Author FML Pepper, while pregnant and unable to work in her profession, received a notebook from her husband and began writing a book. She tried sending it to several publishers; however, at that time contact was very difficult, mainly because companies still had a very limited digital presence. Between 2011 and 2012, she found me on Google and hired me to plan a promotional campaign for her book. The strategy was based on the idea that by sparking readers’ curiosity, it would also be possible to attract the attention of publishers.

At that time, social media did not yet have the same influence it has today. Therefore, the marketing strategy to promote the book focused on Google sponsored links, reading forums, actions on Facebook (a major player at the time), as well as a hotsite and partnerships with bloggers — the influencers of that moment.

This website brought two major challenges. The first was the author’s request for the navigation to work horizontally, something common in older websites built in “Flash”, but optimized for search engines. For this reason, all movement was built using HTML and JavaScript. The second challenge was creating a teaser video. It had to be produced even without full access to the e-book, using only a few excerpts from the book as the narrative basis.

In partnership with Roberto Gaspar (now the owner of Titânio Agency), who participated with me in the Marketing planning, we managed to create an initial base of interested readers. We made a few chapters available and, consequently, sparked the curiosity of many users. However, at that moment we still were not able to capture the interest of publishers.

That was when author FML Pepper decided to release a digital version of the book. She hired a company to convert the work into Kindle format and published it on Amazon at a very accessible price. In addition, she began speaking directly with bloggers, participated in several “fanfic” websites, and further expanded the interest of new readers. As a result, the book’s sales skyrocketed. Over time, the work became a best-seller in the young adult category. The sequels achieved the same success, even competing with each other for the top sales position. The author appeared on interview programs and today is a renowned writer, with other stories published.

Teaser

Before the era of artificial intelligence, creating a video on a low budget was a major challenge. The options were limited to homemade footage, stock image libraries, and a lot of creativity. Even with limited resources, I managed to produce a teaser that drew considerable attention at the time and received many compliments from readers interested in the story.