Promote Your Book

CREATE E-MAIL LISTS
Start collecting e-mail addresses now! We’ll be sending you a couple of different emails timed with the release of your book. The first email you’ll receive will contain a “friends and family” discount for you to share with individuals who may be interested in purchasing the book. The second will be an announcement for you to forward to any listservs, associations, organizations, and groups that you belong to. Alumni associations, professional organizations and, if you teach at a university, your library’s dean and collections specialists would be great contacts to receive the second announcement.

TALKS & SIGNINGS
UPF encourages authors of general interest titles to participate in book signings, speaking engagements, and other appearances that help promote the book. If your book is an academic monograph or an edited volume priced for the library market (usually $55.00 and up), we strongly advise waiting until your book is available in paperback before scheduling any bookstore signings or other events aimed at individuals. Bookstores will usually sell a book at list price and not pass on a discount to the individual consumer.

SHARE EVENTS
Should you schedule any book signings or speaking engagements, we require a minimum of 3 weeks’ advance notice to add it to our author calendar, schedule tweets, and check in regarding book sales. Please inform us of your event here.

DISTRIBUTE FLYERS
Let us know of any upcoming conferences or meetings at least 2 weeks in advance so that we can create a discount flyer for you to distribute. However, if the hosting organization will already be selling copies of your book, it is generally considered bad form to undercut their sales with a discount flyer.

JOIN ONLINE LISTSERVS
H-Net is a great listserv for a multitude of academic disciplines. Many of the learned societies also have their own listservs. However, postings must be made by members and publisher postings are seldom, if ever, allowed. So we encourage you to post information about your book to these forums.

SOCIAL MEDIA
Remain active on social media.

  • Facebook. We advise against setting up a Facebook account for one specific book as that can create problems down the road when you publish additional books. Maintaining a different account for each book can divide your audience and make it difficult for you to keep up with each of them. We suggest authors make an author account, or use their current Facebook account to promote this book and any additional books you will publish. Through your author account, go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create to create pages for each of your books.
  • Twitter. Follow influencers in your field, retweet relevant posts from these influencers, and tweet regularly about news, trends, and other connections to your book topics and topics that matter to you.
  • Wordpress. Start a blog on a topic related to your book. Wordpress has many tutorials to get you started. However, maintaining a blog and building an audience requires a significant commitment of your time.

FOLLOW US
Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WordPress!

SET UP AN AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE
See their instructions: https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/help. However, be aware that Amazon “sales rankings” can be misleading.

WRITE A GUEST BLOG POST FOR US
Take a look at previous author guest posts on our blog here: https://floridapress.blog/category/author-post/. See what other authors are writing about in their blog posts here: https://theconversation.com/us. You can also submit guest blog posts to the Huffington Post, Boing Boing, and various other internet news sites.

WRITE OP-EDS
Keep track of current events for op-ed opportunities. Breaking news events and trending news stories will be the best occasions for submitting op-eds—which must often be prepared and pitched within a day of such news trends. If you have an idea for an op-ed based on a news story, please don’t hesitate to contact us as soon as the news breaks: marketing@upress.ufl.edu. Remember: You are an expert in your field, not just the author of a book. An op-ed should translate that fact rather than prompting readers to refer to your book. Avoid phrases such as, “In my book, I talk about X.” Express your clear point of view in a complete article. Stick to the point, be opinionated, avoid jargon, and remember newspapers use short sentences and paragraphs. Include your book in your byline. This will be the only prompt needed for readers to seek it out. For op-ed examples, take a look here: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/contributors/index.html