{"id":72830,"date":"2024-05-15T00:26:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-15T04:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=72830"},"modified":"2024-05-15T00:26:00","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T04:26:00","slug":"how-to-promote-your-book-when-you-dont-like-self-promotion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/how-to-promote-your-book-when-you-dont-like-self-promotion\/","title":{"rendered":"How to promote your book when you don\u2019t like self-promotion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

How does book promotion happen when the people involved are averse to self-promotion?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a common enough question and one that has become more urgent as researchers feel the pressure to hawk their publications across their social media accounts. It\u2019s something researchers often feel ill equipped to do, and they may also be reluctant to do \u2018marketing\u2019 work that they feel should be the domain of others (e.g. the publishers). Publishers may provide static marketing resources, sales codes, and a formal internet presence for your book but they often don\u2019t invest that much in knowing who the best audience might be or how to sell effectively to them \u2013 they delegate this to you. It\u2019s easy to feel just a mite exploited by all this but, in truth, you\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0more invested in your own work. You\u2019re best placed to know who might find it useful \/ valuable, and how to reach them (usually).<\/p>\n

If you can\u2019t get past the fact that you are being asked to do work that\u2019s beyond your standard job description as a researcher, for work that you provided to a publisher for free and they are now charging others to access\u2026then I hear you. We should have a conversation sometime about burning down the inequitable prestige economy that powers academia. And you can stop reading the post right now.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, read on.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a session that I present at my university that\u2019s focused on planning a research communication strategy. It builds on the enlightening, practical workshop that our buddy\u00a0Jen Martin<\/a>\u00a0gives about telling your research story. As with many things I run, it\u2019s not about telling people what to do. It\u2019s about giving folks the context of the work, and providing them with stimulating and (hopefully) engaging points of reflection to which they bring their own experiences, expertise, and priorities. A question popped up in the session about promoting a new book and I said I\u2019d write a blogpost \u2013 ta-dah!<\/p>\n

As I flagged above, publishers will often provide marketing kits or guides that include practical ways to put your publication on the radar of your potential readers. Do a search for \u2018promoting your book\u2019 and include your publisher\u2019s name. Chances are, you\u2019ll find a bunch of resources that can be helpful in working out what some steps might be. Think about what might work for you and who will do what (if you are part of a team of co-authors, or have buddies who can help you out). Align the activities or events with a feasible timeline and go to it! Sounds simple, right? It can be. Most of our books and other publications are not going to be hitting bestseller lists \u2013 they\u2019re often in niche areas and becoming \u2018big\u2019 in our disciplines can still often mean being pretty small in the scheme of things. If you\u2019ve written something that has much broader appeal and is not a scholarly publication, then that\u2019s a whole other blogpost!<\/p>\n

Instead of just repeating other resources that are already out there (a few of which I will link to below), I thought that sharing what my co-authors and I did for our recently published book,\u00a0Getting Research Funded: Five Essential Rules for ECRs<\/a><\/em>, might be helpful. It\u2019s a window into what a bunch of folks with an average set of marketing skills, busy lives, and a distinct aversion to self-promotion might do for their publication. It is by no means a \u2018golden formula\u2019 for success or the way that everyone should do things. You will have your own particular set of communication skills, support people, and resources around you \u2013 make the most of them!<\/p>\n

HERE\u2019S WHAT WE DID:\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Teaching \/ workshops:\u00a0<\/strong>Because the book we published is a guide and not a standard scholarly text, it makes sense to roll it off the blocks practically and to have researchers view it through the lens of their own practices when it comes to grantseeking. Tseen has been running an iteration of the book\u2019s structure as a workshop \u2013 Five Rules of Grant Club \u2013 for almost ten years at her university, and now she can flag the book as an expansion of the ideas in the session. Phil has run a workshop for ECRs that uses the structure of the book and draws on its content.<\/p>\n

Series of blogposts:<\/strong>\u00a0We posted a series of five excerpts from our book, following the \u2018five essential rules\u2019 format of the publication. The agreement with the publisher allowed us\u00a0 to reproduce a certain amount of text (verbatim) and this initiative was within the guidelines for this. Jonathan did the lion\u2019s share of deciding which sections to include from the relevant chapters, I found images for them, formatted, and queued them for Research Whisperer (you can see them all under the tag\u00a0Getting Research Funded<\/a>). Phil, our colleague in the UK, runs his own blog,\u00a0Research Fundermentals<\/a>, and he cross-posted the series of five posts there. Blogposts can be a really effective way to share accessible versions of your research with different audiences. In our case, cross-posting with Phil\u2019s blog meant that the potential readers for the book excerpts broadened significantly. Our community, while quite international in nature, has its highest representation in Australia while Phil\u2019s blog is well known in the UK and Europe.<\/p>\n

Podcasts:<\/strong>\u00a0We\u2019re planning (many fingers crossed) a series of podcasts later this year, again with the \u2018five essential rules\u2019 format. We\u2019re aiming to invite guests who are particularly relevant for each \u2018rule\u2019 to be in conversation with us. We thought this would enable us to share what the book is about and demonstrate the kind of tone and expertise that sits behind the publication (i.e. what we\u2019re like to listen to is close to how we write), while bringing other voices and perspectives into the discussion. We\u2019re also wanting to do this because we think it\u2019ll be a lot fun.<\/p>\n

Socials:<\/strong>\u00a0Our socials are a bit haphazard at the moment, it must be said. A well-oiled PR machine we are not. Still, we pushed out pre-order information and publication milestone posts along the way \u2013 mostly on LinkedIn. More organised and motivated people might sketch out a timeline of posts in the lead-up to publication and potential book launches.<\/p>\n

Book launch(es):<\/strong>\u00a0We didn\u2019t do a formal book launch. I think we had conversations about whether we should and none of us felt particularly motivated to organise one. For me,\u00a0 a good book launch should be more than the launching of the book (!). As my RW buddy Jonathan O\u2019Donnell says, \u201cI think that, at their best, book launches represent a gathering of the clans. It is a chance for peeps to come together and geek out about their topic of choice, and hang out (virtually or physically) with one another. In some ways, the book is just an excuse.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How does book promotion happen when the people involved are averse to self-promotion? It\u2019s a common enough question and one that has become more urgent as researchers feel the pressure to hawk their publications across their social media accounts. It\u2019s something researchers often feel ill equipped to do, and they may also be reluctant to […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[86115],"tags":[434943],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-72830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research","tag-book-promotion-happen"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow to promote your book when you don\u2019t like self-promotion - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/how-to-promote-your-book-when-you-dont-like-self-promotion\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to promote your book when you don\u2019t like self-promotion - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How does book promotion happen when the people involved are averse to self-promotion? 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