< back
to full article list
< back
to academic authors article list
< back
to textbook authors article list
Book promotion strategies: Participation in national sales meetings
By Leanne Silverman
How to advocate for your book—before, during, and after a national sales meeting
Reid Hester, a 15-year veteran in textbook sales and marketing, and Robert Christopherson, a best-selling geography textbook author, share their advice for making the most of your participation in national sales meetings:
• Provide specific, actionable information. “If it can be used to sell your book, it’s worth its weight in gold,” said Hester. For example, build sales-ready bullet points about your book’s features. Or track the updates and changes you make to a new edition as you make them. “Your editor and the sales reps will want to know,” said Christopherson.
• Review the competition. “When a competing book comes out, I send a full review to show the talking points of my book versus their book,” said Christopherson. “I provide a bolded summary of the point for each section so the editor can send those lines to the sales reps.” Spreadsheets are another good way to highlight at a glance what differentiates your book from the competition.
• Be aware of how your book relates to current events and share that information—judiciously—with your publisher. “I’ll email the editor and marketing manager saying ‘these pages cover this type of event’ and ask them to forward it to the sales reps,” said Christopherson.
• Consider establishing a book-related blog. According to Hester, “marketing managers can’t be emailing reps constantly or they’ll stop listening,” so post about current events vis-à-vis your book on your blog (and let the press know it’s there.) Added bonus: your blog is accessible to adopters, too.
• Be available. Make time if your publisher wants you to wine and dine with you or wants you to make a presentation for big potential adopters, said Hester. Christopherson recommends establishing a dedicated email address and phone number for your book, and sharing them widely. “I include my email address in every book,” he said, noting that having access to the author helps people feel connected to and invested in the book. Just be sure to respond promptly when people reach out. (Using Google Voice is one way to establish a dedicated phone number without giving out your personal number—or adding more phones to your account.) |
The success of any textbook often originates at the national sales meetings held by textbook publishers and larger academic presses each year. But what, exactly, is a national sales meeting (NSM)?
“They’re huge events,” said Reid Hester, a 15-year veteran in textbook sales and marketing. Each January and August, the publisher’s marketing teams, editors, and sales reps gather to review the season’s textbooks—and to establish what’s a priority for the reps to sell.
In large companies, there are often three separate teams of sales reps: “soft side,” “hard side,” and “generalists.” Each team handles a wide array of disciplines. For example, Pearson Education’s soft sales force represents anthropology, art, communications, English, history, music, philosophy, political science, psychology, religion, social work, sociology and world languages.
“You’re competing internally with other disciplines and other titles within your discipline,” said Hester. “Part of what you’re doing [at the NSM] is getting the reps excited to sell your discipline and your book.”
With the increasing role of technology, tech-talk “takes up a fair amount of oxygen at sales meetings these days,” said Hester. Even so, “big first edition launches are very important, which translates into more time to delve into the features of the book itself, not just the larger package.”
Authors may get to speak briefly about their books at such launches. Who is invited depends on having the right book—and the right author: he said: “Publishers try to be discrete about bringing in authors who present well. Some authors are better about being on-message than others, and you don’t ever want the reps to leave with a bad impression.”
Robert Christopherson, a best-selling geography author who has presented at several NSMs, advises you to be fully prepared should the invitation be extended: “Make your 25 minutes stand out. If you come across as passionate, they’ll remember.”
Being invested in your book matters more as your text goes into subsequent editions. “It’s a real challenge to be heard at the NSM after the first edition,” said Hester. “An author with a successful book at a big company needs to be an advocate to keep the company’s focus on the book year after year.”
Christopherson agrees: “Always be the aggressor, make sure they know you’re there” because doing so encourages your publisher to keep thinking about your book. But, he cautions, “make sure there’s relevance and potency to your phone call; it’s a fine line from valued author to irritant.”
Leanne Silverman hung her shingle as a freelance writer and editor in Denver, CO after leaving a 12-year career in academic publishing.
|
