Baverstock - How to Market Books

How to Market Books

Over four editions, Alison Baverstocks How to Market Books has established itself as the industry standard text on marketing for the publishing industry, and the go-to reference guide for professionals and students alike.

With the publishing world changing like never before, and the marketing and selling of content venturing into uncharted technological territory, this much-needed new edition seeks to highlight the role of the marketer in this rapidly changing landscape.

The new edition is thoroughly updated and offers a radical reworking and reorganisation of the previous edition, suffusing the book with references to online and digital marketing. The book maintains the accessible and supportive style of previous editions but also now offers:

a number of new case studies;

detailed coverage of individual market segments;

checklists and summaries of key points;

several new chapters;

a foreword by Michael J. Baker, Professor Emeritus of Marketing, Strathclyde University.

Alison Baverstock is Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism and Publishing at Kingston University, where she cofounded the MA Publishing in 2006, now with an international catchment area and reputation. She is a frequent commentator in the press and broadcast media on publishing and reading, a previous recipient of the Pandora Prize for Services to Publishing and a member of the Board of Management of the Society of Authors.

Endorsements for this edition

Marketing is an increasingly crucial part of publishing discoverability is the buzz word - and this updated version of Alison Baverstocks guide is essential reading for anyone involved in the business. Its lucid, practical, wide-ranging and especially good on the opportunities presented by digital and self-publishing.

Andrew Lownie, literary agent

How to Market Books is a core text for our publishing degrees. Its combination of marketing theory, publishing knowledge, and practical advice, now thoroughly updated, is an immensely helpful resource to anyone setting out on a career in publishing. Its also a great place for current publishers to go to understand and improve their own marketing activities.

Professor Claire Squires, Director of the Stirling Centre for International
Publishing and Communication, University of Stirling, UK

How to market books is an easily readable, well-organized, comprehensive guide to marketing. It is an excellent resource for universities offering Publishing Studies and should be on every publishers shelf. I wish I had written it!

Anne Converse Willkomm MFA, Director of Graduate
Publishing at Rosemont College, USA

This standard work on marketing for the publishing industry has proved invaluable to students of publishing and industry professionals alike. Taking you from the marketing mix to online marketing, this book tells you what you need to know.

Angus Phillips, Director, Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies, UK

This is a book that offers both an immense understanding of publishing and real practical value. It's the one indispensable handbook for every publishing marketing department, every day.

Susannah Bowen, Head of Marketing, Higher Education/Library,
Cengage Learning, Australia

Endorsements for the previous editions

There is a dearth of up-to-date information about the theory and practice of book marketing. Alison Baverstock has filled the gap admirably; her book should be required reading for the novice and will provide an informative guide for the experienced practitioner.

The Bookseller

Over the years the book has attracted innumerable compliments for its common-sense and practical information: it has appeared on reading lists everywhere, on the shelves of libraries supporting study in the field, and in small firms and departments where publishing and bookselling take place for real It does what it says on the tin it offers a great deal of sensible and relevant information that readers really want and need.

Library Review

This is excellent. The clarity of the whole thing is beyond praise let alone the gargantuan task of compilation on such a comprehensive scale. Many congratulations. It deserves to become the bible of the publishing industry.

Professor Emrys Jones, LSE

The most comprehensive and useful tome on book marketing available. It is an indispensible teaching tool and guide.

Gian Lombardo, Publisher-in-Residence, Emerson College USA, and
Director, Quale Press

I think this book will be of considerable interest to authors, as it brings together a good deal of information from different areas in the trade to which authors rarely have access. Most authors have contact only with their editor...and have no idea what goes on in the rest of the organisation.

Margaret Drabble, author

How to Market Books

Fifth edition

Alison Baverstock

Fifth edition published 2015

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2015 Alison Baverstock

The right of Alison Baverstock to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

First edition published 1990 by Kogan Page

Fourth edition published 2008 by Kogan Page

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN13: 978-0-415-72746-4 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-72758-7 (pbk)

ISBN13: 978-1-315-76183-1 (ebk)

For Harriet Clara Alice

who has lived with this book all her life

Figures

Tables

This book began in 1989, as a delegate handout for marketing courses being offered by the Publishing Training Centre at Book House in London, but quickly became a compendium of things I wished I had known when I began in the industry. I kept writing and soon had a contents list and several chapters of a book, which Kogan Page promptly agreed to publish. The deadline was provided by pregnancy and our daughter Harriet (named after Dorothy L. Sayers heroine) timed her arrival perfectly. I completed the manuscript 4 days before she was born. As she arrived on a Friday, I framed and hung on her wall the front cover of the edition of The Bookseller that carried her date of birth (and there it stayed until adolescence meant all parental choices were reconsidered).

My guiding principle from the start was to include everything I would like to have known when I began work as a publisher; to set down a checklist of possible types of marketing activity that should be considered whatever the format or subject area of the list being promoted. In those days marketing staff were relatively new arrivals at the boardroom table (publishing houses had long had departments of Publicity and Sales, but not Marketing), and having spent a lot of time reinventing the wheel, finding out how to do things for which it turned out there were already established processes just not generally known ones it was pleasing to see it all set down in print. Given the enormous output of the publishing industry, its been an ongoing irony that it has in general reflected so little on itself.