Book Marketing - What to Expect from Your Publisher's Book Marketing Department

The book marketing department works behind the scenes to ensure your book is being properly presented and promoted to booksellers, via the publisher's various sales departments. If you're being published by a traditional publisher, the marketing department will help sales get your book in front of the retail buyers who make your book available to the consumer public.

Here are the basic elements you can expect your book marketing department to provide:

• Representation in your book publisher's seasonal catalogs and other sales materials. You can expect your book to have a presence in the publisher's seasonal new title catalog and other applicable sales collateral. The seasonal "trade" catalog is the vehicle by which the publisher's representatives present new book to the booksellers; these go to booksellers and the media. Some highly illustrated books, such as cookbooks, will warrant a single-title promotional piece, such as a sales BLAD.
  

• Representation in other book marketing collateral for channels of distribution appropriate to your book, such as specialty or gourmet accounts, libraries, etc. Different publishers have different means of reaching these markets, both with internal sales staff and commission sales groups hired specifically to penetrate these accounts. Your publisher may produce collateral materials specifically for these markets, such as a specialty catalog for the gift market, or a library catalog from which librarians and librarian systems buy their books.

• Representation at the applicable trade shows. Bookseller trade shows like the Bookseller Expo America (BEA) or on of the regional bookseller shows, like the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association show focus more on upcoming publications than backlist, so your title may be represented when new, but not necessarily at subsequent shows. If your publisher has a booth at vertical market conventions where your book is appropriate (say, the American Dietary Association for a nutrition book), your book should be represented there, either displayed or in some form of catalog or brochure. If you have a professional affiliation and are attending a trade show where your publisher has a presence (for example, the Romance Writers of America Convention), by all means let your editor and/or marketing department know, to increase the possibility that your book will be promoted at the event.

• Representation on your publishers website, and on online booksellers, such as amazon.com and bn.com. As the online world is critically important for sales and marketing purposes, your book should be represented on the key online bookselling sites. You should also be able to obtain good quality digital images of your book's jacket or specific pages for your own promotions, website, alumni newsletter, etc.

There are, of course, other elements of book marketing, for example, developing point-of-sale promotional materials and managing book advertising. But these are expensive and reserved for the blockbuster books whose budgets allow--which is to say, a small percentage of the books that are published.