Ad Promotes a Self-Help Book with Selfies

Seizing upon the popularity of the self-portrait — "selfie" was named word of 2013 by the Oxford Dictionary, after all — British publisher Vintage Books has created an ad campaign to publicize the paperback release of one Britain’s most popular self-help books, The Examined Life by American psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz, featuring mirror posters placed in public areas. They're encouraging fans to take pictures of their reflections and post them.

The book, which is based on Grosz’s decades worth of experience as a practicing psychoanalyst, looks at topics like self-contradiction and hypocrisy through accounts based on Grosz’s patients (or what they told him, at least). The title doesn’t attempt to push its readers in one direction or another, according to the British newspaper The Guardian, but rather attempts to demonstrate to the reader how she can carefully consider her own life.

Given the title, the ad campaign may be a little bit too literal for some — examining oneself in a mirror publicizing a book called The Examined Life, come on — but the posters mark a publishing industry willing to do what it takes to survive in a challenging economic landscape.

Though the ad campaign is taking place in London, the book is available in America.