Our Position on the young adults market

As we have two targets:

• Young adults, the most important and our first target
• Adults that read young adult literature (not negligible market that represents huge source of profits thanks to the new tendencies already explained: there's no need to be a teenager to love fantasy, just need to watch the international success of Harry Potter, Hunger Games and Twilight)

Many adults are finding themselves inspired 

to leap back over the fence into the world of teen literature. — Photo by Jesse Rieser

We have put in place a special strategy that could attract and touch both of them. In order to make that possible we have made a clear differentiation on how we sell our books.

Why are we different?

1. Product attributes

For our first market: Young adults

We offer to young adults an incredible variety of books on many different themes: fantasy, adventure, bit-lit (vampires stories), romance.
So that, they can find and discover many different books published by only one label.
==> wide range of books under only one label

Thanks to our specialized team, that is permanently searching for new interesting books (here or abroad), that could become the big successes of tomorrow, we are always updated with the new tendencies and try to offer those books to our customers before any other label.
==>  label that offers to its customers new books in "avant-première"

As we want to be closer to our customers everyday and that their satisfaction is our priority, we offer them many different services apart from only selling books:

• A loyalty card that rewards them (discount, invitation to special events)
• A particular book-mark: when our customers buy some of our books they can receive with the book a special personalized and dedicated card from the author of the book (for example : "For Peter, XXX, Stephany Meyer), this because we are close to the authors we published
• We organize for our customers special events where they can meet authors, or participate to book fairs
• We have created a website and a blog, as well as a Facebook page, to enables our customers follow trends, our book launch, last trends/news on the young adult literature
• Some special goodies on big books can be bought on our website

==> label that cares about its customer, trying to create strong long term relationship around a strong community made of its readers by creating associated services and tools that could even more satisfy its customers and retain them

For our secondary market: Adults

We offer them all of the previous elements but we have decided to create other books' covers that are more neutral and will more appeal them in books shops (they will be in the adult section and not in the young section) or on our website.

For instance Pocket Jeunesse has done this and its has worked well, so we will also do it for books that could interest our both targets (not for all of our books, because some of them will only interest young adults).

Young cover for Hunger Games:  

Adult cover for Hunger Games:

Castelmore also does that every year with 2 or 3 books. Some books are published with a Castelmore cover for young adults and with a  Bragelonne's cover (adult's label) for adult.

For example the New Victoria's Book:

==> label that differentiates its books according to its targets, enabling its adults' target to find fantasy,bit-lit, adventure books in the adult section and not in the young one.

what's more, we thought on a future innovation  : we want to expose to current taste update classical stories like Hamlet, Snow White and Pride&Prejudice.

Source: http://www.slate.fr/story/59641/livres-young-adultes-twilight-harry-potter-hunger-games-ados
http://www.aarp.org/entertainment/books/info-02-2012/best-teen-fiction-for-adults.html

2. External attributes

• Social/Political :

Darkmoon is a  responsible publisher. We care about the world and the people. We installed a human politic "For one book bought, 1 cent goes to a non-profit association". Every year the association changes.
For instance, until December 2012 we will work with "Rêves" an association dedicated to ill children and that fights to realise their dream.

• Environmental

Ecological aspect : our company is engaged in the protection of the environment. Our books are made with recycled paper. We obtained all certifications. We obtained the european certification : Ecolabel Européen.

The label gives a global approach of the life cycling of the product, the raw materials used, the production, the distribution and the recycling of the product

Nathalie CONTE
Séléna BERNARD
Sandrine CATHALO
Léonore BERARD

Our target market

Develop our B2C target market  

• Primary & secondary market demographics

-Primary market demographics : 15 to 25 years old  (and up) young adult's readers

-Secondary market demographics : the other ones

• Socio- & psycho-graphics

Young adult's readers profile

According to a survey  89 % of the respondents young adult's readers are women between 18 and 34 years old.

Interests, attitudes & beliefs
The brands and the publishing houses are not yet recognized by the readers. Indeed they only take into account the cover page and the back cover (the title, the summary and the main picture). The most important part of the recommendation is made on the internet between community members. It is the principle of "word of mouth". 

Genres 
Young adult's readers prefer the following literary genres:
-1st position : Science fiction & Fantasy (80%)
-2nd position : Women's Literature (46,7%)

Type of books

Harry Potter of J.K. Rowling and Twilight of Stephanie Meyer became the two references for the Young adult's literature.

• Purchasing data

A real addiction
They are avid readers because 60% of them read more than 1 book per week. So it represents a real opportunity. Indeed, this target is the future of the publishing market.

The places of purchase
Young adult's readers prefer buying books:
-in the bookshops : 37%
-in the cultural department stores (Fnac, Virgin) : 24%
-on Internet (Amazon, Priceminister) : 16%

(Source: Survey on the public "Young adult's readers" conducted by the social network Babelio on Internet and carried out among 29 000 members in May 2011, http://www.actualitte.com/societe/harry-potter-et-twilight-ambassadeurs-de-la-litterature-jeune-adulte).

• Key concerns leading to openness to your message

The Maslow model :  the need people have to use our product (a book) belongs to two elements : love&beloging and self-actualisation.

1. love&belonging : people who read this kind of books want to belong to a special community : they can share their experience, their feelings and their passion for dark love stories. The creation of these groups is very relevant because we can notice that on the social network, it exist a lot of communities.
2. self-actualization : it consists in going out of the material aspect of the world, using your creativity and your spontaneity. Reading is a good mean to think outside of the box, to use your imagination. 

It means we have to use these two different ways to communicate and to create ours messages. They have to be based on the relationship between people and what can a community bring them : links, sharing, gratitude.

Create target profiles

• An individual that helps define your primary market

The Young adult's readers are aged between 15 and 25 years old.

For the gender it depends of the type of literature as they don't touch the target the same way.
I.e:
For books like Harry Potter or Hunger games: males and females read them because both can be touched by the story.
For books refering to vampires like Vampire diaries : more females read them because romantism is very present.

  

Sources:

-http://www.adcagency.fr/blog/page/15

-http://imaginelife.forumactif.fr/t37-des-conseils-pour-bien-reussir-son-texte

- http://twilightersanonymous.com/the-wall-street-journal-posts-article-attacking-current-young-adult-literature.html 

• A second individual that helps define your secondary market

The other readers. No gender or age particularly. Indeed, this type of literature can also touch adults. The best example for that is the world wide success of Harry Potter that has touched many people of very different ages.

  

Sources:
-http://lestorytelling.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/le-storytelling-sebastien-durand-conseil-communication-le-blog-chroniiques.jpg
-http://flashinformatique.epfl.ch/spip.php?article1336

Nathalie CONTE
Séléna BERNARD
Léonore BERARD
Sandrine CATHALO

Campaign Objectives

SPECIFIC CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES FOR DARKMOON

• To have an increase of 10 % in sales until 31 december

• To have 3 000  visitors by the end of the semester

• Grow official blog visits by 50%

• Create a facebook and a twitter pages : 5 000 fans on facebook and 500 followers on twitter until 31 december

• Organise a competition to create trafic and win 4 000 Fans on facebook 

Léonore Berard

Séléna Bernard

Sandrine Cathalo

Nathalie Conte

INSEEC - MO1

 

Review on Black Moon

Black Moon is a special collection which belongs to the French book house Hachette. It’s a community which brings together reading fans of fantastic and romantic genre for young adults.This label gathers books dealing with impossible love stories, psychologist thrillers... As it's the leader in young adult literrature, they have a lot of means of communication : a website, a facebook page...

• The web site :

www.lecture-academy.com/black-moon

The website is very clear and uses the colors mainly used in young adult romance : black, white and pink. It corresponds to what the members look for and their slogan "le site des mordus de lecture" is adapted to their public and the play of words refers to vampires ("mordu" has a double sens "to be keen on" and "to be bitten").

On the page, you can find :

A personal space : there is a special community where you can subscribe. On your profile, you can choose your reader profile, your library, your opinions/comments, messages and to contact other members.The community is very important because it can brings ideas, people share their opinion and it is very helpful in the selling process! At that date, there are 22 151 members and 60 502 comments. The members are mainly young women. Comments deal with the characters of the books, or advices regarding a choice or to discuss on what happen in a book.

What's more, they use a huge communication around their books. They have a special tab where you can find new books, some excerpts...

The last tab is about the different events: meetings with authors, competitions (to win : meetings with  authors, special books )

To finish, you can buy directly books through the website. You have to choose your book, put it in the digital shopping bag and there is a link with amazon.com to buy it.

• The Facebook page :

http://www.facebook.com/BlackMoonOfficiel

The same colours are used than on the official website : dark, pink and white. At that date, there are more than 84 440 fans.
The page is well animated : at least a new post every day. I didn't found any bad comment, only remarks from young groupies.
The main difference is that you have more articles about movies than books.

You can also find :  

1. events : the dates and the places of the different dedications
2. new boos excerpts
3. promotional videos
4. pictures of movies 

To conclude on Black Moon : this is a very dangerous competitor : this label is the leader in the young adult litterrature. They have a huge weapon : a very strong community (not to say a familly), they are very active on the social networks and they can easily combine pleasure and profits (don't forget that on the website you can buy a book on amazone.com). Neverless, when you want to build a community, you need opinion leaders and for the moment they don't exist.

Review on Castelmore - a new growing label for teenagers and young adults

Castelmore is a new publisher created in 2010 specialized in the publication of teenagers and young adults books, which themes relate to fantasy, science fiction, and dystopia.

To be published at Castelmore, the book needs to speak about a fantastic universe where the hero has the same age of the readers (enabling identification to the hero).

First books have been edited in October 2010 and nowadays Castelmore publishes 2 or 3 books per month.

This young label is trying to create a strong community of readers around books it publishes and this community seems to grow everyday as this type of literature is gaining more and more readers thanks to international success such as Twilight, Harry Potter and Hunger Games.

By creating a strong community, readers follow the label’s news, actions, and promotions resulting in selling more books.

Review on one of our growing competitor:

On their website:

http://www.castelmore.fr/

•  As it is a new label, their first objective is to inform the public on their books by stimulating interest and awareness among their target: teenagers and young adults
• Persuade is an objective that also can be found by reading description of new books on the website. They are written in the best way possible to reach their target, including key words that will appeal their interest: “new world”, “fantastic book”, “amazing”. They also put on the website some comments said by other famous authors or said by journalists/newpapers on this new book giving credit to it.  For instance: for the book “Apocalypse Zombie”, the famous author of True Blood has said “A thrilling plot, action scenes and effective deep reflection of life”. All of this is made to persuade the customer to buy this book.
•  Remind to buy this book can be seen at the end of the description where Castelmore gives detail on where to buy it and at which price

Conclusion: this website has been designed in a very effective way to target young adults respecting their codes: appealing books, colors/pictures reminding fantastic universe, full description. The emphasis is really put on the interaction with the customer.

==> I have made a review on Castelmore’s website because the blog is embedded in it. When you are on front page, you see the recent posts published on the blog in order to inform customers that apart from having a website, they also have created a blog where a community of readers can share their feelings directly with the publisher as well as with other readers.

Their blog:

http://www.castelmore.fr/leblog.html

• The big news of this blog was the imminent release of their new book: ”Legend” of Marie Lu on September 14^th.  They have created a “marathon legend” around this release to keep their community in suspense. The countdown until the release has been made to push fans to come several times a week on the blog to see news on the book such as the fact that the author will come in France to meet here readers. A special event that will be organized by Castelmore.
• Since September 14^th, only one post has been published on September 18^th, announcing the signing session of one of their author Emanuelle Nunck for the book Bordemarge in Belgium.
• Some chronic are made on books by Castelmore’s team that informs their customers. It also allows also direct interaction with customers that give their impression on books.

      Conclusion: By reviewing their blog, what we can see is that they have few followers. 

      Indeed, few comments are made on post showing that a community is not already created on this blog. Furthermore, few updates are made on it.

Their Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/castelmore.editions

They have 1888 fans and 30 people who talk about Castelmore. Several posts per month made by Castlemore, showing a good community management and strong interest for keeping an active page, a condition to keep fans on it.

The last update was on September 26^th, Castelmore has shared a link from a blog that could interest their fans: some goodies of the Vampire Academy.

The aim of this page is to promote their new books such as “Legend” of Marie Lu, as well as sharing with fans some things/topics that could interest them. We can see also that it's a place where fan can give their comments on books and consequently share and talk directly with Castlemore's team as well as with other fans.

When special events occur or when Castelmore live a special experience (like recording an advertisement for a book) they like to share it with fans, trying to create a "close" relationship with them, which is one of the condition to create strong community.

When we look more precisely to what followers say, we can see that the book “Legend” has make strong impression among them, as many people have make an article on it on their own blog/page giving their impression. This show that the Marathon created by Castlemore for this book was appropriated as fans were wating with great impatience its release.

On Twitter:

https://twitter.com/CastelmoreFR

702 followers, 346 tweets.

Last tweet from Castelmore was on September 18^th, announcing the signing session of Emanuelle Nunck.

Good interactions with followers. When followers talk about Castelmore they don’t forget to put the “#castelmore” so that their comments can be seen on Castelmore’s page. This enables to Castlemore, as well as followers, to see what can be said on books and they can share it again, making promotion for Castelmore’s books.

As on Facebook, we can see that the marathon created for the release of the book “Legend” has created great impression and reactions among fans.

Youtube Channel: editions castelmore

7 followers, 1254 views for 3 videos.

This channel is made for the book’s trailers only.

Review on Pocket Jeunesse Young Adults Books

Review on Pocket Jeunesse

Young Adults Books

• Website http://www.pocketjeunesse.fr

I evaluated this following competitor’s website and I noticed the following points:

- This website is very clear and friendly and it proposes books for each age group.

-This website presents the latest novels. This website gives information on events and for instance the adaptation of cartoons in books for children.

-Books are proposed in two versions: digital version and paper version. 

-There are no sales messages on the homepage. Prices appear only when we click on the details of a book.

-This website is interactive because we can leave comments and indicate that we like the book. Moreover, there are videos which present books. 

-According to books consulted, the website proposes us other books in the same styles.

-There are only positive comments. 

-Internet users can read the first chapter of every book. 

- The website proposes a selection of books with comments of specialists. 

- Internet users can subscribe to the newsletter of Pocket Jeunesse. 

- This website proposes another website dedicated to the teachers and they have created a page for booksellers and journalists. 

• Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pocket-Jeunesse

19 486 persons like the fan page.

675 persons talk about this page.  

This page proposes competitions of photos such as “Your Library”. Internet users can post a photo of their library. There is another competition called “The test the labyrinth”. Internet users have to complete a form and they can win a book.

This page proposes photos of sessions of dedications and photos of books covers exclusively.

There are also quotes from authors.

• Twitter

https://twitter.com/pocket_jeunesse

2 301 Tweets

158 Subscriptions

Pocket Jeunesse answers tweets of the Internet users and gives information about the size, the date of publication of different books.

• Blog

http://www.ablogouvert.fr

912 community members

This is an official blog about news and events on authors who have just published their book.

Conclusion

The company Pocket Jeunesse promotes the same favorite book “Les Cornes d’Ivoire Septentrion” on the website, on Facebook and on twitter. 

The website Pocket Jeunesse is complete, interactive and attractive by developing interactions with the community members. Finally, this website targets young adults and not only the act of purchase.

Reviews for Darkiss – young adult’s harlequin collection

– Reviews for Darkiss –

 Young adult’s harlequin collection

•  On Facebook : 

https://www.facebook.com/darkiss.romans

- 21 682 people who like the fan page 

- 287 talking about this.

 Community management frequently (the page is still updated several time a month). Last update the 25 th September with a competition. Every people can create  a cover for a book will be published in December and the most liked on facebook become the creator of the real book’s cover.

The aim of this page is to announce the news book’s publication and create the buzz on the news books.

• The web site :

http://www.harlequin.fr/index.php/Les-collections/Collection-Darkiss.html

It’s interesting to understand why Harlequin choose to put the Darkiss’s collection in the site Harlequin. It’s a new collection and the collection target a new category of people : the young adult. A totally different target as usual. Harlequin had two choices : create a new site just for this label or group all the harlequin’s label in the same web site even if it’s not the same target as usual. The choice of keep the collection in the same web site is strategic. Darkiss target essentially young womens and the other collections target womens. Moms can buy online or see the news parution for theirs girls.

The website is simple, with a short collection’s presentation et the possibility to buy directly by harlequin the book. No interaction possible with the consumer.

• Non official blog:  

http://darkissharlequin.wordpress.com/

This blog with the name of the collection and harlequin is a non official blog. It added by fans who love the books and the harlequin’s brand.

• Youtube's channel : romans Darkiss

 http://www.youtube.com/user/romansDARKISS

- 16 followers

- 12 031 views for 8 videos

- Any comments

Channel for the book’s trailers.  Not use to discuss with followers but just to publish videos and trailers. 

 

• Harlequin’s aps:

Harlequin develops a aps for iPhone, iPad ou iPod Touch.

This application is a mobile bookshops. You can consult book’s extract, buy and read a harlequin book, have special promotions. With the news ap you can have 10 free books. This aps is for all harlequin’s collection, Darkiss included. 

 

Séléna Bernard - MO 1