them, they created this 15-second spot for Rose’s new novel, The Reincarnationist, and got it slotted into next Monday’s season premiere of the History Channel show Digging for the Truth. Over the next five days, it will also air on four other shows on the History Channel and A&E. Rose breaks down the details on her media buying strategy on her blog, but the meat of the story may lie in how she convinced her publisher, MIRA, to work the cable angle rather than taking out an NYTBR ad. “This whole package, production, media everything is less than 1/4 of a page in the Times,” Rose informed us yesterday, elaborating on her public discussion of how the nine airings she purchased may reach many more readers than an ad in even a heavily read book review section.
(Disclosure: I don’t actually look at our homepage regularly, except to see what Sarah’s written about, so it wasn’t until I filed this item that I discovered Rose had bought ad space from mediabistro.com and is running the ads now.)