Brilliant Marketing Strategy by ABC Television

I've recently started watching the ABC television series, Castle, starring Nathan Fillion (who was Capt. Mal Reynolds for all you sci fi geeks like me out there). The series is about a best-selling author, Rick Castle, who has been teamed up with a police detective, Kate Beckett, as a police consultant to help them solve their crimes. He also uses what he sees in cases and the people on the force as the basis for his next novel.

The series has been touting Castle's newest book, Heat Wave, which has just been published on the show. At the end of the episode, an announcer encourages viewers to buy the book. I've been listening to that announcement for awhile for the past several weeks, thinking it was just part of the shtick of the series. However, after watching this week's episode, I began to wonder if the book was real. So, I went to Amazon.com and discovered that the book touted in the series is a real, published, book with pretty favorable reviews!

My jaw dropped. What a brilliant marketing scheme by ABC Television to enhance the profile of the series, create another line of income into their business, and have the popularity of the book help the TV show and the TV show drive sales of the book. Who'd a thunk it?? Of course, this strategy is not without its critics, as many are saying that it's not ethical to publish a book by a fictional character. However, I'm an avid reader, and as long as I get a believable and reliable plot line, I don't really care if the author is fictional. Does make me wonder, however, who the unnamed author really is and whether s/he is getting his/her due?

This has me thinking about creative, out-of-the-box ways I can market my own business!