page_title: Scion of Ikshvaku
section_title: Marketing and release
hierarchical_section_title: Scion of Ikshvaku / Marketing and release
caption_attribution_description: English: Amish Tripathi and Akshay Kumar release the cover of Scion of Ikshvaku
context_page_description: Scion of Ikshvaku is the fourth book of Amish Tripathi, fourth book of Amishverse, and first book of Ram Chandra Series.It was released on 22 June 2015. It is based on Ram, the legendary Indian king regarded as an incarnation of Vishnu. The title was revealed by the author at the Jaipur Literature Festival. The story begins with King Dashrath of Ayodhya being defeated in a war by Lankan trader Raavan, and the birth of his son Ram. It follows through Ram's childhood and tutelage, along with the politics surrounding his ascension to the throne, and ultimately his 14-year exile, accompanied by wife Sita and brother Lakshman.
context_section_description: Westland had run a social media contest prior to the revealing of the name, with hashtags like #WhatNextAmish" and #MysteryBoxes, containing clues to the subject of the book. A trailer was released on YouTube for the book, which also included a Sanskrit hymn for "Rama Rajya". The cover art was released on 27 March 2015 at a press conference in Mumbai, unveiled by Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar and Padmanabhan. Creative agency Think Why Not developed the book cover, which depicted Rama, shooting with a bow and an arrow towards Ravana, the latter on his legendary Pushpak Vimana.
  Like the cover artworks for the Shiva trilogy, the Scion of Ikshvaku cover also had numerous Hieroglyph symbology alongside the main image, to aid readers in deciphering key parts of the story. The author added the symbols as an addendum, basing them on the still undeciphered Indus Valley letters and made them represent how Rama would have been written in the script. Tripathi believed that the imagery had to "maintain the high standards of visual appeal that we have set with my earlier book covers. Many of these symbols on the cover and through the books are clues to my stories for those well-versed with Indian scriptures." Release date for the book was revealed as 22 June 2015, with pre-orders starting after the cover was unveiled, including the Hindi version titled Ikshvaku ke Vanshaj.
  In April 2015, retail website Amazon.com started promoting the book using their existing relationship with the 2015 Indian Premier League (IPL), in-between the cricket matches. The author explained that the core demographic of his book and the IPL was same, hence Amazon.com chose to promote the book there. It was the first time that a book was advertised during the tournament. Westland also set up a Twitter chat where director Karan Johar interviewed Tripathi, and ultimately released the official trailer for the book to YouTube. The trailer starts off with a coin spinning on a map, spelling out the word "Ayodhya", followed by interspersed scenes of a man chasing someone in a forest, a lady fighting off a group of soldiers, a meteor as well as arrows falling from the sky, and a helicopter like structure flying in the air.
  Tripathi also released the third chapter of the book on Amazon Kindle for the readers, holding a reading and discussion session also. The release was presided over by actress Gul Panag who shared the same alma mater with the writer. Samir Kumar, Director of Category Management at Amazon.in believed that launching the book through their platform helped the company reach out a larger set of customers, based on the success of Tripathi's previous release. On the release day, Amazon planned midnight delivery of the book to some of the customers, with Tripathi himself being present to deliver it; he had instantly agreed to the idea making the delivered books a collector's edition with his signature. Customers in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi were part of this delivery process, with zero shipping costs from the company.
caption: Actor Akshay Kumar and author Amish Tripathi at the release of the cover for Scion of Ikshvaku.
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