In this TAA podcast, Robert Christopherson, author of the leading physical geography textbooks in the US and Canada, shares strategies authors can use to successfully market their textbook, including participation in national sales meetings, an author’s blog linked to the text, an interactive web site, and more.
Use YouTube videos to promote your textbook
Lydia Cline, a drafting professor at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas, and the author of five text and trade books, said she has found that posting short videos on her books’ topics to YouTube can be an effective way to promote them.
How to get your textbook noticed by librarians and book buyers
Here’s what every book promoter and author should know: Libraries (and your local bookstore) provide a significant market for independent titles—especially self-published or those from small presses, said Kimber Bilby, ForeWord Reviews marketing director.
Textbook promotion: How to earn local, national media attention
“Houghton Mifflin Harcourt putting a halt on buying any new manuscripts”
“Publishing companies will no longer expense (extravagant) lunches with literary agents”
“Plunging sales and stocks reported from booksellers”
With headlines like these, the publishing community is wondering how the book industry will survive in a rocky economy, especially those in publicity. Anyone in public relations, media and even writers know promotion is needed to sell books but convincing upper brass can sometimes be an uphill battle. The good news is anyone can promote his or her work. A fancy Manhattan PR firm doesn’t have to be hired for big dollars.
How to leverage a TAA Textbook Award
Receiving a TAA Textbook Award is not only a great honor, it can also be used to increase book sales and advance your writing career.
Judy Rasminsky, coauthor of Challenging Behavior in Young Children and Challenging Behavior in Elementary and Middle School, both of which have received TAA Textbook Excellence (Texty) Awards, said she and her coauthor Barbara Kaiser have leveraged the award in several ways, including:
Marketing strategies: Reinforce textbook adoptions with promotional calendar
Physical geography author Robert Christopherson recently published a calendar to promote the seventh edition of his award-winning textbook, Geosystems.
The calendar’s two opening pages describe the strengths and new features of the new edition, and list the accompanying student and instructor supplements. The calendar itself features factoids that match physical geography and Earth systems science events, as well as photos for each month depicting physical geography subjects, such as the rapeseed crop in full bloom in northern Scottland; frost-shattered rock in Spitsbergen in the Arctic Ocean; and a birch forest in south-central Norway.