the boy in the striped pyjamas review essay

“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” Essay

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Introduction

Film review, the good points in the movie, the bad points in the movie, historical accuracy of the movie, works cited.

Most individuals prefer watching movies as a way of entrainment or killing time especially the youth. Movies entail different themes that might range from historical experiences to current day-to-day experiences. However, some movies and television shows purporting to highlight some historical issues may lack historical validity and accurateness. This paper is a review and historical analysis of the film, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

The film is founded on a novel with the same title. John Boyne authored the novel. The film’s director is Mark Herman, and it was released in 2008. The main actor is Bruno, who is eight years of age living in the countryside with his family after his father receives a promotion in the workplace. Bruno’s dad is a commandant of an extermination camp, which borders their homestead, but it separated by a barbed wire electric fence.

At one point, Bruno decides to disobey the rules forbidding him from accessing the back garden. Curiosity leads him to the fence surrounding the extermination camp. Bruno meets Shmuel, who is a Jewish inmate at the camp, and befriends him. Bruno speculates the striped uniform that Shmuel is wearing to resemble pajamas, thus hinting to the viewers about the origin of the film’s title. The pair organizes regular meetings where they are involved in playing board games together, and Bruno sneaks food to his friend during such occasions.

One day, Bruno’s mother discovers the assignment of his husband following some insights from a junior commissioned officer often called Lieutenant concerning the black smoke emanating from the chimneys of the camp. Apparently, the smoke comes from the burning of the Jews who are perceived as lesser humans in the Nazi Germany. Bruno’s mother becomes agitated and heartbroken, and thus she confronts her husband. Later on at a dinner in Bruno’s home, the lieutenant pronounces how his biological father had moved to Switzerland and left his family.

Bruno’s father accuses the Lieutenant of neglect of duty and recklessness by not informing the concerned authorities about his father’s eminent disagreements with the prevailing political regime. Therefore, to prove his ultimate support for the political regime and cover his embarrassment, Lieutenant Kotler beats to death the Jewish inmate who was a servant at Bruno’s house so that he could show his undeterred support to the political system.

Later on, by coincidence, Shmuel replaces the murdered servant. Due to amusement, Bruno decides to offer him a cake. Unfortunately, the lieutenant sees Shmuel chewing and immediately accuses him of theft. Shmuel explains that the cake was duly offered to him, but Bruno denies the claims out of fear. Bruno decides to go and apologize to Shmuel. However, the servant cannot be found. Bruno keeps on going back to the same venue at the camp, but he is never fortunate to meet his friend until one moment when Shmuel reappears at the fence. During the reunion, Bruno expresses his ultimate apologies to his friend who forgives him before rekindled their friendship ( The Boy in the Striped Pajamas ).

Towards the end of the movie, Bruno endeavors to help Shmuel’s find his father who is missing after failing to return to the camp after a march. Consequently, he disappears from their house by digging a hole under the barbed wire fence to access the camp where Shmuel is residing. Later, his mother and sister discover that Bruno is missing. They inform the father who launches an immediate search together with his men. However, the search is unfruitful because the prohibited friendship between Bruno and Shmuel becomes a tragedy.

In the film, the aspect of true friendship is evident as demonstrated by Bruno and his ultimate affection to Shmuel, who is an inmate and a Jew. The audience often observes the deep relationship expressed through their conversation in the various meetings. Bruno breaks the confines of his family rules of not visiting the back garden just for the sake of friendship. The viewers also witness Bruno’s chances by sneaking food to his friend. At some point, he apologizes to Shmuel for denying that he offered him the cake. Lastly, Bruno’s decides to help Shmuel trace his father who has disappeared after a match.

Bruno’s mother is observed to oppose the dictatorial regime by expressing her anguish and dissatisfaction on the matter of anti-Semitism. She is heartbroken after discovering that the black smoke emanating from the camp chimneys is from the burning of Jewish corpses. She also confronts her husband after learning about his assignment in the camp, thus proving to viewers that she is not contended with the way that the current regime disregards the Jews.

The aspect of dictatorship is evident in the film. Characters such as Bruno’s father, who shows ultimate support to the current regime, demonstrate the feature. At times, he accuses the lieutenant of not demonstrating his loyalty to the political regime by not reporting to the relevant authorities the disappearance of his father to Switzerland. The viewers also witness the killing the Jew servant by the lieutenant illegitimately to prove his support for Semitism.

Racism is also a bad point as depicted in the different scenarios. The discrimination against the Jews is profound in this movie as evidenced by the rules prohibiting Bruno from engaging in friendship with Shmuel. The lieutenant also murders the servant simply because he is a Jew. The black smoke from the Jews’ burning corpses additionally proves how the political regime disregarded the life of the Jews.

The movie, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, is historically accurate. First, it was set during the World War II period from 1939 to 1945. The movie is relevant because it underscores the infamous Holocaust, which happened under the watch of Adolf Hitler’s tyrannical regime in the Nazi Germany. During this period, around six million Jews were murdered. The extermination camps as the one demonstrated in the movie were used in the systematic murder of the Jews.

The predominant ways of terminating life included gassing whereby the Jew inmates in the camps were packed in gas chambers, and then Carbon Monoxide or Zyklon B was used to suffocate them to death. The Jews were also killed by subjection to strenuous work under severe hunger conditions. The movie is historically correct due to the presence of death camps located beside Bruno’s home. The evidence provided by Bruno’s effort to sneak food to Shmuel and his vivid eyewitness of weak and malnourished Jews paints a picture of the situation during the Jews’ condition in the Nazi Germany.

The movie is also historically accurate because it portrays the element of dictatorship that characterized Adolf Halter’s political regime. The tutor employed to educate Bruno and his sister Gretel demonstrates the dictatorship. The tutor often campaigns for nationalist propaganda, which is a key element in a despotic regime. Gretel gradually develops an overwhelming support for Third Reich, which was the historical period between 1933 and 1945 when Hitler’s dictatorship was evident. Gretel even decides to cover her bedroom with posters encompassing the Nazi propaganda, thus painting a full picture of how the dictatorial government controlled all the aspects of the people’s lifestyles.

The movie also portrays its historical accuracy due to its vivid description of significant instances of anti-Semitism. This term underscores hatred, non-preference, and discrimination against the Jews based on their ethnicity, religious, or racial affiliation (Goldstein 28). During the Holocaust in the World War II, the Nazi regime discriminated the Jews leading to their death. This historical occurrence stands out clearly in the movie given the way Jews are treated. Additionally, the prejudice is evident after the lieutenant terminates the life of the Jew servant illegitimately so that he can demonstrate his allegiance and loyalty to the ruling regime.

Movies have different themes that they ultimately aim to communicate to the viewers. Most information may be historical while other films concentrate on the emerging issues around the globe. The movie, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, gives the audience a clear image of what conspired during the World War II in the Nazi Germany. Some of the themes that have been evident include the Nazi propaganda, the dictatorship under Adolf Hitler, and anti-Semitism. The movie is historically accurateness because its themes and occurrences coincide with those of the Second World War from which it derives its setting.

Goldstein, Phyllis. A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism , Brookline: Facing History and Ourselves, 2011. Print.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas . Dir. Mark Herman. New York: Miramax Home Entertainment. 2009. Film.

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IvyPanda. (2020, May 14). "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas". https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-boy-in-the-striped-pajamas/

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The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Striped Pajamas: Introduction

Striped pajamas: plot summary, striped pajamas: detailed summary & analysis, striped pajamas: themes, striped pajamas: quotes, striped pajamas: characters, striped pajamas: symbols, striped pajamas: theme wheel, brief biography of john boyne.

Historical Context of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Other books related to the boy in the striped pajamas.

• Full Title: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
• When Written: April, 2004
• Where Written: Dublin, Ireland
• When Published: 2006
• Literary Period: Contemporary Young Adult
• Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Historical Fiction
• Setting: Berlin, Germany and Auschwitz, Poland
• Climax: When Bruno, who seeks to understand the world on the other side of the fence in which his friend Shmuel lives, changes into a pair of the “striped pajamas” and climbs under the fence.
• Antagonist: Bruno’s Father
• Point of View: Third person omniscient, mostly from the perspective of Bruno, a nine-year-old boy.

Extra Credit for The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Quick work. Boyne wrote the first draft of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas in two and a half days, hardly sleeping until he finished.

Film. The novel became a movie in 2008 under the same name, directed by Mark Herman.

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Life on the farm

Two boys become friends through a barbed wire fence in "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas."

Mark Herman’s “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” depends for its powerful impact on why, and when, it transfers the film’s point of view. For almost all of the way, we see events through the eyes of a bright, plucky 8-year-old. Then we begin to look out through the eyes of his parents. Why and when that transfer takes place gathers all of the film’s tightly wound tensions and savagely uncoils them. It is not what happens to the boy, which I will not tell you. It is — all that happens. All of it, before and after.

Bruno ( Asa Butterfield ) is a boy growing up in a comfy household in Berlin, circa 1940. His dad ( David Thewlis ) goes off to the office every day. He’s a Nazi official. Bruno doesn’t think about that much, but he’s impressed by his ground-level view of his father’s stature. One day Bruno gets the unwelcome news that his dad has a new job, and they will all be moving to the country.

It’ll be a farm, his parents reassure him. Lots of fun. Bruno doesn’t want to leave his playmates and his much-loved home. His grandma ( Sheila Hancock ) doesn’t approve of the move either. There seems to be a lot she doesn’t approve of, but children are made uneasy by family tension and try to evade it.

There’s a big house in the country, surrounded by high walls. It looks stark and modern to be a farmhouse. Army officials come and go. They fill rooms with smoke as they debate policy and procedures. Bruno can see the farm fields from his bedroom window. He asks his parents why the farmers are wearing striped pajamas. They give him one of those evasive answers that only drives a smart kid to find out for himself.

At the farm, behind barbed wire, he meets a boy about his age. They make friends. They visit as often as they can. The other boy doesn’t understand what’s going on any more than Bruno does. Their stories were told in a 2007 young adult’s novel of the same name by John Boyne, which became a best seller. I learn the novel tells more about what the child thinks he hears and knows, but the film is implacable in showing where his curiosity leads him.

Other than what “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” is about, it almost seems to be an orderly story of those British who always know how to speak and behave. Those British? Yes, the actors speak with crisp British accents, which I think is actually more effective than having them speaking with German accents, or in subtitles. It dramatizes the way the German professional class internalized Hitler’s rule and treated it as business as usual. Charts, graphs, titles, positions, uniforms, promotions, performance evaluations.

How can ordinary professional people proceed in this orderly routine when their business is evil? Easier than we think, I believe. I still obsess about those few Enron executives who knew the entire company was a Ponzi scheme. I can’t forget the Oregon railroader who had his pension stolen. The laughter of Enron soldiers who joked about killing grandmothers with their phony California “energy crisis.” Whenever loyalty to the enterprise becomes more important than simple morality, you will find evil functioning smoothly.

There has not again been evil on the scale of 1939-1945. But there has been smaller-scale genocide. Mass murder. Wars generated by lies and propaganda. The Wall Street crash stripped people of their savings, their pensions, their homes, their jobs, their hopes of providing for their families. It happened because a bureaucracy and its status symbols became more important than what it was allegedly doing.

Have I left my subject? I don’t think so. “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” is not only about Germany during the war, although the story it tells is heartbreaking in more than one way. It is about a value system that survives like a virus. Do I think the people responsible for our economic crisis were Nazis? Certainly not. But instead of collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in rewards for denying to themselves what they were doing, I wish they had been forced to flee to Paraguay in submarines.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Vera Farmiga as Mother
• Jim Norton as Herr Liszt
• David Thewlis as Father
• Sheila Hancock as Grandma
• Rupert Friend as Lt. Kotler
• Richard Johnson as Grandpa
• Jack Scanlon as Shmuel
• Asa Butterfield as Bruno
• Amber Beattie as Gretel
• Cara Horgan as Maria
• David Hayman as Pavel

Written and directed by

• Mark Herman

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The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

By john boyne, the boy in the striped pajamas study guide.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas , published in the United Kingdom with the alternate spelling The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas , won many international and Irish awards, including two Irish Book Awards and the Bisto Book of the Year. It topped the New York Times Bestseller List and has sold over 50 million copies worldwide. The book was rank first in Ireland for over 80 weeks and was the bestselling book in Spain for two years.

Boyne had always been fascinated by the Holocaust and had studied the historical context of the genocide and World War II. He reports that within 100 hours of having the initial idea to write a novel set during the Holocaust, he had completed the first draft of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas . The ending of the novel was set in stone from that first draft, completed on April 30, 2004.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is described on the title page as "a fable," a characterization Boyne has said he chose in order to explain some of the story's unrealistic aspects. In interviews, the author stresses that rather than being a historical novel about Auschwitz, the book is meant to be a universal story about any concentration camp in World War II, since so many children were victimized during that time. He gives this as the reason the name "Auschwitz" never appears in the novel; rather, the reader only gets Bruno 's mishearing of the name, "Out With."

Bruno's confusion surrounding the situation at "Out With" is an example of Boyne's technique of defamiliarization. Through the voice of a limited, third-person narrator, Boyne leads the reader to Auschwitz and introduces the terrible things taking place there as if the reader has no prior knowledge on the topic. This allows the reader to avoid immediately categorizing the victims of the Holocaust as "Others," fundamentally different and unknowable. Rather, the reader gains the perspective of Bruno's childlike innocence.

By characterizing The Boy in the Striped Pajamas as a fable, Boyne avoids the retrospective speculation that often marks Holocaust novels. Rather, he implies that Bruno's story is an allegory, serving as a timeless representation of atrocities and the people who participate in and/or become victims of them. It poses the question whether perpetrators of such horrors as the Holocaust might rethink their behavior if they were to themselves become a victim of the horror - as in what happens to Bruno's father.

The book is an example of a trend in children's literature that acknowledges the extent to which children can be witnesses and victims of issues much larger than themselves. Though the Holocaust and all its atrocities are outside the realm of Bruno's understanding as a child, he and his family are participants and he becomes a victim by the end of the novel.

Growing up in war-torn Ireland, Boyne has said he felt a personal connection to the story of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. This connection is revealed in certain details: for example, the characters of Bruno and Schmuel share a birthday, among other similarities. The specific date, April 15, 1934, is Boyne's father's birthday.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

What are some examples of figurative language used in The Boy In The Striped Pajamas?

In "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" by John Boyne, figurative language is used extensively to convey themes, emotions, and the perspectives of the characters, particularly that of the young protagonist, Bruno. Here are some examples:

How does Bruno feel when he looks at Pavel?

This depends in what part of the book you are referring to. Do you have a chapter for this?

How does Bruno feel about his sister?

Bruno sees his sister as a hopeless case..... not someone he would choose to play with. Gretel is, of course, older and unlikely to be interested in the same things as Bruno.

' I don't see what else there is to do other than that,' said Bruno...

Study Guide for The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas study guide contains a biography of John Boyne, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas Summary
• Character List

Essays for The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne.

• Trying Themes of 'The Boy in the Striped Pajamas'
• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas as a Genuine Fable

Lesson Plan for The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

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Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — The Boy in The Striped Pajamas — A Review Of The Book The Boy In Striped Pajamas

A Review of The Book The Boy in Striped Pajamas

• Categories: Book Review The Boy in The Striped Pajamas

About this sample

Words: 708 |

Published: Aug 6, 2021

Words: 708 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Works Cited

• Boyne, J. (2006). The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. David Fickling Books.
• Gavron, J., & Boyne, J. (2008). The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: A fable. Film adaptation. Miramax Films.
• Hedges, C. (2006). Review: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/books/review/Hedges.t.html
• Kadar, M. (2013). "Out-With," History, and Holocaust in John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 38(2), 176-198.
• Kustanowitz, E. (2008). Inventing the Other: Post-Holocaust Jewish Identity in Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Studies in Jewish American Literature , 27(1), 87-98.
• Lacayo, R. (2006). Out of the Past. Time. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20121020155433/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1537536,00.html
• Marks, D. (2009). The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas: Fantasy? Irony? Reality? Journal of Holocaust Education, 18(1), 41-60.
• Reuter, A. (2008). Visualizing the Holocaust: Intermedial Encounters in John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. In S. Onega & J. Garcia Landa (Eds.), Visual Aids in Fiction: An Introduction (pp. 95-116). De Gruyter.
• Sherman, J. (2007). The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: Children's Experiences of Auschwitz in Children's Fiction. Journal of Children's Literature Studies, 4(2), 71-93.
• Zipes, J. (2011). Fairy Tales and Fables: From Origins and Poetics to Reception. Routledge.

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John Boyne's novel, "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," is a poignant narrative that explores the unlikely friendship between two eight-year-old boys, Bruno and Shmuel, amid the harrowing backdrop of World War II. While Bruno is [...]

John Boyne's novel "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" tells the story of a young boy named Bruno who befriends a boy named Shmuel, a Jewish prisoner in a concentration camp during World War II. The novel explores themes of [...]

In the New York Times Bestseller novel, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a tragic story of the World War II Holocaust is described. A German boy and his family moved to Poland for their father’s new job. The boy is never told [...]

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The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

Hope and Despair in the Shadow of Auschwitz

Publisher: David Fickling Books

Genre: Historical Fiction

First Publication: 2006

Language:  English

Major Characters: Bruno, Gretel, Shmuel, Lieutenant Kotler, Pavel Bruno’s Mother and Father, Eva Braun

Setting Place: Berlin, Germany and Auschwitz, Poland

Narration: Third person omniscient

Theme: Innocence and Ignorance, Family and Friendship, Holocaust

Book Summary: The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

When his father is promoted to Commandant in the German army and his family is transferred from their comfy home in Berlin to a strange place called Out-With, nine year-old Bruno has no idea of the true nature of his new surroundings. Indeed, he is also unaware of the horrors being perpetrated at the command of the German leader, the Fury, who visits the family one evening. He is unimpressed by the small man with his tiny ineffectual moustache.

The dreaded concentration camp as seen through Bruno’s eyes is simply a place of many, many long huts and the people who wear an odd sort of striped pyjamas. Starved for company, Bruno’s explorations lead him to meet a new friend, Shmuel, a boy his own age who, for reasons Bruno cannot understand, looks like a small sad bony caricature of a normal boy. Bruno’s innocence and his friendship with Shmuel will ultimately have catastrophic results on his life and that of his family’s.

Book Review: The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne is truly an amazing yet daunting novel that I will never forget. The author John Boyne did a masterful job of depicting the setting in such vivid detail and exposing the events in a manner that I felt a constant emotional pull as the story unfolded and impending doom lingered on the horizon.

I was recommended this novel a while back while reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak , but after finishing that story and experiencing such deep sadness, I knew I couldn’t jump into another novel about the Holocaust for quite some time. I’m glad I waited because as with other works that cover this topic, distance and perspective is key. I feel the author did a grand job of juxtaposing two resounding themes in such a flawless manner; one being of the evil that was the Holocaust; against the second theme that of the innocence of a child.

“What exactly was the difference? He wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?”

I thought it was brilliant of Boyne to tell the story from the perspective of a nine-year-old German boy as you experience the events of this abominable and unthinkable time in history as a mere complicit bystander, which ultimately leaves you with a sense of hopelessness.

The story unfolds the day Bruno arrives home to discover his family is moving from Berlin to Auschwitz where his father will serve as a Commandant for the concentration camp. Bruno is forced to leave his three best friends for life and discovers that life in Auschwitz is lonely and desolate. All that changes the day he meets a boy his exact age and they begin to forge a friendship over the course of year. However, as much as he finds he and Schmuel have in common, living on opposite sides of the fence proves to have a devastating consequence to their friendship.

“The thing about exploring is that you have to know whether the thing you’ve found is worth finding. Some things are just sitting there, minding their own business, waiting to be discovered. Like America. And other things are probably better off left alone. Like a dead mouse at the back of the cupboard.”

After completing The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne, I did some research on the author and the novel and found that he not only received well-deserved praise for this book but also harsh criticism. As with any piece of literature, when words are committed to page and presented to an audience for their interpretation, there will be varying degrees of acceptance and backlash. Couple that with such a sensitive topic and you’re bound to get a reaction. Well, my hats off to John Boyne for tackling a story through a unique perspective and presenting a poignant fable that, as a reader, willingly suspended my reality and experienced the events in a way that exposed my emotions and feelings to such a raw level.

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The Book Marketing and Promotion Plan that we provide covers a variety of different services. You have the option of either choosing the whole plan or customizing it by selecting and combining one or more of the services that we provide. The following is a list of the services that we provide for the marketing and promotion of books.

Book Reviews

Book Reviews have direct impact on readers while they are choosing their next book to read. When they are purchasing book, most readers prefer the books with good reviews. We’ll review your book and post reviews on Amazon, Flipkart, Goodreads and on our Blogs and social-media channels.

Author Interviews

We’ll interview the author and post those questions and answers on blogs and social medias so that readers get to know about author and his book. This will make author famous along with his book among the reading community.

Social Media Promotion

We have more than 170K followers on our social media channels who are interested in books and reading. We’ll create and publish different posts about book and author on our social media platforms.

Social Media Set up

Social Media is a significant tool to reaching out your readers and make them aware of your work. We’ll help you to setup and manage various social media profiles and fan pages for your book.

We’ll provide you our social media marketing guide, using which you may take advantage of these social media platforms to create and engage your fan base.

Website Creation

One of the most effective and long-term strategies to increase your book sales is to create your own website. Author website is must have tool for authors today and it doesn’t just help you to promote book but also helps you to engage with your potential readers. Our full featured author website, with blog, social media integration and other cool features, is the best marketing tool you can have. You can list each of your titles and link them to buy from various online stores.

Google / Facebook / Youtube Adverts

We can help you in creating ad on Google, Facebook and Youtube to reach your target audience using specific keywords and categories relevant to your book.

With our help you can narrow down your ads to the exact target audience for your book.

For more details mail us at [email protected]

The Bookish Elf is your single, trusted, daily source for all the news, ideas and richness of literary life. The Bookish Elf is a site you can rely on for book reviews, author interviews, book recommendations, and all things books. Contact us: [email protected]

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