In the course of our investigations into the influence of the Booktube community on the publishing industry, the Publishers Inc team reached out to several publishers – inquiring about their relationship with  Booktube: community and audience.

Diana Griffin, publicist at Tor/Forge (Macmillan), was kind enough to spare some time to answer our query.

Could you elaborate and comment on how has Booktube affected your publishing house?

Diana: In the course of our research into YA reviewers, we noticed that Booktubers were becoming more and more a vibrant (and popular) influence on the YA community, going beyond reviews to building relationships with their viewers through sketches, unboxings, group videos and interviews with their favourite authors.

We came up with a campaign that we thought would appeal to this audience: “swag” boxes containing an ARC of the book and fun extras. For our Tor Teen title Riders by Veronica Rossi, we sent signed posters, character bracelets, pencils and buttons, made in collaboration with Veronica and our marketing department. We kept these quantities very limited, so that these boxes became an enticing extra beyond offering a review copy.

We did see results from this campaign beyond amazing amounts of views (72,000 from the Booktuber with the largest audience), in that pre-orders spiked around the time that these videos went live. And this included print copies as well as e-books, an unexpected bonus. We’ll be continuing to build fun promotional strategies around our forthcoming Tor Teen titles and Booktubers will definitely be part of those strategies.