3 Key Takeaways – How to Survive a Sharknado by Andrew Schaefer

The first thing to say is that pop culture tie-ins don’t need to be superficial, okay? I think when I was growing up, the 90s, the 2000s, there was a certain expectation that pop culture tie-ins would be a bit superficial, a bit maybe useless, you would only buy them if you were an absolute super fan because all you would get would be like a blow-by-blow of the episodes that you’ve already seen and enjoyed or something like that.

It kind of seemed like there was no point in buying them and I think I bought one or two of those types of books and then stopped for a long time. This book defies that. This book is far more than a superficial tie-in.

It does go into the Sharknado and it does go into a number of other films, in fact there’s a whole list of them at the back of the book to tell you what has been referenced. However, there are also lots of extra monsters and extra scenarios that are not from movies. The references in those are not to movies.

This really goes in-depth, it’s got illustrations, it’s got quotes, it’s got fact boxes, you know, made-up people, made-up scientists, made-up scenarios that aren’t featured in any film or anything like that, so it really goes a lot deeper and therefore it adds a lot more value and I would say even if you haven’t watched any of these films, you could still pick this book up and have a good time. The second thing I want to point out is that even though it says Sharknado on the front cover, because that is obviously the biggest film, the biggest property that we’re referencing, tying into multiple properties is such a good marketing idea. Because this book is not just relevant for fans of Sharknado, it’s for fans of Arachnoquake, Basilisk, Bigfoot, Dino Shark, Ghost Shark, Ice Twisters, Manticore, Meteor Storm, Sharktopus, Rock Monster, Polar Storm, NYC Tornado Terror, Swamp Volcano, Swamp Shark, I could carry on.

This means that anyone who’s a fan of any of those movies could be your potential audience for this book, which expands your audience hugely. And because it’s got those made-up scenarios in there as well, the things that aren’t actually part of a film but they are separate and they are just in this book, that means that it can appeal to any fans of that kind of genre. It’s really obvious why Sci-Fi have put their branding all over this.

I actually don’t know the story behind this book, I don’t know whether it was something that was suggested by Sci-Fi or whether it was suggested by the author and then managed to bag a deal with Sci-Fi, but why wouldn’t Sci-Fi want to get involved with something like this? This is incredible marketing. This is the kind of book that markets itself because of all those tie-ins, and then it’s also the kind of book that re-markets those other properties. So I’ve only seen Sharknado from the whole list, I now have a whole list of films that I can go and check out if I like Sharknado.

Brilliant. The third thing is humour is everything. This could so easily have become dry and dull, but because the author maintains this tongue-in-cheek humour throughout the whole book, it’s actually really enjoyable to read and it’s not at all hard to finish it.

Even though I didn’t know the references that were made in a lot of the other sections that were taken from movies, I could still enjoy and appreciate them. And that’s a real feat because it means that the tie-in actually stands completely alone from the properties that it is tied into. That’s, again, really valuable as a marketing tool, as a sales tool, and just is going to get people leaving you excellent reviews, again, and that’s why this sold well enough that it ended up on my husband’s bookshelf, where I then decided casually to pick it up, and now I could be someone that sends a lot more royalty Sci-Fi’s way by watching the movies that this book has essentially recommended to me. See, it all ties in, in one big circle of life. Those are my three key takeaways from How to Survive a Sharknado.

If you have read any other tie-ins that you really enjoyed, please let me know in the comments because I would love to read some more that do this well.