Hello writers! How are you feeling right now?
I know that for a lot of you, spring break is finally here! Congrats on making it this far and I hope you get some much-needed rest.
I saw a tweet recently that said “Academia is looking forward to the vacation break so you can do work.”
The reason it’s funny is because it’s accurate!
On a future episode I’ll talk about how rest is the key to work productivity, but until then I strongly encourage you spend at least half of your break doing absolutely nothing work-related.
And if your inner critic fills you with anxiety or tries to guilt-trip you into working, just tell it that your coach said that you HAVE to take time off.
Today I want to give you some helpful tips on ways to promote your book.
As you know if you’ve been listening for awhile, most of my podcast episodes concern what to do BEFORE your book comes out.
But your book’s publication does not just mark the end of the process—which, I need to point out, is still an amazing place to reach in and of itself.
It’s also the beginning of an entirely NEW process of letting people know about it and getting them interested and excited to read it.
This is fresh in my mind because I recently caught up with a former coaching client, who I’ll call Mina.
She’s a full professor and highly established scholar in an article-dominated field.
Very excitingly, Mina is about to publish her very first sole-authored book with a university press.
She wanted to be coached about her concerns about marketing her book and difficulty with self-promotion.
This came about because she had reached a part of the book publishing process that NO ONE ever talks about, which is the marketing document.
Basically, even after you go through rounds of peer review, negotiate a contact, revise your manuscript, write response letters, and your book is copy-edited and indexed, there is STILL more work to do!
The press will ask you to fill out a lengthy document that talks about every aspect of getting your book known by other scholars and assigned in courses.
The thing to know is that you CANNOT ASSUME THAT THE PRESS WILL HEAVILY MARKET YOUR BOOK!
Academic presses have small marketing teams and budgets.
Yes, your book will be featured in catalogs and at conferences. It will be on their website.
They will send out a notice to an email listserve that you put together for them.
They will submit your book to a limited number of competitions that you tell them about.
But, the brunt of promotion is primarily on YOU, which is something that strikes fear into the hearts of many an introvert academic.
So I’m going to talk a bit about self-promotion, followed by 6 different effective strategies for letting people know about your new book.
Some Thoughts on Self-Promotion
I just want to start by spending a few minutes talking in general about fears of self-promotion, particularly when it comes to social media.
This is something that I see prevalently among certain academics, particularly women, scholars of color, and scholars from working-class backgrounds.
For some folks, talking about your achievements can feel like selfishness or bragging.
There can be fear of judgment about how others may view you or your work if you draw too much attention to it.
We all know academics who seem to ONLY post about their work successes in ways that really feel narcissistic and competitive.
And most good-hearted people don’t want to come across that way!
For Mina, she conflated self-promotion with selfishness, which goes against the core values that motivate her scholarly work of community and helping others.
So we worked on reframing her thought process around publicizing her book.
We tapped into the deeper purpose of her book—which is to help readers process complicated family histories.
Instead of thinking about publicizing her book as self-promotion, I encouraged her to frame it as helping her future audience.
In other words, posting about her book is in direct service to others.
And I reminded her that her posts can be helpful and valuable to people even as they talk about her work. It’s not either/or.
The other thing is that you cannot control what other people think.
Some people will like the book and your posts. Others might not.
It has nothing to do with you and it’s none of your business!
But you’re doing a disservice to all of your hard work AND to your potential audience by not letting them know about your book.
With that said, let me give you six different ways you can promote your book!
#1: Use your institution’s media and publicity channels
My first suggestion is, if you’re an employed academic, to utilize your institution’s media and publicity channels.
Most academic institutions have an Office of Communications or something similar to handle things like news releases and media advisories.
If you have one of these, reach out to them a few months before your book’s publication date to get an idea of what they can do.
They might be able to put out a press release or create an article to be featured on the university website.
Both of my scholarly books came out when I was at the same university.
In the case of the first one, I contacted the media office and they actually sent a photographer to take photos of me in the campus library that they used for a school article.
I was also interviewed on a campus podcast to talk about the book.
For the second one, they put out a press release that linked to an op-ed piece I had written (which I’ll talk about in a moment), and then circulated that on social media.
#2: Use Your Own Publicity Channels
The second strategy is probably even more important than the first, which is to publicize the book yourself using your OWN channels.
As I talked about before, you might hate talking about yourself or worse, your own work, on social media!
But these days, if you want people to know about your book (and you do!), then this is a necessary evil.
The goal is to make this process feel more natural and fun—or at least to feel relatively neutral and not like you’re going to die from it.
And one trick is to treat your book like an entity that is separate from you.
You know how a lot of moms feel more comfortable posting about their kids and their kids’ achievements than themselves? It’s like that!
Many authors refer to the writing and publishing process as “birthing a book.”
This thing is your baby and it likely took many years of gestation time.
And similar to a child, once it’s out in the world, it’s going to do things you have no control over.
Some of these things may appall you, such as getting critiqued by reviewers.
Others will be immensely gratifying, such as finding out that your book is being assigned in actual classes or is being read and discussed by non-academic audiences.
And, like I often remind my clients, your book can transform the way people think and call them to take action in ways that will totally surprise and amaze you.
But in order for this to happen, people need to know that it exists! And a lot of that needs to come from you.
My advice is to focus on one primary social media platform that you feel most comfortable with and use most often.
It doesn’t matter if this is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, whatever.
What does matter is that it’s a space where you are connected to other academics who support you and your work.
And that you go into this process ready to talk about your book multiple times.
The truth is that an average social media post gets viewed by only about 10% of your network.
This means that you need to post 10 times to even ensure that everyone knows about it.
So don’t assume that you can post only a couple of times and gain any type of traction.
As an example, I want to share the story of one author in my personal Facebook network who has done an amazing job publicizing his book.
His name is Raul Perez, and he’s a sociologist who wrote a book entitled The Souls of White Jokes: How Racist Humor Fuels White Supremacy, which was published last year by Stanford University Press.
Cool title, right? And important subject matter.
But the reason I know about it is that this person—who I’ve never actually met—has probably posted 50 different times in the past year about his book.
He posted images of the cover to announce the publication date.
He posted a discount code to pre-order the book to remind people that it was coming out soon.
Whenever he’s attended a conference, he’s posted that he was there to present about his book.
He went on a major book tour, and every time he presents, he posts an image of the flyer, which always includes the book cover and his own picture.
Some of his friends have posted pictures of themselves holding his book when it arrived in the mail.
He pitched himself to multiple podcasts and radio shows such as Tavis Smiley and posted links to the episodes.
He spotted a copy of his book in a regular bookstore and posted photos of himself with it.
Now that his book is being reviewed, he is posting the reviews on Facebook and crediting the authors for the work that went into them.
In essence, there’s nothing this scholar hasn’t done to promote his book.
And because of it, a huge number of people, academics and non-academics alike, now know about it.
He has established himself as the go-to person to talk about racism and humor in the U.S.
And I am totally here for it! His posts are gracious and often generous to others.
I love seeing scholars of color so openly take up space and be willing to be seen and listened to unapologetically.
He is an exemplar for us all.
#3: Throw a book party (or two!)
So my third suggestion is to throw a book party (or two)!
If you know me, I’m all about celebrating your achievements, big and small.
Publishing your book is, for many people, a once-in-a-lifetime accomplishment that provides the chance for you to really celebrate its entrance into the world.
These parties can take any form you like and should really match your personality.
I held a book party for each of my books.
The first one was a bit more stuffy. I was a junior faculty member who was still trying to prove my intellectual merit.
I rented a room in a space near Harvard University and held a reception, which included me reading a passage from the book, followed by cake and book signing (there was unfortunately no alcohol allowed).
For my second book, I wanted to do something way more fun.
So I got together with four other Asian American women sociologists who had also recently published books.
We pooled our resources to rent out part of a nice bar during our annual Sociology conference and asked friends and colleagues to stop by during the night.
It was casual and much more celebratory. We each brought flyers and books to display on a table, and that was pretty much it.
But again, each of these parties matched where I was in my career.
#4: Arrange an academic book tour
My fourth suggestion is to arrange your own academic book tour.
A lot of new authors are mystified as to how to be invited to give book talks or colloquia at different departments.
Let me tell you that, unless you have a really hotly anticipated book or your research is already well-known, you will have to put in a lot of legwork.
So what should you do?
The quickest and easiest thing would be to start with your own friends, colleagues, and social network.
By the time you’ve published a book, it is likely that at least some of your friends from grad school have become professors who can put in a good word for you with their departments.
Or they might even be chairing the colloquia committee, which is even better.
A lot of departments book their colloquia series the semester before, so this means you should be reaching out to folks to offer to give a talk as well as posting on social media regularly about your book.
Now that it’s possible to give talks over Zoom, the possibilities have widened even further.
Some people also do events at bookstores.
Just know that you usually need to guarantee a minimum number of book sales to the store, so you need to know that you’ll have a good-sized audience.
For my first book, a colleague of mine invited me to do a joint event with her at a bookstore in Los Angeles.
She had a big network of people in the area who showed up, and I was also able to bring numerous friends and family members so it worked out well.
Just know that these types of events need to be planned months in advance and you’ll have to put work into making sure people turn up.
And as an extension of this idea of appearances, if this appeals to you, offer to give a guest lecture or do a Q&A with students for classes that assign your book.
#5: Write an Op-Ed Piece
My fifth suggestion for marketing your book is to write an opinion piece to be published by a mass media outlet.
Let me start by saying that writing op-eds are a truly distinct art form.
There’s a lot to say about them, and I plan to devote an entire episode to it in the future.
They are not easy to do, but if you can master the style, it’s a great way to draw attention to your research and become the go-to expert for journalists on particular topics.
It’s nearly impossible to get into a major newspaper like the New York Times.
But the chances are very good that if you have a well-written, clear and concise op-ed, it will be placed somewhere that has much wider reach than a typical academic outlet.
I wrote an op-ed to coincide with the publication of my second book, and in my experience, writing a successful piece takes a lot of time and commitment.
So I would only go this route if you are willing to take at least a couple of months to learn the ropes.
And for this I would recommend you head to the website of the Op-Ed Project, which seeks to diversify the authorship of opinion pieces.
If you can, take a workshop from them!
Also, if you are U.S.-based, you can see if there’s a chapter of the Scholars Strategy Network near you.
This is an organization that describes themselves as “university-based scholars who are committed to using research to improve policy and strengthen democracy” in the United States.
One of the main things they do is connect scholars with journalists and media outlets.
In my case, once I had a solid draft of my op-ed, one of their team members gave me very useful editorial feedback AND helped me place it in a national publication.
In the end, the article was picked up by numerous media outlets across the country and was ultimately viewable by over one million readers.
#6: Nominate Yourself for Awards
My sixth tip is to be bold and nominate yourself for awards!
Of course, you can count on your press to submit your book to several different awards based on the marketing document you fill out for them.
However, there is typically a cap on the total number—usually around three—because books cost money and it’s expensive to ship them to the various committee members.
First-time authors often don’t realize that they can nominate themselves for awards.
This means you will submit a cover letter describing the merits of your book and mail copies to each committee member.
And I can tell you from experience serving on a book award committee, self-nominations are treated exactly the same as non-self-nominations.
The pros of this approach obviously include the possibility of winning, but also because it exposes your book to committee members who are likely active researchers in your subfield.
Who knows? It could result in your work being assigned in their classes or speaking invitations!
For the same reasons, I also recommend you send copies of your book to key people you cite and important researchers in your field, along with a handwritten note.
You should also know that you often have two years from time of publication to apply for awards.
In the case of my first book, I applied to everything the first year and received nothing.
The following year, I selectively applied to disciplinary awards and won two of them!
I also received an American Library Association Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title.
I was nominated for this by a stranger who happened to review my book for a journal; this is but one example of the wonderful surprises that can come from becoming an author.
Summing It All Up
So let’s sum it all up one more time.
My six strategies for promoting your book include:
1) Use your institution’s publicity office
2) Use your own publicity channels
3) Throw a book party
4) Arrange your own book tour
5) Write an op-ed piece
6) Nominate yourself for awards
There are definitely more, but this is a good start.
The important thing is to NOT assume that your press will do immense marketing for you, so you need to commit to putting effort in yourself.
I fully understand how challenging it can be to put your book out there for all to see.
But let me just remind you that when you’ve done this much work, it is only fair to you to let the world know about it.
Consider book promotion the gateway to getting people excited about your work, to get them to actually buy and read it, to get them to cite you, to get them to ask you to come speak and to collaborate, etc., etc.
You have nothing to lose and so much to gain.
I’ll talk to you again soon!