By Sanjeev Kotnala
In the lockdown, Juggernaut, the now not-so-new publisher, ran an interesting campaign: #ReadInstead. The idea: instead of getting bored during the lockdown, read books. It was simple to join and well-executed.
Once you had enrolled in the programme, every evening at 7pm, a fresh, free short story was delivered on the Juggernaut app. The story was available to you free to download and read in the next 24 hours.
A weekly email announced the Free Short Stories in the coming week. And the app reminded when it was available to download and read. Each story took around 15-20 minutes to read.
#READINSTEAD WORKED ON MULTIPLE LEVELS.
I loved this simple programme, as it worked on multiple levels.
1. Juggernaut app downloads increase
2. Juggernaut collected data for future marketing of publishing programme
3. Juggernaut got live data on the changing reader profile and interest
4. Readers were exposed to many new authors
5. Readers got one story everyday free
6. Readers got a first-hand experience of online reading
7. Hopefully, it helped to inculcate reading habit
8. Readers could appreciate the art and power of engaging short stories
9. Readers were exposed to books on the app
I think it was a successful initiative, even though I have no data on increased app downloads or the percentage of the readers visiting and reading the short stories every day,
One of the readers, Rakshesh (@ORDX), commented: ‘I could not read the initial stories, but I think I read almost all the stories from the second week onwards. It was a good initiative. Some well-known authors mixed with not so familiar ones. So I got to know about them, and I can explore their work further. Short Story is a medium that I often use to know the writer’s style. So if I find it comfortable, then I try to find out about his / her other works… it helped me know about a couple of writers. … It was an interesting program, and it certainly brought joy for an avid reader like me. Who doesn’t like a good story!‘
MY EXPERIENCE WITH JUGGERNAUT #READINSTEAD
There must be a sound logic behind new stories uploaded at 7pm daily. I would have preferred the new stories uploaded in the morning.
Juggernaut Books rightly did not focus on a genre every week. It could have resulted in a hyperdose of short stories on a particular genre and only interest a subset of the audience, leading to a break in reading.
The only flaw (personal POV) was the stories mixed through the week. Sometimes, old classics followed one after another, or the contemporary authors came as a swarm. And at times, stories from the same genre were repeated one after the other.
Given a chance, I would have better mixed the genre through the week and alternated between classic and old writers with the fresh-contemporary writers. Having said that, I did enjoy rereading the classics and diligently followed the programme. And completed reading 30 short stories in 30 days.
Personally, Juggernaut did add to my comfort with online reading. And in addition to the short stories I have read many a books like HALF THE NIGHT IS GONE, Amitabha Bagchi, Sanjay Dutt- story of Bollywood’s Bad Boy, TRIED AND TWISTED – EROTICA, I Am a TROLL and many more on the app.
Juggernaut, thank you for the #ReadInstead initiative. I continue to read a new short story free every day.