Book 1 Project

My first idea to promote the book 11/22/63 by Stephen King is a yellow card man bobble head. In the book the yellow card man is a character that lives near the time portal or “rabbit hole” as Ed calls it. Throughout the course of the book the color of the card he has is “yellow, or orange, or black,”(pg. 794) and later in the book even green and ocher. My idea is to have a table top bobble head figure which depicts “The Yellow Card Man” but make where his card is sticking out of the top of his hat a color changing card. There are the baseball of football cards that are holographic and change colors and pictures when you view them from different angles, but in this case his card would change only colors. It could cycle through yellow, black orange, green and ocher. I think this would be a smart marketing move because it would be a very cool gift for fans of Stephen King or just the book, and it would be a conversation starter. It would draw your eye with the changing colors, and the yellow card man would be so unique looking that people would be sure to comment on it. It’s good because it’s starting conversation about the book and when the person recommends the book it will mean more coming from someone they personally know.

My second idea is an online web game of sorts that utilizes Stephen Kings writing to draw an older audience to the game. Kids will play any video game but to draw adults to it you will need a promise of something intellectually interesting for them. The whole concept of the game will be based around the idea from the book that “the past doesn’t want to be changed.”(pg. 76) You will have the chance to go through some sort of rabbit hole to go back in time, then complete a variety of tasks to alter the past in some way. Each time you choose to complete a level, you will be rewarded with a couple pages of King describing what has happened and whether this has led to something good or bad. There will be no real way to win the game but after completing each level you will be taken back to the beginning and asked what other action you want to take. This is a good marketing idea because it targets the younger audience. It’s very tough to get kids interested in reading big long books but this can successfully do that. Of course one of the levels in the game will be to go back and do what George did in the book, try to stop JFK from being assassinated, but when they choose that screen they will just be given a teaser of the book and then a link to buy it.

My third idea is to join together with a theme park to create an 11/22/63 ride. The basis of this ride will come from the idea in the book that “every trip’s a reset, buddy.”(pg.77) When Ed tells George this he is letting him know that even if he messes something up when he goes back in time, he can always come back to the present and whenever he decides to go back in time, it’s a complete reset. The amusement ride will involve only 2-4 people in a “cart” at a time, that way they can decide what actions they want to take in the past. There will be multiple options to choose from and the very first thing you do after taking off on the ride is choose one of the options. Depending on what you choose you will be lifted up by a hydraulic arm and flown around to different half sphere screens, so that it feels like you’re actually in them. They’ll show what’s happened because of your actions and you will have 2 more opportunities during the ride to fix what you’ve done by choosing other alternatives. This will appeal to almost anyone as most people love amusement rides. It may appeal to people who wouldn’t normally go on rides, but the uniqueness of this one(the ability to choose your fate) would bring them on.    

What is a Book?

A book is a written story, plain and simple. To me it doesn’t matter whether it’s printed, hand-written, on paper, an e-reader. The fact that an author sat down to write a story, no matter if it’s fiction, non-fiction, informative or a biography makes it a book in my mind. A book needs a goal, an author, and a topic. Yeah, that’s it. The fact that people try to say a story on a phone or a tablet isn’t really a book is just ridiculous. A book is just like a human; we all have an author, ourselves, and we all have goals. A topic can be a little harder to identify for some people but everybody has something they’re interested in, and something that they’re passionate for in life.

I like how Joe Meno put it, “The Kindle, the iPad, these are just variations of a need we have as a civilization, as a species, to use our imagination.” He seems to really get that it doesn’t matter how you read the story or even hear it, it’s the story itself that matters. That being said there is something nice about having a physical book, but sometimes it’s inconvenient or just plain uncomfortable. Right now I’m reading the hard back edition of Stephen King’s 11/22/63, an 850 page book. Depending on how you’re sitting, where you are etc., it can be very hard to read the book without some discomfort.

As a matter of fact, physical books may be dying all together. It may not have had as many different platforms as say music, but as we keep moving forwards towards everything being as convenient as possible, I believe books will be swept up in that wave. Just within the past century music has gone from vinyl to 8-tracks to cassettes to CD’s to the modern day mp3. (That order may be wrong I’m only 17 and I’ve never even seen a cassette.) While the only two big jumps for books has been from hand written to print, I can’t see why they wouldn’t eventually start to move digital, along with the rest of the world. The point to stress though is that THIS IS NOT A BAD THING! Kids and teens are the first to adapt to new technology and with so many less kids reading now than ever before this can only be a positive progression.          

Why I Read

Why do I read? Well, that would have been an easier question to answer when I was younger. Back then I read all the time, book after book, a lot of times choosing to read over watching TV or playing video games. That seems a little crazy to me today, in fact it’s probably been close to a year since I actually read a novel. I do enjoy a good book but in today’s world I’m surrounded by things designed to distract me from that. At home I’ve got the TV and my computer, but probably the biggest reason I’ve stopped reading is I practically carry a mini computer in my pocket everywhere I go now. Back when I was a kid without all those things, reading was the easiest form of entertainment. It let my imagination run wild in ways I can’t remember it doing in recent years.

The first books I can remember reading are the Hardy Boys books, but I don’t think that’s what got me hooked. For my first “real novel” my dad got me Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, a good pick as it was a while before it was massively popular. I can remember reading that book and just getting lost in the world of Harry Potter. I could see it in my head, hear the characters and even stray from the story and control the characters myself, something I could never do with TV. Imagination is one of your most entertaining qualities, and Harry Potter helped stretch that for me like never before. Even after the Potter series was done I continued to read for a while, enjoying the worlds of Lord of the Rings and Narnia, but at some point that hobby got lost. I’m so glad I can take this class to give me a reason and excuse to set some time aside for reading. I can’t wait to find another good book or series and get lost in it like I did all those years ago.