Dr. Michael Pillsbury might be the most well renown expert on U.S.-China relations. His most recent book, 100 Year Marathon, used the last century of evidence to make some bold predictions. We wanted to make sure our website was as bold and beautiful as Dr. Pillsbury’s writing.
Unfortunately authors are often stuck in a world of inept marketing efforts, led by antiquated publishing behemoths. Book websites too often house little more information than can be found on Amazon or even the book jacket. Little attention is paid to branding, marketing, or promotion.
At Javelin we don’t ever create websites because “that’s just what you do.” No, we wanted to give Dr. Pillsbury’s readers a special experience; we wanted to make the website a product of its own. And as users are drawn into the website and its content, they’ll more likely convert into book sales.
We built a website that focussed on the crux of the book, not the book itself. We built an interactive timeline of the past century that teased the storyline of the book, but gave users a rich, multimedia experience. Users could get synopses of the book, chapter-by-chapter, or even read some quick samples of Dr. Pillsbury’s beautiful writing.
To further extend the book, readers could come to the site and get a fully interactive Source File Library. They could see the extensive research that went into the book, or just use it as a fully searchable index of research documents about U.S. – China relations.
For this scholarly endeavor, we needed to create a strategy to help users dig deeper into the annals of history. We developed a research tool that allowed readers to dig deeper into the history, and deepen their knowledge of the US-China relations.
Authors are often stuck in a world of inept marketing efforts, led by antiquated publishing behemoths.
