Tartarus Press Launches Promotional Videos

Tartarus Press appears to be exploring a new venue for promoting its books, one rarely seen with other weird horror publishers: Youtube. Short promos have appeared for the recent Robert Aickman reprint, Sub Rosa, as well as Angela Slatter's Sourdough and Other Stories, created by the author. Marketing by online videos has proven successful for many other products, but can it work for supernatural literature?



This is a tricky question that hides many others, much like one of those Russian nestling dolls. In the pro-Youtube column are facts about its ability to rank well in searches and the complete lack of content for many writers. The Sub Rosa video, in fact, is probably the most relevant Aickman item ever uploaded there. The site's ability to throw up "relevant" videos to viewers may also help lead a small, but significant percentage of mainstream horror fans to discover weird fiction for the first time.

On the other hand, Youtube can be particularly fickle. Giving a video the wrong tag or category may place it in a no man's land with few viewers, or worse, one with a high bounce rate (where viewers searching for the same term that has nothing to do with the video content end up clicking the back button once they realize their mistake). Youtube has cracked down in recent years on direct links due to spam-bots too. This makes it more difficult, but not impossible, to direct users to a website or online store where they can actually see more details about a book.

Though the list of pros and cons is long, Youtube and similar video websites have a chance to prove their worth to promoters of weird fiction. Right now, room for experimentation is enormous, and only more strange artists and publishers testing the black seas of digital media will learn whether or not they can be harnessed to their advantage.

-Grim Blogger