For the launch of James Patterson’s new book “Private Vegas”, we created a reading experience like no other. One that took the thrill of this new novel to a spectacular, new height.During 5 days, we engaged fans with two self-destructing, promotional versions of the book. The first one was an outrageous $294,038 experiential version created to capture fans’ attention. The other one was a free digital version available at selfdestructingbook.com. Fans had to wait for unique codes released every hour in order to download a digital book that self-destructed after 24 hours.

We designed two versions of the book: An outrageous $294,038 self-destructing physical version that was promoted with an online film. And, 1,000 free digital books available at selfdestructingbook.com. There, users got codes to unlock the digital book and, to heighten the thrill, they could track other readers’ progress and steal time from them. The website became a community of fans united by the thrill of a book.

The iPad e-book, downloadable from the website, included a 24 hours timer, scary story-related animations and an ominous “page burner” that destroyed every page as the user swiped it.

Minds were blown. More than 13,000 hours were spent reading and users sabotage each other almost 6,000 times, for a total of 5,310,000 stolen seconds.86 articles were written around the world. The campaign got coverage from traditional newspapers, like The Guardian, to technology magazines, like Wired and Mashable. Some bloggers even wrote about their experience our-by-hour. All the press coverage gave the campaign more than 419 million impressions.

Visitors to jamespatterson.com went up more than 60%. And “Private Vegas” became a New York Times bestseller in the first week of the launch of the campaign.