The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Driving in to work today I heard an interesting segment on NPR about the Swedish author Stieg Larsson . Stieg Larsson wrote a trilogy of books with the first one being The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which is currently #17 on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction list. I have not read the book myself, but a couple of my colleagues have been raving about it. What I didn't know is that Stieg Larsson died in 2004. When Knopf picked up the rights for publishing it in the United States they needed to use some inventive marketing techniques since they had an unknown author who could not do book tours. First they starting giving out advance copies to booksellers, and basically to anyone who asked. They went so far as to take an ad out in the New York Times Book Review telling readers if they wrote asking for a copy they would get one in the mail. They also made use of bloggers. The books were already popular in Europe and so getting the book into the hands of some influential book bloggers was important. When the book was finally published it had glowing blurbs on the back from Michael Connelly, Lee Child and Harlan Coben, and debuted at #4 on the New York Times Best-Seller List.