More Marketing just for Marian :D

Last post on marketing for a little while :) I'll go on to other fascinating things like "the purpose of page numbers" or "what tables of content are for" or how "a book needs a spine". Yup, we talked about these in class.

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Now that I've been doing some actual marketing work on mondays, the kind that someone will actually profit by, I'm starting to understand some things in a more instinctive way. Don't talk to me about PEST and SWOT and crazy spreadsheets though.
I've mostly been doing research, making sure the journals we mail review copies or review invitations too are appropriate for the book we're trying to sell. With a small academic publisher, the list is fairly small but it can be pretty confusing because there's a lot of crossover between subjects.
However, it is crucial that you send the right book to the right place. First, because you want them to be read by people who are interested in the subject, second because you don't want to send expensive books to people who will not review them (or return them). If your books is under 15 GBP, you have a bit of room but if the book is over 100GBP and your print-run is about 250 copies, every single one counts.

Even so, marketing is expensive. I mentioned in another post that for one of the books we do, we sent out 5 copies, totaling about 500GBP. Then there is the paper and all the fliers we sent out to conferences, the order forms (with discounts!), the going to the conferences... This is why authors can't be expected to do the marketing of their own books themselves. They play their part but there's only so much they can do and so far they can go. No publisher can survive by selling their books only in the immediate vicinity of the author. It wouldn't even make up the costs of printing.