How to write and publish a scientific paper - Barbara Gastel, Robert A. Day 2022

How to help market your book
How to write a book chapter or a book
Doing other writing for publication

If you have chosen well, your publisher will have experience and expertise marketing books to the audiences for your book. To do its best job, though, the publisher needs information from you. Thus, you are likely to receive an author questionnaire. The questionnaire may, for example, ask you to identify scientific organizations that have members interested in your topic, conferences at which your book might appropriately be sold, journals for which your book is suitable for review, and people well suited to provide endorsements or blurbs. The questionnaire also is likely to request information about you, as well as other information that can aid in promoting your book. Take the time to complete the questionnaire thoroughly. This information can help the marketing department ensure that the appropriate audience knows of your book, and thus that your book receives the sales it deserves.

Increasingly, authors are expected to take active roles in marketing, especially if their books are for general audiences. “Today, I do not offer a contract or invest in a project if the author isn’t willing to promote his or her book,” states an acquisition editor at a university press. “In today’s world of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, blogs, and so on, we ask authors to actively seek venues in which to speak, lecture, present—anything to get the book into the right hands. Markets are increasingly specialized and targeted, and a reader is more likely to purchase a book on astronomy at, say, a star party where the author is a featured guest than by walking into a Barnes and Noble and reaching for that book among the other 150,000 or so titles available each year.”

You may also be asked to participate in the marketing of a book in other ways. For example, you may be interviewed for radio or television, or for a podcast or webinar. Book signings may be arranged. Arrangements may be made for excerpts of the book to appear in magazines. Be open to such possibilities, and suggest any that occur to you. If you have questions, consult the marketing department.

For scholarly or technical books, marketing remains more restrained than for books aimed at the general public. Although pushing one’s book in inappropriate venues, such as scientific presentations, can be counterproductive, do mention your book when suitable occasions arise. For example, if a posting in an email discussion list requests information that your book happens to contain, mention your book. Likewise, consider mentioning your book in science blogs and on professionally oriented social networking sites. Doing so can at least prompt prospective users to seek out the book in the library. And given the ideals of science, the success of a book should be measured not only in its sales, but also in the service it provides to those who can benefit.