Wednesday, May 23, 2:30-3:30pm
Room: Ski-U-Mah Room
Presenters: Kathryn Conrad, University of Arizona Press; Emily Hamilton, University of Minnesota Press; Becky Welzenbach, University of Michigan Library; John W. Warren, Mason Publishing Group/George Mason University Press
Description: A publisher can make a book openly available but beyond creating good metadata, what can you do to help it find its audience, and assess whether it has? This session, organized by the Association of University Presses’ Library Relations Committee, focuses on how to promote the discovery of open monographs, with an emphasis on low-cost strategies such as social media, and tactics for directly engaging authors in promotion. We’ll talk about barriers to discovery but also about how readers are finding new, open scholarship on the web, and how publishers can reach those readers where they are. We’ll discuss scheduling and budgeting for promotions, as well as promotional tactics such as publicity, outreach, and engagement. While the session primarily deals with research and practice focused on books, many of the strategies can also be used to promote journals and other kinds of scholarship.
Participants will:
Gain a better understanding of how readers find open books.
Learn practical, low-cost strategies they can use to promote their books.
Discover ways to improve outreach and engagement for titles and series.
Gain insights on scheduling, budgeting, and publicity.