More TV Shows Offering Reasons To Buy; Castle's Successful Character-Written Novel

from the creative-business-models dept

We always hear from people that certain types of digital content can't come up with scarce "reasons to buy," and yet we always seem to hear of new and creative ways that it's being done anyway. Back in December we wrote about how the TV sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia had turned ridiculous on-air products into the real thing and they were selling quite well. Now, PrometheeFeu points out that the popular ABC TV show Castle has come out with a real book supposedly by the lead character in the show, who (in the TV show) is a professional writer. Not only that, but the book itself has hit the NY Times best seller list. Now, it's not entirely clear who wrote the book (when asked, the producers of the show insist that it was the character in the program), but the book has gotten decent reviews and ABC is pitching the book on its website (including free chapter downloads). One assumes that ABC likely gets a cut of the sales as well. It's yet another neat attempt to combine an infinite good with a scarce one to make that scarce one more valuable. I would imagine that the book wouldn't sell nearly as well if it hadn't been tied to such a TV program.

Filed Under: books, business model, castle, cwf, novels, rtb, tv shows
Companies: abc, disney