STANFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
  
Prospective Authors
Current Authors
Published Authors

Marketing Your Book

The Marketing team at Stanford is the conduit that places your book with retailers, libraries, academic conferences, and other key influencers crucial to publicizing and selling your book. As the author, you bring something to the table as well: your colleagues, friends, expertise, and the professional contacts you have developed over the course of your career—all of which are valuable channels to be tapped during the promotion of your book.

The marketing questionnaire that you receive is our way of starting a dialog between you, the author, and us, the Marketing team, so that we can begin crafting a strategy that will combine the Press’ resources with your own networks to position your book in the proper markets and bring to light unique opportunities for promotion and outreach. This questionnaire is the nucleus of your book’s marketing plan—it helps us determine which reviewers to contact, where to place ads for your book, and how to pitch it to the broader book media, among other things. An exhaustively completed questionnaire is an invaluable marketing tool and will inform all of the Press’ promotional efforts.

What the Press Does

About six weeks prior to publication you will receive an overview of the marketing activities planned for your book. These typically include sending out copies for review, nominating it for prizes, advertising your book in scholarly journals and other publications, sending it to scholarly meetings, and promoting it for possible course adoption. Any post-publication publicity or honors that you or your book may receive will also be promoted via SUP’s social media channels.

What You Can Do

As an academic author, you have intimate and unique access to some of the most relevant markets for your book and can position yourself as an expert to external media, which presents many opportunities for drawing attention to your research. Keep in mind that any promotion you undertake on your own will be most effective immediately around the time of your book’s publication.

Update your professional profiles to reflect the publication of your book. Include a link to the book in your email signature, add the publication to your LinkedIn profile, include information on your research on personal and departmental webpages, and post announcements to relevant blogs or listervs to which you contribute.

Take advantage of your position within the academic community. Give talks at your institution and other universities and attend conferences to present your research (creating “buzz” at conferences can work wonders for a book’s sales). Touch base with colleagues—would they be interested in adopting the title for a particular course? Would you want to adopt the book for courses you teach? Reach out to alumni magazines and communications departments at your alma maters. They can help publicize your book and bring it to the attention of local media.

Consider writing a guest post for the SUP blog. The Stanford University Press blog eagerly fields guest posts from our authors. Posts can take the form of op-ed style pieces or written Q&As tied to current events or ongoing debates. For local authors, or those visiting the Bay Area, video and podcast interviews are also an option. Contact our Digital Media Specialist if you’re interested in pursuing any of these options.

Reach out to colleagues, friends, and fans online and via social media. If you have social media accounts, (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or a personal or professional blog), consider announcing the publication of your book, linking to excerpts or quoting reviews. Should you contribute to any blogs, or have a blog of your own, think about intriguing ways that you might discuss your book or issues and events tangential to its themes and arguments.

Use the tools available to you through the SUP website. You can share the link to your individual book page on the SUP website via email and on social media using the share buttons on the bottom right-hand side of the page. You can also retreive a ready-made marketing flyer for your book from the book's page on our website by clicking on the cover and then clicking on the Marketing Flyer link on the following page. These flyers can be shared online or printed out and distributed by hand. 

Keep us in the loop. Oftentimes authors will receive media mentions, conduct interviews, or receive invitations and awards on the strength of their research that have not been expressly arranged through SUP’s channels. If this happens, let us know! Email your Editor and/or our Publicist so that we can share your accolades with our sales team and publicize them on the Press’ social media accounts.

If you have further questions, please contact us:

For media inquiries
For conference inquiries
For award inquiries 
For advertising inquiries
For direct mail inquiries
For social media and blog inquiries
For general marketing inquiries

Also see a full staff directory here.

Rights & Permissions

In the event that you would like to provide excerpts of your book to inquiring journalists, book reviewers or other media interested in reprinting portions of your book for publicity, please reach out to publicity@www.sup.org.

If you would like to reuse content from your own book in a publication for which you are the lead author/editor, or in a course that you are teaching, please request permission via our online permissions form or email permissions@www.sup.org.

If you have further questions, please contact our Contracts and Rights Manager.

Also see:
Royalties and Tax Information
Authors Fund

Ordering Author Copies

Authors who have published with the Press can order copies of any book published by Stanford University Press at a 40% discount. For more information on ordering with your author discount please contact sales_assistant@www.sup.org.

 

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