How a Mobile App Made a Print Book a Bestseller

Canada's first and fastest-growing mobile wine app has helped propel a print book—yes, those still exist—into a bestseller in just weeks.

Accredited Canadian sommelier Natalie MacLean's Wine Picks & Pairings app has complemented her latest book, Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines, in such a way that app users want the book and book readers want the app. This has allowed her book to reach number four on the non-fiction bestseller list just three weeks after publication. Push notifications to the apps 136,000 users helped raise awareness of the book, while the app's ability to scan 150,000 wines for instant information is a palatable supplement to the written work.

“For some reason, Random House wasn’t willing to update my book every month, even though the wines in stores change every month,” MacLean says, tongue-in-cheek. “So the app is a natural companion to the book, not only to get a shopping list of current wines, but also to supplement the book’s content with photos, video clips, interviews and other material that would be too expensive include in the print version.”

Natalie doesn't indulge in the pretentiousness many have come to expect from wine experts; instead, she leverages social media, her website, and her mobile efforts to reach audiences on a personal and engaging level, which has made her an online success in the wine space.

“This coupling lets each medium do what it does best: print with narrative storytelling and mobile with real-time product selection,” Natalie says of the app-book marriage. “With the budget cut-backs in publishing, it’s essential for an author to use mobile, social media and online channels to support a book launch. It’s a different world today from 2006 when I published my first book Red, White and Drunk All Over. Fortunately, this pairing is perfectly app-etizing.”