How do you market a book written in a foreign language by an author who’s now dead, that was originally published 60 years ago, and has been overlooked by mainstream publishing ever since? This series takes an ongoing, insider’s look at the campaign to get Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone on the bestseller lists, by Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson ….

You have achieved some kind of zen level of marketing when you achieve meta-marketing, a place where things begin to feel a little out of control, but in a good way — i.e., our marketing campaign about our marketing campaign has achieved an unanticipated amount of attention. On Tuesday alone this week, it was featured on Publishers Lunch and the British equivalent, BookTradeInfo. We got a terrific shout-out on the great blog about international publishing, Publishing Perspectives (”the series should be mandatory reading for any small presses trying to get past what Johnson calls ‘the echo chamber’ of American publishing”). One of the country’s better literary journals, the Virginia Quarterly Review, wrote a lovely commentary about us. And that’s just some of the places I’ve heard of. Then there were all these aggregators I hadn’t heard of — such as BookNewsMatters. Meanwhile, one of my spies tells me that the same day, the publisher of Bloomsbury Press sent a link to the series to all employees.

Meanwhile blogs and twitter accounts were touting the series before and since — for example, there’s this post at the ever-great Bookslut, and at Geof Wisener’s wonderful A Natural Curiosity, and on the Chatter, the blog of the great Los Angeles indie bookstore Diesel, and this tweet from publisher Thomas Riggs & Co. in Montana.

Thanks one and all — getting attention from people we respect like that makes us feel danged lucky. And forgive us tooting our own horn, but the lesson here is twofold: 1. Marketing is about tooting your own horn, and 2. There’s a huge element of luck in all marketing campaigns.

How do you market a book written in a foreign language by an author who’s now dead, that was originally published 60 years ago, and has been overlooked by mainstream publishing ever since? This series takes an ongoing, insider’s look at the campaign to get Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone on the bestseller lists, by Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson ….

The cover for the initial, hardcover release of Every Man Dies Alone

It’s almost impossible in modern book marketing to have a successful book without someone acting as a public spokesman for it, preferably the author. It’s something authors like to complain about in public (while hectoring their publishers behind the scenes to for god’s sake get them on Oprah!) but there you have it. The author’s role in the blurred land between marketing and publicity has become more essential then ever. For example, there’s the infinite world of outreach — speaking to book clubs, visiting booksellers — which can go on for years. Then there’s the fact that so-called “off-book” features — essentially, anything that isn’t a review, such as author profiles or interviews — are de rigeur nowadays, and have grown to the point where they usually have more of an impact than even a great review.

And yes that includes reviews in the New York Times — a review there, like almost no place else, can still have a big impact. But a feature there, in my opinion, trumps even that. (Getting both leads to what’s known in indie publishing as a “heart attack.”) Every Man Dies Alone got a wonderful review there that made the many booksellers who put stock in Times reviews take notice and put us on display. But I could never convince the Times features editors to take my call. (Let’s just say they don’t pay attention to indie publishers the way the Los Angeles Times does.)

Okay, so in the case of Every Man Dies Alone, we knew that we had the most amazing off-book author of all time: a fascinating ex-con who had substantial substance abuse issues, was involved in duels and embezzlement and wrote books in code while incarcerated in a Nazi insane asylum, who stood up to the Nazis and was blacklisted and helped sneak money to Jewish writers — what’s not to love? What’s more, by all accounts Hans Fallada was a warm, chatty, friendly guy, quick with a joke and a smile — perfect for speaking to reading groups. There was only the one hitch: He’s dead.

Combine this with the tendency of places like the Times to ignore indies and favor authors who are beautiful, young, blond and related to staffers and you’ve got a problem.

What to do?

Normally, a publisher in this situation would have called in the translator (think of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky out shilling for Tolstoy). But in this instance, we had a translator who wasn’t inclined or available.

But then we thought of something better when I saw that Hans Fallada’s oldest son, Ulrich Ditzen, had recently published a book about his relationship with his father. From there, we got lucky — it took me weeks to track him down, but when I finally got him on the phone, he gave me precisely the right answer to the question: “Do you speak English?” We brought him over for the launch.

It turned out to be one of our smarter moves. The 79-year-old Ditzen was deeply touched by our efforts to resusciatate his father’s work in English, and although not in the best of health he did a series of interviews on behalf of the project that, given how moved he was and the tragic nature of his father’s life, were truly stirring events.

Still, we weren’t able to generate as many interviews as you’d think — although we’d had a terrific Times review, as I say they don’t necessarily carry the weight they used to and we did not immediately generate all the great press we eventually got.

Which means we had a long effort in front of us with no ready spokesman.

It was time for some more improv. I was, at this point, probably the leading expert on Hans Fallada in the US. I was also more genuinely passionate about his work than perhaps the author himself was at the end. We took a page from Barney Rossett taking the stand on behalf of D.H. Lawrence and offered up Hans Fallada’s publisher — yours truly — as a spokesperson for the absent author. We decided to also try and broaden the appeal of that by pointing out there were interesting tangential story lines — for example, discussing what this story says about modern publishing or works in translation in the American or British market, say.

Surprisingly, there were some quick takers. For example, there was a great, in-depth interview with Kevin Sylvester for the CBC. More recently there was my talk with Leonard Lopate at New York’s local NPR affiliate, WNYC. There were interviews with newspapers — such as my recent talk with Julia Keller of the Chicago Tribune. And as time goes on, I’ve been speaking — both remotely and in person — with more and more book clubs and reader’s groups.

My favorite appearance, though, was when I appeared on a television show with an exhausted Ulrich Ditzen at the end of his American visit. Tired, not feeling well, and weary, too, I think, of speaking in English, it was a thrill to sit next to him as he held on to do a very difficult thing: speak in another language on TV. But I think his steely effort came across, and in the end, this was one of the most successful things we’ve done to support the book. Filmed the day after publication, but not aired until over a month later, it lifted us onto the Amazon bestseller list within hours of its broadcast. You can see it here:

How do you market a book written in a foreign language by an author who’s now dead, that was originally published 60 years ago, and has been overlooked by mainstream publishing ever since? This series takes an ongoing, insider’s look at the campaign to get Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone on the bestseller lists, by Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson ….

A galley of Every Man Dies Alone

For all the elaborate ends we’ve gone to in our marketing efforts for Every Man Dies Alone, it all began with the simple thing with which all book marketing campaigns begin: galleys, also known in some quarters as advanced reader’s copies (aka ARCs). They are simply early versions of books that maybe are quite done yet — usually, the writing is essentially done, but the text isn’t copyedited yet. (Which is why galleys always have a “do not quote” warning on them.) And as such, they are typically the thing that kicks off a marketing campaign.

As to what you do with them, it seems a simple chore — get a copy of a book out early to critics, booksellers, whatever — but of course, it gets complicated. For one thing, publishers are more and more competitive about getting attention for galleys earlier and earlier in the process. But that just means that, as a result, there’s a good chance the book isn’t done in time, or isn’t edited in time, or isn’t laid out yet.

Then there’s the fact that, as I say, more and more galleys are out there these days. So many that little houses can’t keep up: Printing galleys represents a significant cost for little indies, and we can never print as many as the big houses do. Plus, the flood of galleys means that it’s difficult to get overwhelmed critics and booksellers to pay attention to yours.

So for Every Man, we decided to try something different. Normally, galley covers are a simple affair. Often enough, the cover isn’t finalized yet, and galleys covers are all text. Or they’re not-quite-finished versions of the cover — often enough, rendered in black and white in order to keep costs down. (Galleys are typically printed digitally, which is far more expensive per book than offset printing.)

But we decided to do something dramatically different: Not to put the typical information on the front of the book — not even the title. Instead, we used a quote we had about Every Man from Primo Levi. He called it “The greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis.” It was an amazing testament, from an important writer who happened to be a Holocaust survivor, rendered in large white letters on a stark black background. There was nothing else on the cover.

Thinking back to my own days as a book critic, I couldn’t imagine how I could have not picked up such a galley. Still, it was a gamble. Critics and booksellers prefer as much information as quickly as they can. If they can’t learn what they want to know by scanning the cover, they might be annoyed — not a mood you want people in when they first encounter your book. I remember telling myself that at least we kept it to black and white, and didn’t incur the extra expense of color.

It wasn’t long before we heard back from several critics (Liesel Schillinger, who reviewed the book for the New York Times, for one) that the cover was striking and did give them some crucial information, after all. And our sales reps and booksellers were equally enthused. One wrote to us “that galley completely made a statement and stood out in the towering pile of galleys …. it also made a statement that you were serious about the book and putting some creative energy behind it ….”

We still hear about this from critics a year later when we’re trying to talk to them about other books. It’s another lesson in paying attention to the small things. As simple as this cover seems in retropsect, it got an unprecedented reaction, and turned out to be a key part or building an intense, early enthusiasm amongst booksellers and critics … which we’ll discuss in future installments ….

How do you market a book written in a foreign language by an author who’s now dead, that was originally published 60 years ago, and has been overlooked by mainstream publishing ever since? This series takes an ongoing, insider’s look at the campaign to get Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone on the bestseller lists, by Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson ….

Maureen Johnson of the Hamilton Public Library

What’s a marketing campaign without a tee shirt?

Many Melville House authors will grumble upon hearing me say that, because if there’s two things every writer in the known universe and some others want it’s a full-page New York Times ad and a tee shirt, and normally I’m opposed to both, especially tee shirts. They cost more than they should, and so does mailing them to the hinterlands; I live in fear of offending some petite recipient by sending them a large, and I’m convinced most of the people that get them don’t wear them anyway; and nobody has ever satisfactorily explained to me how, precisely, they lead to sales.

And yes, I also complain about staffers wasting paper clips. Hey, I’m a small publisher, so sue me.

But then someone sends me a photo like the one on the right — of librarian Maureen Johnson (no relation) of the Hamilton Public Library in Ontario — and I remember why, sometimes, it’s actually a good idea to make tee shirts.

Other things it reminds me of: Never forget to market to librarians, and every good marketing campaign works closely with sales reps — like our great sales rep to Canadian libraries, Maylin Scott, who took the photo.

In short: Thanks, Maureen!

How do you market a book written in a foreign language by an author who’s now dead, that was originally published 60 years ago, and has been overlooked by mainstream publishing ever since? This series takes an ongoing, insider’s look at the campaign to get Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone on the bestseller lists, by Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson ….

Week one of our TV advertising campaign using Google TV Ads is over, and the statistics are impressive. Google, of course, is nothing if not statistical data, and what that data is telling us about our first seven days is that we successfully bid on 60 ads, which got a total of 1,270,000 “impressions.” According to Google, “An impression is an active television that is tuned to and displays a given commercial for 5 seconds or more.”

Assuming at least one person was in front of that TV, that means that at least 1,270,000 people might have paid attention to the ad. True, a lot of people may have run off to get a sandwich during the ad, but it’s also true that in a big percentage of those households there was more than one person in the room when the ad ran. So it’s probably fair to say that number is a conservative estimate.

As to how many actually paid attention to the ad, however — well, that’s what business people call SWAG (a Scientific Wild-Assed Guess). In other words, as with most marketing efforts, it’s about doing the best job you can to attract the attention of the best audience you can get in front of. Beyond that, it’s hunch and instinct.

For Every Man Dies Alone, our instinct was that even though the book has amazingly wide appeal, we should go after two specific target audiences, from which we thought things would grow. That meant people already inclined toward World War II era thrillers and love stories, and people who liked literary novels. AKA, smart people.

So, we bid for ad time on the History Channel, the Military Channel, BBC News America, MSNBC and some of the movie channels. We landed some interesting spots: “The Rachel Maddow Show,” “Meet the Press,” and “Countdown with Keith Olberman”; “Mysteries of the Smithsonian,” “Heroes of World War II,” and “Wings of the Luftwaffe”; and a wide range of movies, from The Dirty Dozen to King of Hearts. Most of them were showing in the middle of the night, or early in the morning, but that made them affordable and, we suspected, exposed us to a more dedicated viewer. There was one mistaken bid for prime time on the History Channel when we found we’d aired ads during “Ice Road Truckers.” If you hear of any eighteen wheelers going off the road in the Yukon because the driver was reading Hans Fallada, well, you’ll know who to blame. Still, over all, we were pleased with the programs we managed to get our ad on, and the total number of “impressions.”

So what was the impact? Amazing. Sales were up 50% over the previous week, according to Bookscan.

We’re fairly confident we can get in front of an even better viewership during the next seven days — there’s a definite learning curve at figuring out how to place winning bids, and we think we’ve got it down now. And getting more of the exact programming we want could lead to a bigger audience made up of a more perfect demographic. We’re trying to tamp down our optimism about what that could mean for getting more and more people to read the book.

Stay tuned.

How do you market a book written in a foreign language by an author who’s now dead, that was originally published 60 years ago, and has been overlooked by mainstream publishing ever since? This series takes an ongoing, insider’s look at the campaign to get Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone on the bestseller lists, by Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson ….

From the start, we were confident that we had in Every Man Dies Alone a book that would generate the fabled, unmeasureable thing they say is what ultimately sells books: word of mouth. That is, we were confident we would win a citizens’ campaign. The trick would be keeping the book in stores long enough to get it going.

Thus, a key component of our early campaign was to boost the word of mouth among booksellers.

So, well before publication, we began to get early reader’s copies into the hands of some of the country’s leading indie booksellers — nothing radical there, but we worked it like we’d never worked it before, with the publisher writing out letters (by hand) to bookseller after bookseller, making calls, sending more ARCs. It didn’t take long: several booksellers became immediate champions of the book. One, Nancy Olson of Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina, even wrote a letter about it to other booksellers (she called it “admirable” and “inspiring”) and nominated it for the IndieBound’s “Indie Next“ list — a monthly list of recommendations to booksellers put out by the American Booksellers Association. It boosted orders immediately.

And once word of mouth is gets going, it moves in interesting and unexpected ways.

Take, for example, our encounter with Alan Furst, bestselling author of some truly great World War II thrillers. It seemed to us that the brilliantly learned person who wrote those novels would surely be interested in Hans Fallada. So, we approached him for a blurb. He not only wrote one, he called it “one of the most extraordinary and compelling novels ever written about World War II. Ever.”

But he didn’t stop there. He went on to write an even-more moving review of the book for the Globe and Mail. He wrote another for Barnesandnoble.com. And in an interview with Seattle alt weekly The Stranger that was supposed to be about his own new book, Furst gave us another lengthy plug, saying he was proud that he’d “helped Melville House support it,” because “it’s an astonishing story.”

But of course, inevitably, word of mouth is happening not where you can see it, but where you can’t. Even though you can follow it somewhat now on the internet, it’s still largely an invisible phenomenon and only sales figures can ultimately back up your suspicions and hunches.

Still, we’ve been fortunate to get more visible examples than most — take this letter that came in just yesterday from a librarian in Minnesota who’d read about our postcard campaign:

I sat down and read Every Man Dies Alone shortly after it first appeared on the book scene, and within the first hundred pages I knew I had something outstanding.  Since finishing the book it very comfortably ranks as one of my all time favorites, and as a book I would unhesitatingly recommend to anyone.  Being a librarian by trade, I immediately recognized the accessible nature of the book, and I’ve added this title to the top of my “Books for Non-readers” list–a truly high compliment considering the inherent gamble in putting your faith in one book to transform a non-reader into a reader.

So …  I recently read on your blog about the genius idea to market Every Man Dies Alone with postcards, which could then be left anywhere/everywhere.  I would love to get my hands on a stack of these postcards, and I could engage in quite a campaign of postcard dropping here in Minneapolis, MN.  Metro-transit, coffee shops, libraries, community bulletin-boards, and any random windowsill or stairwell I can manage to find.

Oh, and before I forget, I should like to give a little shout out to Micawber’s Books in Saint Paul for turning me onto Every Man in the first place.  What a great independent bookshop.

Anyway, if it would be possible to obtain a stack of postcards, or any posters, bulletins, or other materials you could spare, I’d love to contribute with a citizen’s campaign of my own.

If this won’t work out I understand, and I’ll just have to keep marketing by word-of-mouth.

Your friend in Minneapolis,

Jon Allinder

We sent him a stack of cards yesterday.

How do you market a book written in a foreign language by an author who’s now dead, that was originally published 60 years ago, and has been overlooked by mainstream publishing ever since? This series takes an ongoing, insider’s look at the campaign to get Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone on the bestseller lists, by Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson ….

One of the Hampel's actual postcards, saying, in part, "Hitler's war is the worker's death"

So far, the most viscerally satisfying part of our marketing campaign for Every Man Dies Alone was an idea based on one of our guiding principals of marketing here at Melville House: the best marketing campaign is always organic to the book.That is, there’s always a good idea for how to promote a book buried in the heart of the book somewhere.

In Every Man Dies Alone that campaign was more quickly evident than in any book we’ve ever done. After all, the book is essentially about a marketing campaign.

Not to give away too much of the plot, but as you probably already know it concerns a working class couple living in World War II-era Berlin who decide to take a stand against the Nazis. They conduct a propaganda campaign whereby they leave anti-Nazi postcards all over the city. The cards bear simple statements such as “Mothers, the Fuhrer is killing your children,” and “Commit work place sabotage.” It seems pitiful, except for the fact that if caught they will surely be executed. Their bravery is what gives the campaign its stirring eloquence.

It’s all the more stirring when you know that the novel is based upon a true story: a couple named Otto and Elise Hampel really did what the characters in the book do, and similarly eluded capture for years, and similarly enraged the Gestapo. (Every Man Dies Alone includes excerpts from their actual Gestapo files, including photos of some of the cards — see the illustrations.)

Thus, this campaign started with the word that starts so many campaigns: “Duh.”

Another of the Hampel's cards, saying "German people, wake up!"

Postcards are a very inexpensive thing to make, and a not-so-complicated thing to design, and so we have done a few thousand of them now. I knew from the start what they needed to say. One of the book’s most moving scenes is when it really sinks in to the protagonists that it’s just the two of them against the world. (The book is as much a love story as it is a thriller.) And they say to each other, “The main thing is you fight back.” Our first round of cards said nothing more.

We left them on subways and buses and in cafes and on park benches. I left some in Grand Central Station and in the New York Public Library, main branch. We sent them out to reps and booksellers and stuck them into other books being mailed to critics. Many people who read Every Man liked the idea when they heard about it and asked us for a stack of cards. We were happy to oblige.

We still are — we’ve done a couple of mail campaigns with them now. If you want some let us know. It’s a thing that got to a point where it didn’t really feel like we were promoting a book. Of course, it’s typical for people who really believe in a book to cross over from being a salesmen to being evangelists. But in this instance there is the fact that you are passing along a message that comes not from a book really but from a couple of very brave dead people.

As to the question of whether it sells books — well, we’ll never know. Seems doubtful. And yet, as a potent reminder of what it’s all about, it’s one of the most important components of this campaign.

How do you market a book written in a foreign language by an author who’s now dead, that was originally published 60 years ago, and has been overlooked by mainstream publishing ever since? This series takes an ongoing, insider’s look at the campaign to get Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone on the bestseller lists, by Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson ….

The hardcover edition of Every Man Dies Alone

As mentioned in earlier installments, it’s not easy to begin with for indie publishers to get publicity in the echo chamber of American publishing, and it’s especially difficult for old books written in foreign languages by authors now dead. It’s even tougher when you’re several months out in the market with a book and it’s not “news” anymore. (Which makes me think of a certain producer for whom my staff has often heard me express warm affection — when you call her to see if you can get her interested in a forthcoming book,  says, “We treat books like news stories — call me back a few days before pub date.” When you call her back, she says, “We can’t put something together that quickly. I wish you’d called me earlier.” It’s a lesson in publicity: Some people just won’t say, “No.”)

All of which is nonetheless meant as set up for another important thing to remember about marketing a book: You don’t get any lucky breaks if you quit trying.

Yesterday was a case in point: Our campaign to resuscitate the reputation of Hans Fallada got a terrific shot in the arm from one of America’s leading newspaper columnists, Pulitzer Prize-winner Julia Keller of the Chicago Tribune. In a moving column — which she called “The Rescue of Hans Fallada” — she said Fallada “reminded the world of the power of courage and persistence.”

It was the kind of column, from a major writer, publicists break their butts to attain. But that wasn’t how this one came about. Keller had simply discovered one of our Fallada titles — Wolf Among Wolves — on her own and tweeted enthusiastically about it. I got a Google alert on the tweet, and quickly sent her the deluxe, hardcover version of Every Man Dies Alone — and I’m not sure why, but I didn’t do something I always do religiously in such situations, which is include a press kit. I guess I was confident the book would speak for itself, as Wolf apparently had. There was something of the co-enthusiast about my reaction. And in any event, viola! Out of the blue, a major piece of mainstream media was the end result, a couple of short weeks later.

By day’s end — it’s now 12:03 am Monday morning in New York — each of our four Fallada titles has leapt up into the upper echelons of our quick-fix bestseller list, Amazon.com: The Drinker is number 10,843; Little Man, What Now? is number 4,353; Wolf Among Wolves is number 3,312; and Every Man Dies Alone, which had started the day at around 2,600, is now number 707.

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Julia Keller

Is it all the Keller column, or is the TV commercial — running for four days now — starting to show an impact? It’s impossible to say for sure, but probably a little of each, although the fact that all four of our Fallada titles jumped simultaneously on Amazon make it seem likely Keller’s piece was the most influential — her column was about Fallada himself and it mentioned all of his books, as opposed to the commercial which is only about the lead title, Every Man.

We’ll know more when we see precise sales figures for the week when Bookscan releases them on Wednesday. It includes a breakdown of city-by-city sales.

But regardless of sales figures, the Keller column is a reminder of the most important thing of all when it comes to marketing a book: The book has to be good. Because when you’re operating outside the echo chamber, there always comes a point where the book is alone in a room with a smart critic like Julia Keller.

How do you market a book written in a foreign language by an author who’s now dead, that was originally published 60 years ago, and has been overlooked by mainstream publishing ever since? This series takes an ongoing, insider’s look at the campaign to get Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone on the bestseller lists, by Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson ….

As mentioned yesterday, marketing an old, translated book by a dead author faces certain problems, and so we’ve had to be creative about how to get the word out about Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada. While we wait to see if the TV campaign works, we’re going to report on some of the other weird ideas we’ve concocted to promote a book we love. One of our very favorites was something that — once again — we’d never heard of a little indie doing: Advertising in the Toronto subway system.

You heard that right. Thanks to a tip from our intrepid Canadian sales rep, Janet Joy Wilson, we learned that the Toronto subway system has this one interesting line that follows a route featuring stops near several good bookstores, including several large outlets for the Chapters-Indigo chain.

“Hmm,” says we.

“Posters,” says J.J. “On just that line. By the doors.”

It wasn’t hard to design the poster — Every Man has collected the most sincere, heartfelt reviews of any book we’ve ever published. I mean, we don’t need to say anything, really, when we’ve got Primo Levi calling it “the best book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis.” Give a couple of moving testimonials like that and our striking cover image to an amazing designer (Bruce Peters) and viola! — or whatever the German equivalent is — we’ve got a hell of a poster, as you can see above.

The real work was the footwork and phone work of J.J. — we’re talking about an ideal situation, where a sales rep loves the book as much as the publisher does — alerting the stores and seeing if we couldn’t coordinate displays of the book, so when riders came above ground they would see the book waiting for them.

As it turns out, those booksellers already knew the ruse, already loved the book, and were happy to sign on. We splurged for a month, and we’ve been getting thank-you’s from booksellers ever since. It worked!

Tonight begins a project that we here at Melville House find kind of mind-boggling: We’re beginning a three-week TV advertising campaign for one of our books, thanks to the magic of Google TV Ads. Much as we hate to shill for Google — ahem — we must admit that they’ve come up with a way for us to do something we never thought we could: advertise on television in the four digit range.

So we jumped at the chance to use TV — are we the first little indie to do so? — to support a book that’s become really special to us: Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone. It’s a book we’ve all come to feel is a once-in-a-lifetime event — a book that perfectly encapsulated the imperative of our nonfiction (to out fascism) and our fiction (to inspire perseverance), and was so moving it made us feel an immediate sense of its importance, as well as an impulse to pass it on.

But it’s not easy for little indies to pass it on — to get attention for anything in the mainstream. Plus, this book faces certain marketing issues beyond that: it’s old, it was written in a foreign language, and the author is dead. The common response: If it’s so good how come Penguin didn’t publish it for over 60 years?

But we exist to counter the mainstream. And we thought it might be interesting to document our attempt to do so here, on a daily basis, in an ongoing series giving a behind-the-scenes look at our marketing effort.

It all starts with the video below — our first-ever commercial, which we made ourselves on iMovie. (Our only production expense was a consultation with a sound engineer.) The core footage (the staircase) was shot by Benjamin Ditzen, Hans Fallada’s grandson, in an old building on Jablonskistrasse in Berlin, the same street where the protagonists of Every Man Dies Alone live. (The precise address cited in the novel, however, was bombed into smithereens during the war). The rest of the footage was made in-house, or lifted from Nazi propaganda footage.

That just left buying time on Google — true, way more expensive than anything we’ve ever spent before on marketing, but still, we couldn’t buy a single ad in the New York Times for what we’re paying for three weeks on the History Channel, BBC America, and elsewhere.

Worth it? Stay tuned.