Why Textbook Authors Should Also Be Textbook Marketers

An author of mine, the wonderful Arlene Muller, is fast becoming a marketer extraordinaire, and I couldn't be happier.

Arlene's book

Arlene writes How to Survive and Maybe Even Love Health Professions School: Retention And Career Placement Guide, a guide to success in health professions school. She also operates a service called Retention Specialist Today, which provides consulting services to schools that want to increase the rate of retention among their students.

Arlene is always thinking about ways to market her book. She promotes it whenever she speaks to school faculty and administrators. She calls me to suggest ways to help our marketing department better promote her book. She sends potential leads to us so our reps and customer service staff can follow-up and close the sale.

She wants her book to succeed and believes 100 percent that it will, but not just that. It's the drive she has to make sure her book succeeds and the time she spends working every marketing angle available to her.

I wish more authors did that. I wish more authors spoke at their professional conventions, created and maintained an author page on Amazon, blogged on topics related to their book, and overall pushed their book in every avenue available to them.

Marketing a textbook is a full-time, team-based job, and the more everyone works together, the more books we'll sell and the more students we'll help.

And that's the name of that tune, June.

Er, Arlene.

Podcasts on the Way

No blog this week on account of how I've been working on a few podcasts, which I hope to launch soon.

Stay tuned!

Guest Post: TO POST OR NOT TO POST

A guest post from Allison Morris at OnlineClasses.Org.
Thanks, Allison!

There are 900 million social media users plugged into Facebook alone, and nearly 500 million of them log into the social network every single day. In fact, in just one day on Facebook, 250 million photos are uploaded, and 532 million statuses are updated. And that doesn’t even count the millions of tweets sent, tumblrs updated, and instagrams snapped.

With so much personal content constantly being uploaded to the web, it’s no small wonder that so many recruiters and would-be employers are turning to various social networking platforms to determine the personalities of prospective hires. If you’re working toward your online degree, chances are you hope to one day apply for, interview at, and ultimately secure a great job.

The first step to preparing for that future job, however, is to stay forward-thinking in the types of things you post, tweet, and otherwise put up online. In the information age, when everything about a person is available for scrutiny, the fact of the matter is that one incriminating photo or post can make or break the way people perceive you in the future. And even if your social media habits don’t have an immediate impact on your employment dreams, the laws of social media etiquette dictate that sometimes, people need to think before they overshare.

The following infographic provides a handy flowchart to determine the ever-increasingly important question: To post, or not to post?

10 Characteristics of a Successful Textbook Author

Far more people think they can author successfully than actually can. Over the years I've identified several common characteristics of the people who not only actually write a book but who also become invested in its success.

In my view, successful authors:

1. Are deeply devoted not just to teaching but also to learning.
2. Stay up-to-date on what's happening in their profession.
3. Focus on how they can teach better and make more successful students.
4. Have a clear vision of how they can make a better book.
5. Can focus fully on a single task for long periods.
6. Are open, honest, and communicative.
7. Expect more out of themselves than others.
8. Can leave their ego at the door and work toward a common goal.
9. Can put cogent, organized thoughts on paper.
10. Prefer the lighter side of life.

Just my take.