As a publisher and now a bookseller, this is one strategy I have to give some thought to. (Only question: How to implement?) The Guardian just posted an interesting article about how mention of Wuthering Heights in the Twilight series of vampire novels and films (it’s the central couple’s favorite book) has resulted in a spike in sales of new editions—with a Twilight-like cover—of Emily Bronte’s 1847 novel. This isn’t the first time that dropping the title of an already well-established book in a work of mainstream entertainment resulted in renewed interest for that book: When Mad Men used Frank O’Hara’s slim volume of poetry, Meditations in an Emergency, as the metaphorical text for season two—it was mentioned in three episodes—sales on Amazon shot up nearly three hundred percent. And don’t get me started with Lost and Flann O’Brien’s enigmatic The Third Policeman…

This news item led to some playful suggestions at the gossip site Jezebel for more profitable pairings of literary works or books that could be mentioned in other books by their fictional characters. Here are just a few:

• A Picture Of Dorian Gray mention in fashion authority Charla Krupp’s How Not To Look Old
• A David Copperfield mention in any of the Harry Potter books
• An Alice in Wonderland mention in the diet book Eat This, Not That!
• A Grapes Of Wrath mention in Jim Cramer’s financial guide Mad Money
• A Madame Bovary mention in Confessions of a Shopaholic

and my favorite:

• A Titus Andronicus mention in Eat, Pray, Love

Any more suggestions out there?

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