Embedded Files
Files archived from the official website LemonySnicketLibrary.com and official social media accounts
Files archived from the official website LemonySnicketLibrary.com and official social media accounts
Screenshot of the homepage at LemonySnicketLibrary.com.
Visitors to the website could scroll sideways on their screens, moving through the homepage background image (an illustration of the city) while the overlay image (Theodora's green roadster) remained in place. This gave the impression that the roadster was driving through the city.
"Who Could That Be at This Hour?"
"Who Could That Be at This Hour?"
1. Snicketmail
In January 2012, the temporary official website LSATWQ.com posted a widget to sign up for email updates about the All The Wrong Questions series. The email updates, which fans colloquially termed "Snicketmail", ran from February 28, 2012 through October 3, 2017 and totaled 38 installments. Most were sent prior to the publication of "Who Could That Be at This Hour?" (the first book in the series) and provided teases about the premise and characters.
The Snicketmails predominantly followed the same format: a cryptic title in the email subject line and a single image in the email body. The image was usually a draft version of one of Seth's book illustrations overlain on a typewritten caption. (Seth illustrated the All the Wrong Questions series.)
Click to view the Snicketmails:
Why would anyone want to steal this statue? (2/28/2012)
Who is Ellington Feint? (3/7/2012)
Where has all the ink gone? (3/15/2012)
Drop Everything (3/23/2012)
Just a cover until October 23? (3/28/2012)
When does the bell ring? (4/4/2012)
How can we stop him? (4/13/2012)
What? (4/19/2012)
It's for thee. (4/27/2012)
804.1 (5/9/2012)
Keep your eyes on the road. (5/29/2012)
Stormy weather. (6/14/2012)
And a toothbrush. (6/28/2012)
Cave-dwellers, all of us. (7/24/2012)
Qwerty. (8/14/2012)
Third from the left. (8/28/2012)
attn VFD: stanzas in meditation re: ATWQ1/4;1/7 (10/3/2012)
attn VFD: stanzas in meditation re: ATWQ1/4;4/7 (10/10/2012)
Watch this and/or out. (10/16/2012)
Lemony Snicket Lands Today (10/23/2012)
attn VFD: stanzas in meditation re: ATWQ1/4;3/7 (10/25/2012)
attn VFD: stanzas in meditation re: ATWQ1/4;6/7 (11/8/2012)
attn VFD: stanzas in meditation re: ATWQ1/4;2/7 (11/14/2012)
attn VFD: stanzas in meditation re: ATWQ1/4;5/7 (11/29/2012)
attn VFD: stanzas in meditation re: ATWQ1/4;7/7 (12/20/2012)
Can You Be Trusted? (2/28/2013)
THE DARK by Lemony Snicket (4/2/2013)
File under "Wrong Questions, All The" (6/12/2013)
Missing Lemony Snicket? (9/15/2013)
File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents (1/14/2014)
Enter Lemony Snicket's Fan Art Contest! (8/5/2014)
Help Lemony Snicket Choose the Mystery! (10/6/2014)
Join Lemony Snicket LIVE TOMORROW! (10/13/2014)
Bring Lemony Snicket to YOUR town! (7/8/2015)
Questions? Ask Snicket on Facebook. (7/17/2015)
More Misfortune is Coming. (4/10/2017)
BAD MOOD? Lemony Snicket has the cure! (10/3/2017)
attn VFD: stanzas in meditation re: ATWQ1/4 (assembled in order)
2. Question Mark
The temporary website LSATWQ.com was replaced with the final official website LemonySnicketLibrary.com in July 2012. A new section of the website, accessed via a question mark icon in the site header, was added in October 2012.
Visitors to the Question Mark could scroll through a bewildering array of stock photography, animated gifs of Seth's illustrations, and repurposed video footage, all with a vague thematic connection to elements of the All the Wrong Questions book series. The array of images and videos was organized into a grid, with only one image or video visible on the screen at a time. The grid was navigated by scrolling up, down, left, and right.
The Question Mark existed in several different iterations during the promotion and publication of ATWQ books 1 and 2, with new images and videos being added to and removed from the grid.
Selection of images from the first iteration of the Question Mark, during the publication of "Who Could That Be at This Hour?":
Entrance to the Question Mark section of the website:
Overview of the Question Mark grid as it appeared in October 2012:
Navigation controls in the Question Mark grid:
During later iterations of the Question Mark, hidden clickable background images on the main homepage of LemonySnicketLibrary.com linked to certain grid spots within the Question Mark section.
"Missing Cleo Knight" posters blowing in the wind --> Gif of "Missing" poster with fiberglass arm
Bird sitting on streetlamp --> Gif of eyeball containing photo of Snicket
Blotted Blvd. street sign --> Video of Diver Dan clips
Clouds in the sky --> Image of green plant (seaweed?)
Theodora hanging from cliff --> Video of swimming octopi
Taxi on hillside --> Gif of trains on TV screens
Clock face on building --> Video of hot air balloon timelapse
Ink pumps --> Video demonstrating balloon octopus
Pen-shaped tower --> Video of car chase
Black Cat Coffee Shop sign --> Image of Prosper Lost with caption "Who is that?"
3. Book Trailer
The publisher Little, Brown released a book trailer in October 2012 for the first book in the series, "Who Could That Be at This Hour?" All the Wrong Questions: Book One. The trailer contained flash animations of Seth's illustrations, with narration by Daniel Handler.
4. Chapter Samplers
In the months leading up to the publication of "Who Could That Be at This Hour?", the first four chapters were released for free as "exclusives" on media websites and digital bookseller websites.
Chapter 1 was released June 1, 2012 by Entertainment Weekly in the US and by The Guardian in the UK. Read the first chapter of Lemony Snicket's 'All the Wrong Questions' Book One -- EXCLUSIVE
Chapter 2 was released to the fan website 667 Dark Avenue in mid-June 2012, concurrent with the release of the sneak-peek Chapters 1 and 2 sampler booklet at at Book Expo America 2012 and the American Library Association Conference 2012.
Chapters 3 and 4 were released August 14, 2012 as a promotional download for Amazon Kindle and Google Play.
These previews resulted in almost a third of the book being released prior to the publication date of October 23, 2012.
"When Did You See Her Last?
"When Did You See Her Last?
1. Reader Quiz
In June 2013, prior to the release of "When Did You See Her Last?", a promotional quiz was posted on LemonySnicketLibrary.com and the "Lemony Snicket's All the Wrong Questions" Facebook page. The quiz was accessed through an illustration on the homepage background cityscape.
"Curious what kind of reader you are? Probably not. But nevertheless Mr. Snicket has devised a more-or-less scientific quiz to award you a label which you may wear with pride or keep in a drawer, as you wish."
Screenshots of the Reader Quiz:
2. Top Secret Conversation
In February 2013, a promotional video was posted on the homepage and Question Mark sections of LemonySnicketLibrary.com to reveal the title of the second book in the All the Wrong Questions series, "When Did You See Her Last?". The video contained a recording of a top-secret conversation between the author Lemony Snicket and his legal, literary, and social representative Daniel Handler.
3. Chapter Sampler
A free preview edition of the first three chapters of "When Did You See Her Last?" was released on September 10, 2013 as a promotional download for Amazon Kindle and Google Play.
Publicity campaign for "When Did You See Her Last?" from the 2013 Little, Brown catalog:
Little Brown catalog 2013.pdfFile Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents
File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents
1. Plagiarism Spoof
On April Fool's Day 2014, the day that File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents was published, a fake news page was created on LemonySnicketLibrary.com to accuse authors Lemony Snicket and Malcolm Gladwell of plagiarizing each other. The scandalous evidence posted on the news page showed that both authors used words like "the", "you", and "and". (Gladwell's book David and Goliath was published with Little, Brown the previous year, hence the joint promotion.)
The prank was annouced via Snicketmail; see mailing #31 "Did Malcolm Gladwell Plagiarize Lemony Snicket?" (4/1/2014) in the Snicketmail section above.
Evidence page, archived in 2018 before the website shut down:
LEMONY SNICKET vs MALCOLM GLADWELL_ The Evidence.pdf2. Grammar Mistakes Quiz
On April 2, 2014, the day after File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents was published, Mr. Snicket and Mr. Handler submitted an article to the Huffington Post expressing how much they enjoy receiving letters from readers informing them of grammatical or rhetorical errors in their published work. The article included a quiz with suggested improvements to sentences selected from File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents. Artwork by Seth was provided to illustrate the quiz.
"Read each sentence carefully, and then choose from the two suggested improvements so that the book might be more beneficial to people less wise and discerning than yourselves."
"Shouldn't You Be in School?"
"Shouldn't You Be in School?"
1. Crack the Case with Lemony Snicket
In June 2014, prior to the publication of the third book in the All the Wrong Questions series, "Shouldn't You Be in School?", a puzzle game was added to LemonySnicketLibrary.com. The game was called "Crack the Case with Lemony Snicket" and consisted of 13 short logic puzzles for the reader to solve. The game was accessed through an illustration on the homepage background cityscape.
Custom pencils to promote the game were distributed at book signing events on the release tour of "Shouldn't You Be in School?".
Entrance to the Crack the Case section of the website:
13 CASES. 13 CLUES. 13 CHALLENGES.
13 CASES. 13 CLUES. 13 CHALLENGES.
CRACK THE CASE
CRACK THE CASE
WITH LEMONY SNICKET
WITH LEMONY SNICKET
Do YOU Have What It Takes?
As chronicled in his series of books All The Wrong Questions, Lemony Snicket spends his time in the town of Stain’d-By-The-Sea solving perplexing puzzles. Now it’s your turn. Thirteen challenges await those who are interested in aiding in Mr. Snicket’s noble work, or who just have nothing better to do at the moment.
2. Lemony Snicket's You Choose the Mystery
On September 30, 2014, the day that "Shouldn't You Be in School?" was published, the LemonySnicketLibrary YouTube channel released an interactive choose-your-own-adventure film titled "Lemony Snicket's YOU CHOOSE THE MYSTERY". The film consisted of 34 short videos, linked together into a loose narrative. Each video contained clips from old black-and-white movies, with added sound effects and voice-over narration by Daniel Handler to tell the story.
At the end of each video, the viewer was presented with two choices; clicking a choice led to the next video on that path of the choose-your-own-adventure story. Originally, the choices were embedded into the videos as clickable buttons using YouTube's video annotation feature. When YouTube disabled video annotations in 2019, the choices were added as links into the description section below each video.
Each video segment was preceded by an advertisement for the All the Wrong Questions series. The advertisements were styled as parodies of movie theater advertisements and cinema newsreels from the 1940s and 1950s (for example, Let's All Go to the Lobby).
The release was later annouced via Snicketmail; see mailing #33 "Help Lemony Snicket Choose the Mystery!" (10/6/2014) in the Snicketmail section above.
(use the links in the YouTube video description to advance through the story)
Screenshot of "You Choose the Mystery", as featured on the homepage of LemonySnicketLibrary.com:
Flowchart of the story paths available in "You Choose the Mystery":
You Choose the Mystery Flowchart print.pdf"Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?"
"Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?"
1. Association of Associates Character Profiles
In fall 2015, as part of the marketing surrounding the publication of the fourth book in the All the Wrong Questions series, "Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?", the LemonySnicketLibrary Tumblr page posted character profiles for each of Mr. Snicket's youthful associates. The profiles included:
an illustration of the associate by Seth
the associate's occupation
descriptive adjectives for the associate
the principal predicament in which the associate finds himself or herself during the book series
the associate's favorite book
what the associate was recently observed saying and doing
The character profiles were also printed on bookmarks and distributed in the Association of Associates sweepstake packages.
2. Suspicious Character Builder
In October 2015, a new section was added to LemonySnicketLibrary.com: the Suspicious Character Builder. The Builder offered different hairstyles, clothing choices, and facial features (imitating Seth's illustrations) for fans to create their own Association of Associates character profiles.
After each component of the profile picture was selected, the Builder would automatically generate an occupation, descriptive adjective, principal predicament, favorite book, quote, and recent location for the custom character. Users could then download the character profile as a "Case File" or a bookmark.
Archived walkthrough of the Suspicious Character Builder entrance page and profile picture creation:
Social Media Promotions
Social Media Promotions
The official social media pages LemonySnicketLibrary (Tumblr) and AlltheWrongQuestions (Facebook) posted promotional images throughout the publication of the series. Below is a selection of these promotional images.
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