Penguin Group publishing company has been working very hard promote direct sales via its website, provided, apparently, that the marketing campaign be slightly illogical. A fortnight ago I investigated the promotion of their website via a new set of serialised novels in the nineteenth-century tradition, but I still could not have foreseen the marketing of their online presence through the distribution of thousands of fans.

No, not ‘fans’ as in ‘fanatics;’ excited book-lovers were not hurled out of the backs of vans at people blithely listening to their iPods on the sidewalk. ‘Fans’ as in ‘the implements waved back and forth in front of the face in order to cool oneself,’ last widely seen in primary school classrooms made of accordions of folded paper, or in—ta da!—nineteenth century salons. Either I’ve cracked the code of their bizarre marketing schemes or I simply relate everything to the nineteenth century tradition, anachronism that I am.

According to Publisher’s Weekly, the fans-as-in-cooling-implements advertised a 25% off discount on one side, and on the other, Penguin branded gear, including a tote bag, baby clothes, tea cozy and salver. (No, I made the last two up. But it would follow the trend, wouldn’t it?) 5,000 fans were handed out in New York City over the course of four days. The promotion did not occur elsewhere in the United States or in the United Kingdom: this is the summation of Penguin’s attempt to “take its bookselling presence to the next level” and raise “consumer awareness through advertising.” But no one except for heat-afflicted New Yorkers reads books anyway, right?

Like Kassia at Medialoper, who wittily titled her article on the subject, ‘How Not to Sell Books,’ my initial befuddlement passed into deeper confusion. In an echo of the ‘Glass Books of the Dream Eaters‘ website’s failure to deliver, Penguin’s main bookselling website is not particularly well put-together in order to facilitate the online sales. Medialoper summed up the website’s situation as follows:

Not a word about this sale, not a peep about the promotion. The closest the website comes is a series of links for “Shopping Tools”. I kid you not.

There is no storefront, no encouragement to buy books. The campaign truly appears to be limited to the handing out of fans.

The 25% off campaign has since expired, so it’s not surprising to find no mention of it currently; even so, the website has hardly styled itself as bookseller. On the other hand, neither did the promotion of fans.