I recently had a chance to catch up with Niko Pfund, president of Oxford University Press. In another life, 25 years ago, I was a young editor at the press and Pfund was an editorial assistant. Besides reminiscing about those days, I was interested to know what one of the oldest and most prestigious university presses was up to in terms of marketing.
I was curious because a friend had recently published a serious history book with a commercial publisher and had been sent on a multi-city tour. He’d gotten enough good reviews that there were healthy crowds in most of the places where he held readings. It helped that he gave about a zillion radio interviews; his readers are mostly well-heeled, white-haired dudes who still buy hardcovers and pay to listen to audiobooks. His book is selling well.
The way it was publicized and marketed seemed, to me, a remarkably old-fashioned model. Few publishers have the resources to send authors on book tours anymore, and it’s not clear that bookstore readings and the attendant publicity are the most effective way to reach potential buyers.
So I asked Niko Pfund about that. Presses, he said, are increasingly shifting to content marketing, “which compels a publisher to be more clever about its promotions and therefore more familiar with the work we’re promoting than ever before. Just as editors tell their authors to ‘show’ not ‘tell,’ marketers are now moving beyond the idea that presses can simply point at a book and say, ‘Trust us, this is great.’ They need to be able to interest readers with the content of the book. Developing this sort of expertise takes resources, investment, and effort, and the sophistication to tailor your promotions to the intended audience.”
The key point is a simple one: “Readers love to hear from, and connect with, authors.” The way to do that now is through social media. We can provide authors with all kinds of tools to help get the word out, whether that be via a flier or by helping them write an e-mail to send to people they know through their alumni associations, etc. Properly enlisted, social media is a great tool for spreading the word. It can help the message of a book get out to appropriate networks without feeling like spam or a sales pitch—because it’s not, or needn’t be.”
Niko gave some specific examples of content-marketing strategies that Oxford uses, and those examples make clear that writers play a central role in promoting their own books. Among the approaches he cited:
- Encouraging writers to join Twitter: “One of our publicists convinced Sir Lawrence Freedman, author of Strategy, one of our best-selling books last year, to sign up for Twitter before his book was published. Sir Lawrence now has over 4,000 followers.”
- Publishing timely posts on the press’s blog and Twitter account: To coincide with the 2013 release of the fifth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Oxford featured a weeklong series of author-written blog posts and tweets to highlight the press’s new books on the DSM-5 during the American Psychiatric Association conference. “There was an overwhelming amount of discussion around the DSM-5, so social media was crucial to make our books stand out among the noise. All the books highlighted sold better than expected and were among the top sellers at the conference. This was so successful that we duplicated the campaign at the American Psychological Association conference later that year with similar results.”
- Asking authors to write for the press’s blog: “One of my favorite examples is from a few years back. Barry Eichengreen wrote a post that was picked up and rerun by The New York Times and started the campaign rolling for his book Exorbitant Privilege.” He added: “The OUP blog is read closely by editors and producers, and as such is a great way to showcase new publications and research. Last summer, the blog featured a post on the Fulbright program written by Sam Lebovic, an assistant professor at George Mason University who contributed to one of our journals (Diplomatic History). Steve Heuser, an editor at The Boston Globe, read the piece and adapted it for later publication in his Ideas section.”
- Featuring author-written articles on Oxford’s Tumblr page: “Earlier this year Judy Foreman wrote an essay for The Wall Street Journal based on her book for us, A Nation in Pain. We later ran this article on the OUP Tumblr, where it was shared over 8,000 times, a remarkable response from readers to a bylined piece from an author.”
- Interviewing authors on Oxford’s YouTube channel: “We posted a video of Paul Collier on our YouTube channel and shared it via Facebook, Twitter, etc., to promote Exodus. In addition to reaching more than 13,000 people on Facebook alone, the video was also picked up by some professors and is now used in courses. So the content we’re producing is not merely promoting content, but also can be used as an educational tool.”
As writers, many of us feel like it’s hard enough to write the dang book but having to promote it, too, especially after the fun part of thinking and crafting are completed, can feel not only tiresome but unseemly. The whole process reminds me of a quote from British novelist Ian McEwan who said that when you publish a book you become an employee of your former self.
For many authors, a review in The New York Times Book Review is still the mark of acceptance by the Eastern literary establishment. But there are now fewer print book reviews than there are ivory-billed woodpeckers. There are, however, more blogs than there are pigeons in St. Mark’s Square, and savvy authors who want their work to be read will see ways to take advantage of them.
Publishers like to talk about building a platform—establishing yourself as an expert on a topic with access to many people—and they also use the fairly icky word, “branding.” None of us likes to think of ourselves as a brand, but publisher’s imprints have often served exactly that purpose. When I was in college, I’d go to used bookstores in search of the orange spines of Penguin classics. Writers know to expect a level of quality, taste, or even, in some cases, political slant, from certain presses.
Authors ignore brand building and platform construction at their own risk, even if it feels slightly creepy. I think of George Eliot’s poor old Mr. Casaubon, spending a lifetime working on his opus, “The Key to All Mythologies,” and believing that it must be utterly above criticism; I imagine him finally publishing it and anonymous commenters on Amazon giving it one star and writing, “TLDR” or “It bored me.” What if he’d started blogging or tweeting while working on that dusty tome?
I’ve heard many academics mutter that online writing doesn’t “count” in the same way as print. But the fact is, even for high-level scholarship, it used to take months and even years before anyone beyond the author’s family and close friends noticed a book was out. Niko points out, “In the early days of social media, there was much reluctance on the part of authors to devote time and effort to this sort of work. And everyone was inexperienced as to how to go about it. But changing demographics and, most importantly, quantifiable successes are changing minds. A recent analogy might be to the early days of online retailing when authors were anxious that their books were being ‘put online for free.’ Today we understand the benefits of discoverability, and authors are justifiably concerned if prospective readers can’t leaf around in their book online.”
Social media is not for everyone. It can feel salesy and slick and, well, young. And, as we know from recent Twittergates, the content can get you into trouble. But the changes in marketing are, in many ways, for the good. Niko Pfund says, “I like the fact that it compels publishers to engage more, rather than just marketing in a rote manner.”
Me, I like the fact that the president of an ancient and prestigious publisher—that, if I’m being honest, used to be a bit stodgy—feels like his press needs to do more for its books and its authors in different and better ways.
Rachel Toor is an associate professor of creative writing at Eastern Washington University’s writing program in Spokane. Her website is Racheltoor.com. She welcomes comments and questions directed to careers@chronicle.com. Her first novel, On the Road to Find Out, was recently published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
