Book Marketing for ELT

As a small publisher/self-publisher, I am exposed constantly to ads and articles about how to market books. Many of the associations I belong to, such as the IBPA and the TAA, are constantly advertising services about book marketing. Most blogs I read have a post every week on some aspect of marketing whether it be how to write a catchy Twitter post, how to tweak your Amazon ads, or creating an author brand. The problem is that little of this advice seems to be specifically aimed at ELT books.

A lot of the tips and tricks out there that work great for fiction writers (run a contest to name a character after the winner or create a Twitter feed written by one of your characters) don’t really apply. And most of the advice for non-fiction writers seems to assume you’ve written a general, self-help, hack your life, book with a title like, ‘How to Work 10 Minutes a Day and Make 10 Million Dollars’. Actually a surprising number of authors in the webinars I’ve attended are writing books on how to be an author, a bizarre circuitous loop.

There are definitely some methods of marketing that apply to all forms of writing like getting book reviews and advertising in groups that are related to your genre.  But it would be nice to have some marketing ideas targeted to ELT, particularly ones that are uniquely suited to reaching teachers.

There is at least one exception that I know of, Nik Peachy of Peachy Publications is the only ELT author I know out there who is sharing ways to do marketing. He recently did a great webinar on Becoming Your Own Publisher (Here are the slides; the recording is free for IATEFL members) and I’ve tried to apply some of his advice. In fact, here’s a little video ad I made for a book I’m currently publishing. I never would have attempted this if I hadn’t seen some of the videos Nik has done:

So How Do You Promote Your Books?

I’d very much like to add to the number of ELT publishers out there sharing marketing ideas. I’d like to list some of the things I’ve done and some ideas on how I did it or how it went. I hope others will follow my lead and share some things that have worked for them. This would also be a nice place to call for collaboration or float innovative ideas. And of course feel free to ask questions or offer up better alternatives to some of the things I’ve shared here.

Ways to Market ELT books, particularly as a self-publisher

1. Book Reviews – This may go without saying. So far, I’ve found that most ELT magazines and journals are open to doing book reviews. Some will be happy to find you a reviewer and others prefer that you find a reviewer yo submit the review for you. Note that it can take time to get your book reviewed so it’s best to start sending out copies anywhere from 1 year* to 3 months in advance. I don’t know whether mainstream book review publications (Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, Library Journal, etc…) are helpful in selling ELT books or not because they require you send them advance copies at least 4 months in advance of publication and frankly, I haven’t been organized enough to do that yet!
2. Blog Reviews – I’ve also been trying to target teacher bloggers and get them to review the books. Hopefully that will get the word out to teachers who do not read the journals. I’m always happy to review a book and if anyone else is interested in doing reviews, perhaps you could leave a comment here.
3. Mailing List – Another standard method of promoting books. Get people to sign up on your mailing list and then send out periodic posts, discounts, and news. If anyone has tips on building mailing lists or what kinds of things teachers want to see from a mailing list, I’m sure that would be of great interest.
4. Postcards or Business Cards to hand out at conferences and talks. I rather like this idea from this post. Put the cover on one side and then some tips or a brief useful excerpt on the other. I added a QR code as well as the URL for the landing page. But I love the understatedness of the footer, “published by St. Martin’s Press”
5. Online Quiz – another idea from Nik Peachy. Here’s a little quiz I made about doing group work. It could be fun to do a personality test as well: What kind of teacher are you? Quizzes are ridiculously popular so hopefully you can leverage that.

So these are some of the things I’ve been doing. What have you been doing to promote your books? How can we do ELT book marketing better? Please share in the comments so we can help each other.