YouNeedCharacter has inked an exclusive contract with HarperCollins India, a world-renowned publishing company based in the United States, with a set of 26 storybooks of CricketPang to be hitting the shelves this July, CEO Minsu Song revealed to Animation Xpress.
Song shared with us, “Along with the broadcasting of CricketPang, we found publishing very important as well, so we put our best effort into selecting a publishing partner. This partnership will help increase the popularity of the CricketPang character brand in India and accelerate related sales. We are very happy to have signed with HarperCollins, a major publishing company in India, and we are excited to complete and start distributing throughout India. For the remainder of the year, we will continue preparation for the storybooks and create books that will be loved by local and global children all around the world.”
The publishing contract includes an initial print of 78,000 books, to be on sale in major book-stores and online retailers such as Amazon in India starting July.
Rakesh Chander of HarperCollins publishing added, “Cricket is a loved sport in India, so an animation based on cricket will gain great popularity. We are happy to work with CricketPang for the storybook series and together we will publish books that bring positive influence to young readers. After the publication of the first series, we would like to continue working together and plan other book series using the CricketPang IP.”
In addition to publishing, other projects in India have shown results as well. The CricketPang TV channel started broadcasting on Jio, an OTT platform owned by India’s largest mobile telecommunications company, and recently, the CricketPang brand has signed up Indian Cricketer Ajinkya Rahane as the brand ambassador of the IP. Additionally, the ‘CricketPang Kindergarten APP’ has over 100,000 downloads, and ‘CricketPang TV’ the official YouTube channel for CricketPang has over 20,000 subscribers, with views exceeding 5 million.
Song further stated, “We plan to establish the value as a brand in a short period of time by entering various businesses and using marketing tactics such as airing on different OTT channels, celebrity marketing, educational apps, YouTube services, publishing, and licensing.”
YouNeedCharacter’s publishing contract for the CricketPang storybooks with HarperCollins is meaningful also because it has plans of exporting them to markets like Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Middle East.
