A mega book launch for young author
According to this Wall Street Journal story (subscription required), approximately 195,000 books were published last year with few books promoted extensively by the publishers. The exception is an upcoming fantasy novel, Christopher Paoloni's "Eldest" that will have 1M copies published accompanied by a huge marketing budget:
Mr. Paolini's series, however, already may be on its way to becoming a cultural phenomenon. Now 21 years old, Mr. Paolini wrote the first in the series, "Eragon," when he was only 15. He published it himself. Then it was scooped up by Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers and published in 2003. Today the book has more than two million hardcovers and paperbacks in print in the U.S.
Ms. Kline says the most important marketing lesson the publisher learned from "Eragon" is "how powerful the online community can be in establishing a book." Fan sites and message boards built tremendous word-of-mouth, effectively establishing "Eragon" as a book that many teens and young adults felt they had to read.