Bringing Lisa Jewell’s Podcast Novel to Life
We were thrilled when Century Books UK approached us to have a read of the latest Lisa Jewell novel, NONE OF THIS IS TRUE. All we knew at the time was that it was about two women, a podcast, and might be Lisa’s darkest novel to date.
Boy, oh boy - were we in for a ride!
As a self-confessed Lisa Jewell fangirl, I can happily report not only that this is Lisa’s darkest novel yet, it’s also potentially her best - in my opinion.
Celebrating her 45th birthday at her local pub, podcaster Alix Summer crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie is also celebrating her 45th .A few days later, they bump into each other again, this time outside Alix's children's school. Josie says she thinks she would be an interesting subject for Alix's podcast. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life. Alix agrees to a trial interview and indeed, Josie's life appears to be strange and complicated. Aix finds her unsettling but can't quite resist the temptation to keep digging.
Slowly Alix starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it Josie has cajoled her way into Alix's life - and into her home.
Soon Alix begins to wonder who is Josie Fair really? And what has she done?
Upon reading the novel, split into sections of podcast transcript, Netflix script, and standard narrative text, it became quite clear to us all that we had to bring this podcast to life. Our main character, Alix, has previously hosted a podcast called All Woman, recorded in her own bougie recording booth at the end of her north London garden - now, she is making her second podcast ‘Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin’ and I wanted to hear it.
The podcast that Lisa describes in the book would have 100% been on my true-crime podcast rotation and sat right alongside titles like Lionsgate Sound’s SCAMANDA, or Tortoise Media’s SWEET BOBBY, so we knew we had to make it happen.
Luckily for us, the Century UK Audiobook team were also on board and graciously allowed us to use snippets of their recordings for Ep1, 2, and 3 of the companion podcast. Episode four was a ‘reveal’ episode where, the voice of Alix-Nicola Walker, sat down with Lisa for an exclusive interview.
We use the word ‘reveal’ here, because we added a touch of guerilla marketing to our creator celebrations here by selecting creators across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube from the UK, IRE and ANZ, who all played along to keep their lips zipped on the correlation between the book and the podcast. To their audiences, we were simply celebrating the hottest new true-crime podcast in town.
Creating all of the content to sit alongside the podcast with Century Books UK (the jingles, the podcast introductions, the transcripts, the metadata for the podcasting platforms) allowed us to bring to life this element of Lisa’s book, creating an immersive experience for readers and listeners alike. When looking to the future of digital storytelling, campaigns should be immersive, innovative and intimate and we believe this podcast campaign hit the trifecta.
The podcast was then linked to every touch point of marketing surrounding the book including Lisa’s newsletter, the Amazon page, all social content, and purchase platforms, ensuring the follow-through was targeted to pre-ordering the book. All of the podcast content (once the jinx was up!) was updated to reveal that #NoneOfThisIsTrue, and featured to-buy links for all territories across the transcription pages, podcast platforms and creator content.
Overall, this campaign was huge fun to play with, and we had a truly excellent time collaborating with the team at Century Books UK to celebrate NONE OF THIS IS TRUE by Lisa Jewell.
You can also see this campaign featured in The Bookseller, here.
