Free books distributed to generate hype

The pa­trons of Dirt Cow­boy and passersby out­side of Col­lis may have got­ten a lit­tle more than they bar­gained for yes­ter­day as the dy­namic duo of James Ther­rien and Lidya Esrig dis­trib­uted free copies of “Too Far,” the most re­cent book from ven­ture-cap­i­tal­ist turned au­thor Rich Shap­ero. Though the pair’s neon at­tire and the far-out cover art­work may have sug­gested oth­er­wise, this was no hal­lu­ci­na­tion.

In a ex­per­i­men­tal mea­sure to counter what they per­ceive as the fail­ing ad­ver­tis­ing ef­forts of book pub­lish­ers today, “Too Far” pub­lisher Out­side Read­ing de­cided to gen­er­ate buzz through good old-fash­ioned word of mouth. Ther­rien, East Coast brand rep­re­sen­ta­tive for out­side read­ing, de­scribed the ef­fort as a “grass­roots ap­proach” for a “pub­lish­ing in­dus­try in dire straits.”

The idea be­hind the mar­ket­ing ploy is to avoid what Ther­rien termed “top-down ad­ver­tis­ing,” in which the pub­lisher ex­pends large sums of money in at­tempts to pro­mote the book. Out­side Read­ing’s strat­egy, in­stead, aims to gen­er­ate hype or­gan­i­cally, Ther­rien said. By dis­trib­ut­ing free copies of nov­els to key de­mo­graph­ics, the pub­lish­ing com­pany hopes that the in­crease ex­po­sure trans­lates to higher sales fig­ures.

Ac­cord­ing to Ther­rien, the com­pany’s “psy­cho­me­t­ric maps” iden­ti­fied Dart­mouth, along with a num­ber of other promi­nent col­leges on the East Coast, as a focal point for pro­mot­ing “Too Far." The novel, as de­scribed by Ther­rien, is a psy­che­delic ad­ven­ture tale of two trou­bled Alaskan chil­dren try­ing to cope with an abu­sive fam­ily. The book comes bun­dled with “Dawn Re­mem­bers,” an ac­com­pa­ny­ing audio disc con­tain­ing music in­tended to serve as a back­drop dur­ing the read­ers lit­er­ary ex­pe­ri­ence.

“Too Far” is cur­rently avail­able for pur­chase on www.​toofar.​com for $9.99.