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Snakes on our blog

PW Daily has a story about Sterling Publishers’ cashing in on the marketing behemoth that is Snakes on a Plane by churning out — wait for it — Snakes on a Sudoku.

According to the story, “Sudoku grids [feature] diagonally connected boxes, or ‘snakes,’ slithering through the standard game board. (Or, as the house’s marketing copy describes it, ‘replaces the traditional 3×3 squares with deadly s-s-s-s-snakes.’). The idea for the title, which went to press for 40,000 copies and has, according to Sterling’s director of library and specialty marketing Chris Vaccari, sold 1,000 copies in its first three days on the market, grew out of a joke conceived by one of the house’s editors.”

The snake-y Sudoku puzzle first appeared on Sterling editor Francis Heaney’s blog back in March, leading to “a mention in an April 14 Entertainment Weekly cover story about the film and its unexpected online fan base …. Sterling managed to scrape together a licensing deal and enough snake-filled Sudokus to get their unusual addition to the SoaP (that’s the invented acronym of the title, to you non-fans) frenzy in front of readers in just enough time.”

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Read PW Daily story here

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