Everyday Book Marketing: Promotion Ideas to Fit Your Regularly Scheduled Life by Midge Raymond (review)

At the outset of Everyday Book Marketing: Promotion Ideas to Fit Your Regularly Scheduled Life, Midge Raymond writes that she was on her own when it came to promotion of her first book, a collection of short stories published near the end of the existence of Eastern Washington University Press, which closed in 2010. Everyday Book Marketing is thus geared not toward professional marketers in scholarly or trade presses but rather toward authors of any type of book. Due largely to the economics of publishing, the realities of publishing arrangements, and the rise in self-publishing, the premise of the book is that authors themselves can and should play key roles in the promotion and marketing of their works.

With this book, Raymond is joining a crowded field.¹ Her approach is potentially of interest to authors of scholarly books in the way that she defines and targets her suggestions toward the ‘everyday writer’: ‘the published author who is not only a writer but also has a career, a family, and/or any number of other obligations that require fitting book promotion into a budget in which both hours and dollars may be hard to find’ (3–4). The first half of the book includes an introduction to book marketing and chronological treatment of strategies for both before and after the book launch. Interspersed throughout are ‘everyday marketing tips’ describing tasks that can be accomplished in fifteen minutes, in thirty minutes, or whenever time can be set aside. The second half of the book includes transcripts of question-and-answer sessions with authors, promoters, and events managers. These individuals, all women, and many from the Pacific Northwest, echo themes that Raymond herself sets out, including that the ‘hard work is really just beginning’ once the writing is finished (events manager Susan McBeth, 223) and that ‘word of mouth is still the best way to sell books, but it’s up to the author to get the word started’ (author Sharan Newman, 143).

So how, then, does an author get the word started? Predictably, perhaps, Raymond’s methods involve taking advantage of the Internet and social media through a variety of active and passive means, ranging from participating sedulously on blogs and Twitter to crafting an email signature that includes the title of one’s new book (with a link to a page with more details and ordering information).² Raymond claims that ‘a website is essential for authors’ and that ‘you simply need to have an online presence so that readers, potential reviewers or interviewers, or anyone else interested in your book can find and contact you’ (23). Fortunately, scholarly authors with academic affiliations should already have Web presences; publications should be given a prominent position. Question-and-answer participant Kathryn Trueblood, author and associate professor of English at Western Washington University, recommends having downloadable press kits for your books available on your Web site (153). I would recommend following her advice in cases where your publisher’s page for your book does not include such material.³ (A book published by University of Nebraska Press by Wendy Call—another author profiled in the question-and-answer section—features a digital media kit on the book’s Web page at the Nebraska Press Web site.)⁴

For a Web site or blog, Raymond mentions that designs and ideas do not have to come from the ether: She recommends that you take a close look at other authors’ Web sites, making note of what you like and adapting similar features for yourself. A current favourite is the professional (and university-hosted) Web site of sociocultural linguist Mary Bucholtz of the University of California, Santa Barbara; the titles of her books and edited volumes, under the ‘Research’ tab, link to the respective publishers’ pages.⁵ For blogs, expect to be amazed...