Marketing

On Oct. 19, Book Business held its first webcast for book publishing executives. The webcast was on—what else—but webcasts. Titled, “Expand Your Brand: Webinars for Publishers,” it featured the following speakers: • Twila Bennett, director of marketing, Revell/Baker Publishing Group • Suzie Cross, assistant marketing manager, Revell Books • Sharon Linsenbach, director of e-learning, North American Publishing Co. • Noelle Skodzinski, editor in chief, Book Business • Jeffrey Yamaguchi, online marketing manager, HarperCollins. Book Business compiled the following tips, tactics and considerations for using webcasts as effective marketing and sales tools, based on its recent webcast. If you missed the live event, you can view it at <a

The good news is that book marketing professionals have more channels through which to promote their titles than ever. But with so many choices and decisions to be made, crafting an effective, far-reaching multichannel marketing campaign is more confusing than ever. Book Business spoke with several book marketing gurus to get their takes on what makes a multichannel marketing campaign work. 1. Take advantage of all available marketing channels. Noreen Henson, marketing manager for Demos Medical Publishing, says her biggest difficulty today is “the electronic revolution in information delivery”—and her constant challenge is to ensure Demos’ campaigns take advantage of this evolution. Among

Following typical protocol, Ayun Halliday went on tour to promote her latest title, “Dirty Sugar Cookies.” Only, it wasn’t a 30-city tour, it was a 30-blog tour. These days, blog tours are all the rage thanks to the high-speed, seemingly infinite cyberspace connections they create. After interviewing with bloggers who either posted Halliday’s comments online or recorded her on a downloadable audio podcast file, the author’s “appearance” was suddenly linked to other blogs, which linked to more blogs, ad infinitum. Buzz like this is priceless and, interestingly, Halliday’s publisher, Seal Press—an imprint of Avalon Publishing, New York—didn’t have to make too many adjustments

Laura Waldron’s life is publishing. An author, a publisher and the marketing director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Press, Waldron offers a perspective on academic publishing that is uniquely well rounded. After an internship at Carnegie Mellon Press piqued her interest in publishing, she cut her teeth in sales and marketing for Princeton University Press and eventually represented 15 different university presses in the Mid-Atlantic territory as a trade sales representative. Today, she is closing in on her 10th anniversary with Penn Press and is the author of “Museums of Philadelphia: A Guide for Residents and Visitors,” which was published in 2004

Children’s books may be about finding the kid in all of us, but everyone in the children’s publishing business agrees that they have to grow up when it comes to taking advantage of profitable opportunities. The Internet is clearly not going away, yet with the need to protect children from cyberspace predators, publishers have to go through parents to get through to their young audiences. Once you reach them, however, it can’t hurt to be as multidimensional as possible. Jason Wells, publicity and marketing director for New York-based Harry N. Abrams Inc., says kids are looking for books that are not just self-contained

Starbucks, the world’s largest multinational chain of coffee shops, will begin offering books for sale alongside its beverages starting this fall. The company announced this week plans to periodically add books to its retail merchandise at more than 5,400 locations throughout the United States. The program will launch with Mitch Albom’s newest novel, “For One More Day.” Hyperion Books will publish the book on Sept. 26, and it will appear in Starbucks a week after it becomes available in traditional retail stores. The book will be on sale at Starbucks locations from Oct. 3 until the second week of November. Starbucks Entertainment announced that Albom, the

Somewhere between the ages of five and 11, kids stop reading. Well, maybe not all of them, but a recent study spearheaded by Scholastic Inc. shows that readership drops off as children age. The results show that 40 percent of kids between the ages of five and eight read for fun every day. Only 29 percent of nine- to 11-year-olds read as frequently, and that number declines sharply through age 17. Running Press Book Publishers thinks it knows why—and how to reverse this troublesome trend. Running Press, a Philadelphia-based imprint of The Perseus Books Group, will release a new young adult (YA) title, “Cathy’s

Noreen Henson’s career path took a stop at Demos Medical Publishing three years ago after stints in television ad sales and with a few ad agencies. Demos has an extensive and successful line of references in neurology and rehabilitation medicine and is now expanding into the spine medicine and oncology professional markets. Its sales, Henson says, continue to increase steadily, and the New York City-based company—now in its 20th year—is finding new and improved channels to market its products. Henson, Demos’ marketing manager, talked with Book Business about the challenges and changes she has endured during her time in medical publishing, as well as

Scholastic Press is betting there’s at least a few million readers out there who didn’t bring home the magic of J.K. Rowling’s famous boy wizard last summer. The paperback version of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” the sixth installment of the series, hit book shelves on Tuesday, almost exactly a year after it caused mass-media attention with its midnight release last July. Scholastic, the U.S. publisher of the series, said an initial run of two million copies of the book went on sale on the paperback’s first day of release. This time around, the marketing of the 672-pager will involve Scholastic presenting five episodes

In the two months since launching the first female-focused mobile phone entertainment application, Harlequin Enterprises Ltd., the Toronto-based publisher best-known for its romance and women’s fiction, says it’s seeing success with its first foray into wireless content. Partnering up with Vocel, a San Diego-based publisher of applications for mobile phones and other wireless devices, Harlequin began offering its mass-market stories to download at the end of April. So far, subscribers have paid $2.49 a month to receive a serialized chapter-a-day of three new stories delivered to their phones or PDAs. “We are very excited about the initial response to Harlequin On The Go,” says