Trying something new

I'M SORRY, I'M OUT OF THE LOOP. WHO IS SILENA?
From PW:

The team behind Amistad's red-hot radio campaign for Karrine Steffan's bestselling memoir, Confessions of a Video Vixen, is back with another clever publicity scheme. Only this time, it doesn't involving giving away celebrity sex secrets. Now, the HarperCollins imprint is scoring urban radio play, online buzz and bookstore events by pairing popular novelist Lolita Files with rising pop singer Silena Murrell.

The hook is that Murrell's catchy debut single from Universal/Motown, I Like My Man Hard, does a decent job of describing the hardcore bad boy in Files fifth novel, Sex.Lies.Murder.Fame, who will do anything to create a platform for literary stardom, including court P. Diddy, Starbucks and Calvin Klein. (This is fiction, remember.)

To help stir word-of-mouth among readers and music fans, Amistad has created a music video—no doubt the first to be set in front of the HarperCollins offices in Manhattan. It pops up on Google Video if you search for "sex" (the first word in the book's title) and is also posted on Karrine Steffans's highly trafficked pages on the HarperCollins Web site.

Though it's too early to tell if the video will go viral, the package was enough to get the two women on Wendy Williams's nationally syndicated radio show (with 10 million listeners) and on MTV radio, both airing on February 21. They will kick off their bookstore tour on February 18 at the Fort Bragg, N.C., Army PX, with Files reading from the novel and Murrell performing her single, which Universal will release for radio play on March 14.

The imprint has also distributed 3,000 promotional CDs to bookstores, barbershops and radio stations. In addition to Murrell's R&B single, the disc includes songs by three other debut artists and two excerpts from the novel read by actor Al Jackson. Marketing director Rockelle Henderson came up with the idea of creating a video for the book, and publicity director Gilda Squires ran with it, recruiting Murrell through a friend at Universal, while Files recommended the other singers who contributed.