A match made in corporate “Heaven”

When I saw this news posted at Publishers Marketplace late last night I couldn’t help but laugh. Because really, what better match can there be than Mitch Albom and Starbucks? So of course the coffee chain would launch its books program by selling copies of FOR ONE MORE DAY starting October 3 (one week after Hyperion‘s laydown) at 5,400 stores – which means the book will be pretty damn impossible to avoid in major metropolis areas (Manhattan = every other block.)

Marketplace adds that Albom will visit a Starbucks store in eight cities, and on October 26 the coffee chain will organize Book Break discussion sessions at a “flagship store” in each of 25 big cities. Starbucks’ support will also include in-store signage, online promotion through their wi-fi welcome page. And most interesting of all, Starbucks announced it will donate a dollar per book to Jumpstart, a nonprofit early education organization, and they have guaranteed a minimum contribution of $50,000.

Of course, it remains to be seen if the promotion will work. Not just because the book didn’t really get a whole lot of buzz when Albom appeared at Book Expo America, but because as Motoko Rich reports in her write-up of the news, Starbucks’ promotion of the movie AKEELAH AND THE BEE didn’t exactly lift it to blockbuster status, what with it raking in just under $19 million in ticket sales.

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