Author Toolkit

If you’ve got a pub date coming up, consider checking out the marketing and publicity information below to ensure you’re doing the most you can to promote your new book! This toolkit is perfect for first-time or seasoned authors looking to engage with us in the marketing and publicity efforts we put forth on your book.

View this Toolkit online by scrolling down on this page or selecting the topic you wish to review from the table of contents to jump to that section.

Table of Contents

Welcome to NYU Press Marketing

Digital Marketing

Publicity

Other Initiatives

Welcome to NYU Press Marketing

Everyone at the Press is excited about your work and we are thrilled to continue working on the marketing of your title. While we send each of our authors a comprehensive outline of all the ways we will work to market your title, this toolkit is meant to help define some of the finer points of what we do and to indicate what you, the author, can do for your title. When it comes to marketing, you are the most powerful tool we all have. Authors can make or break the success of their titles by being active and engaged in the marketing, publicity, and promotion of their book. Across this toolkit you can access valuable tips on utilizing online marketing and social media to connect and network with your audience and maximize your book’s potential, along with so much more!

Who’s Who

Mary Beth Jarrad, Marketing and Sales Director, [email protected]

Mary Beth oversees the promotion of your title and calls on all major national accounts (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.).  She meets with the domestic field reps, Canadian, European, and other overseas sales forces to discuss the content of your title and share individualized marketing plans. She also manages subrights, which includes translation rights for your title, as well as domestic rights deals—like audio rights. Mary Beth attends BEA (in NYC) and the Frankfurt Book Fair (in Germany) every year and presents your titles to foreign publishers.

Jenny Rossberg, Publicity Manager, [email protected]
Sydney Garcia, Associate Publicist, [email protected]

Jenny and Sydney pitch and coordinate book reviews and other coverage in media outlets including print and online newspapers and magazines, websites, and academic journals. They will send review copies of your title to media outlets and to any personal media connections you provide. They also facilitate speaking engagements, radio and television interviews, op-eds, and other promotional opportunities.

Lia Hagen, Marketing Associate, [email protected]

Lia focuses on the retail marketing of your book, working through channels that reach general readers, including Twitter, Facebook and Amazon. Lia also organizes all advertising campaigns and works with our sales representatives to effectively reach independent bookstores.

Madison Greene, Marketing Assistant, Humanities, [email protected]

Madison focuses on the institutional marketing of your title in the Humanities—inclusion in our catalogs, course outreach, placement at exhibits and conferences, your book’s web page on nyupress.org, your author profile at nyupress.org, the monthly eNewsletters, and more. In addition, she facilitates the submission of your book to awards. She will liaise with you to brainstorm your submission strategy, send your books to awards committees, and work with you to prepare nomination letters. 

Michelle Duran, Marketing Assistant, Social Sciences, [email protected]

Madison focuses on the institutional marketing of your title in the Social Sciences—inclusion in our catalogs, course outreach, placement at exhibits and conferences, your book’s web page on nyupress.org, your author profile at nyupress.org, the monthly eNewsletters, and more. In addition, she facilitates the submission of your book to awards. She will liaise with you to brainstorm your submission strategy, send your books to awards committees, and work with you to prepare nomination letters. 

If you are unsure of who to reach out to, you can check the top of your Marketing Plan we mailed you and emailed you pre-publication. Here you will find your publicist and your marketing manager listed. If you don’t have access to that, feel free to reach out to any of us, and we’ll make sure to put you in touch with the right team member!

Timing

  • 4-8 weeks from the bound book date, your book will be published
  • NYU Press publishes in two seasons: Spring and Fall. The Spring season consists of books that are published between March and August. The Fall consists of books that are published between September and February.
  • Keep your publication date (the date on the website) in mind when planning lectures, media reviews / interviews, and other announcements.
    • You can see the specific book publication date (MM/DD/YY) when you search for your book and it appears in the search results grid
    • You can see the month and year publication date on your book’s webpage.
    • If you are still unclear about your book’s publication date, please be in touch with your production editor.

What Marketing Does

We developed our marketing plan with your title and audience in mind, and this plan constitutes the most effective marketing for your specific title. The book industry and market are constantly changing, and we routinely shift our resources to address those changes, and sometimes in anticipation of them. Included in your marketing plan is our retail catalog containing a listing for your title that is sent out to bookstores and wholesalers both in the US and throughout the world. This retail catalog is an essential tool for our sales reps, who call on independent bookstores. The keywords, copy, and information included within is also sent electronically to all of our trading partners, as well as the major online retailers such as Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and Google Book Search, which is critical for search engine optimization.

Here at the Press, print marketing is any marketing collateral we put into print. This includes: our seasonal retail catalog, yearly subject catalogs, book and series flyers, promotional postcards, and sometimes print advertising. In an effort to save trees, we try to scale down our printing and supplement with digital marketing efforts when we can as long as it doesn’t impede our marketing strategy.

Seasonal Retail Catalog

Here at the Press we publish in two seasons: Spring and Fall. Depending on when your book is published, you will be included in one of our two seasonal retail catalogs. This retail catalog is a tool our sales reps use when making sales calls to our extensive network of independent bookstores. Bookstores and wholesalers are the specific audience for our retail catalog, so the copy within it is tailored specifically for those markets. We also upload a copy of our retail catalog to Edelweiss—which is an essential platform for publicity. 

What you can do: View our current and past seasonal retail catalogs here: https://nyupress.org/catalogs/.

Subject Catalogs

When it comes to marketing to institutions and professors, subject catalogs are much more effective than a large retail seasonal catalog. For each of the major subjects we publish in, we create a yearly subject catalog. The main purpose of these catalogs is to time them with the major society and association conferences or annual meetings (such as American Political Science Association, American Sociology Association, etc.). We prepare the subject catalogs and print them to mail out to the conference attendees or other groups aligned with the subject (2000-3000 professors teaching classes related to the books featured). We bring these subject catalogs to the appropriate conferences and meetings. Right now, we offer subject catalogs in these areas:

  1. Africana & African American Studies
  2. American Studies
  3. Asian American Studies
  4. Anthropology
  5. Criminology
  6. NEW! Environmental Studies & Nature (every two years)
  7. Gender & Sexuality Studies
  8. History
  9. Jewish Studies
  10. Latinx Studies (every two years)
  11. Law
  12. NEW! Literary Studies
  13. Media Studies
  14. Middle Eastern Studies
  15. NEW! Native & Indigenous Studies (every two years)
  16. Political Science
  17. NEW! Public Policy (every two years)
  18. Religion
  19. Sociology
  20. NEW! Urban Studies (every two years)

We are expanding our subjects to make way for new areas of scholarship we (and our partners) are publishing in, such as Indigenous Studies, Literary Studies, Urban Studies, Disability Studies and more.

What you can do: View our subject catalogs here: https://nyupress.org/catalogs/.

Book Flyers

Specifically for your book, we will create a custom book flyer (8.5 X 11) which has your book’s cover, synopsis, price, ISBN, your biography, and other data on it. Before your book is published, we will email you a PDF of this flyer. The flyer also contains a discount code that you should promote far and wide.

Note: You can use this coupon code across all your promotions online, in print, in person, etc. It’s yours to distribute how you see fit! The coupon never expires but is only valid for purchase of your book from nyupress.org. It’s not valid for use on Amazon or in bookstores, as those folks set their own prices and discounts on your book!

What you can do: Distribute your flyer as you see fit–either electronically or in print. If you are attending a meeting or have a speaking engagement and you’d like for us to print and mail you 50 copies of your flyer, we are more than happy to do that for you. Just shoot your marketing manager an email with your request.

Book Postcards

Sometimes flyers can be a little arduous to wrangle at a speaking event or awkward to leave around at a conference. Postcards are a great alternative to flyers if you should need something a little easier to hand out or even if you want to put some in the post! One side has the cover of your book, the other side would have the headline, synopsis, ISBN, price, series (if applicable), a coupon, and your biography.

What you can do: Let your marketing manager know if you want us to create you a bespoke postcard for your book. We will design it, print them, and mail you a bunch! In your request, make sure you outline what event you need it for (if applicable, so we have a deadline) and what mailing address you want us to ship them to.

Digital Marketing

Website Book Page

Before each season launches, we upload the titles in that season on to our website. This happens about four months before the season officially starts. This information is controlled by our database and composed of the metadata we have for your book. Some of this data Marketing controls, and other parts of the data your Editorial team controls. Your book will be featured on our website with its very own URL which your marketing manager will email to you before your book is published. The information on this webpage is also distributed electronically to our other trading partners (like Amazon and Barnes & Noble). 

We often run promotion campaigns via eNewsletters alerting subscribers of a special sale on our site in order to push more traffic to our site. We monitor traffic and engagement with Google Analytics and also have a link to request a free exam copy on each book page on our website, along with links to the PDFs of your TOC and Introduction (or first section of your book if available). Note that the TOC and Introduction come to us from Production when your book is wrapped, so there may be a delay on this information showing up on your book’s web page.

What you can do: First, you’ll want to include this URL in everything, including your email signature! Boast your new publication—you worked hard on it! If you see an issue on your book’s webpage, please email your marketing manager and your Editorial team ASAP. We can work together in our database to correct the metadata.

Website Author Profile

When we upload your book onto our website (per the section “Website Book Page”), we also create a custom author profile on our website. This is a web page which features your author bio and all the books you’ve published with NYU Press. The URL includes your name, which looks great when included in your CV or other portfolios.

What you can do: Check out your author profile on our website. If you have any edits to the biography displayed, you can be in touch with your Editorial team.

Monthly eNewsletters

Every month, we send out eNewsletters by subject to our internal contacts (over 65,000 folks and growing) featuring new publications for the month, sometimes older featured titles, blog posts, and other content we think is valuable to our audience.

What you can do: Sign up for our eNewsletters so you can stay in the know and see when we feature your book: https://signup.e2ma.net/signup/1860081/1806065/. Also encourage other readers to sign up for our eNewsletters.

Bespoke Email Campaigns

A bespoke email campaign for your title can be a highly effective marketing tool. We find the click-through-rates on bespoke email campaigns are sometimes more than double the industry average. This email is tailored specifically to your book and built by your marketing manager. It will include your book’s cover, title, headline, synopsis, any praise, your biography, and links to buying options (nyupress.org, Amazon, IndieBound, etc.). We also include your book’s specific coupon in the email to drive demand.

What you can do: Simply send your marketing manager a list of your contacts’ emails (in Excel, one email per row), and they will send the bespoke email campaign to your contacts on behalf of the Press. We ask that you only send us contacts for which you have a current email address. We will also include our own internal contacts to bolster your list, folks who have signed up for subject-specific mailing lists, along with previous NYU Press customers of similar titles to yours.

Adoption Campaigns

Adoptions are a large part of our marketing and sales strategy here at the Press. Most of the books we publish are written for use in the classroom, and it’s our job to make sure it gets there! We send out two main course adoption email campaigns per year. The adoption seasons are January / February and August / September. For select titles, we send out a single title adoption email to targets list of professors (1,000-2,000) teaching courses related to the book. For other books that are appropriate for course adoption, we include them in a bulk adoption email by subject, which is sent to a list of professors (3,000-5,000) teaching in that subject area. The main goal of these campaigns is to get professors to request desk / exam copies of your title. We track open- and click-through rates, desk / exam copy requests, and optimize emails to improve these analytics. Through our email marketing service, we can follow up with people who have requested desk / exam copies to suggest related titles and future editions with our Curriculum Recommendations (https://nyupress.org/curriculum-recommendations/).

Other course adoption outreach: In our subject catalogs we specifically note which books are “great for courses,” we link to our desk / exam copy request form in our monthly eNewsletters, and we obtain Instructor’s Guides from our authors.

What you can do: Make sure to clearly outline in your Author Questionnaire the classroom potential of your book. The more specific you can be about which courses (like course names, course numbers) your book will be appropriate for, the more comprehensive we can make our adoption campaign strategy. You can list general course titles across departments / institutions, or list specific courses at targeted institutions. Once your Editorial team alerts you that your book has moved to Production, you should start thinking about creating an Instructor’s Guide for your course. Take a look at some examples here: https://nyupress.org/instructors-guides/

NYU Press Blog, From the Square

We encourage all of our authors to contribute to our blog, which gets thousands of unique visitors every month. We are happy to run a post at any time, but often plan content according to important events, anniversaries, holidays, or special months observed. We share our posts widely across Facebook, Twitter, and our eNewsletters. We find that this platform also helps authors refine pitches for media outlets and connect their work with broader interest topics and themes (more about that in the Publicity section).

What you can do: Write a blog post for us! A successful blog post is short, topical, and easy for readers to digest and engage with. This is a way to appeal to an audience of curious general readers, so the post should be an informal and accessible teaser for your book, not a summary of it or a full explanation of your research. This means each post should be about 500 to 800 words and written in a conversational tone. 

If you’re not sure what to write about, here are some questions that can get you started: 

  • Why did you write the book? 
  • Is there an element of your book you don’t get to explore as fully as you’d like? 
  • Does your book or field of study particularly relate to/influence/put into perspective a story in the news right now? 

If you have an idea for a post you’re not sure about, feel free to ask your marketing manager!

Successful posts often utilize other media resources to engage the audience, like video clips, photos, podcast interviews, and relevant articles. If you have any of these, or would like us to work with you to put something together, they make great additions to a post and we would love to include them.

Check out our blog here: http://www.nyupress.org/blog

Social Media

Social media is an invaluable tool to help promote authors and their work. We maintain a strong social media presence and encourage our authors to do the same. Social media activity can help authors interact with readers, build and expand their audience base, make complex topics accessible, refine pitches for media outlets, engage with industry leaders and most importantly to develop their brand. 

What you can do:

Pull Quotes

We would love to highlight your book on our social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) with quotes from your book. If you are interested, look through your proofed manuscript and send your marketing manager 5-7 quotes. Your marketing manager will then design them into graphics which we’ll share on our social media platforms. You want quotes to pack a punch; we suggest finding quotes that are 25-40 words.

Check out examples here:

Gaming Sexism (Media Studies)
The Untold Story of Sheilds Green (History)
Honey on the Page (quotes from children’s stories)
A Queer New York (Sociology / Urban Studies)
Fight the Power (History), carousel image
The Trouble with Snack Time (Anthropology)
Haiti’s Paper War (History), carousel image
Literary Bioethics (Media Studies), carousel image

If you’re interested in Twitter/X…

No matter which name you pick, Twitter/X is a great platform for sharing information with a wide variety of people. In addition to people they know personally, Twitter users often follow public figures or other users who engage with subjects in which they’re interested. This makes it a useful platform for expanding your audience past your personal contacts. Below are a few tips for making the most of Twitter.

Tweeting Tips for Author 

The Basics:

  1. Tweet regularly—people are more likely to follow users who are very active on the platform.
  2. Be clear about your Twitter ‘voice’ and stick to it—and it’s easier to be yourself. If you chop and change then this could confuse your followers. 
  3. If you like someone’s tweet but don’t want to reply or retweet you can always just like it by clicking the heart. This lets the user know you liked their tweet, and also enables you to find that tweet more easily afterwards.
  4. You can include links in your tweet—Twitter automatically shortens URLs, so don’t worry about using link-shorteners. Include the link to your book wherever possible, and be sure to share links to media coverage of your book!
  5. Track what people you are following are talking about and retweet to your followers, including their @name. 
  6. Engage with your followers, ask them questions—including @names if appropriate. You could give them a question to answer or ask their opinion on things.
  7. If you are commenting on something that you think that someone else, whose Twitter @name you know, will like or be interested in, include their @name in your tweet. They will automatically see this. 
  8. If people are sending you abusive or spam messages, you can report their tweets and/or block them from seeing tweets from your account. To report a tweet, click on the three dots underneath a tweet and select ‘report tweet’. To block a user, go to their page and click on the cog, which gives you a drop-down menu allowing you to block the offending user. 

For Authors:

  1. People love to see insights into authors’ lives. So before publication, tweet about things like your writing process, a picture of the cover, when the book is being published, etc. 
  2. If you’re participating in any events, be sure to spread the word on Twitter.
  3. Always tweet links to any media coverage your book receives.
  4. Try to comment on social events where relevant, tying your tweets to what is happening in the news or in the media, using the appropriate hashtags. If a news story comes up that’s relevant to your book, you can tweet the link and comment on the ways it connects with your research in your tweet. 
  5. Do tweet photos if they’re relevant or interesting, especially photos of your book! NYU Press can provide you with graphics about your book to post as well. 
  6. See below for tips on information to share on Facebook—these ideas will also work well for Twitter!

Facebook can be a great platform to connect with people you know and share information about your book with them. Unlike Twitter, most Facebook users only connect with people they know personally, so Facebook is a bit more limited when it comes to spreading info about your book to new contacts. Setting up an official author page, rather than using your own profile, can be a time consuming effort that’s often not worth undertaking unless you publish new books regularly. For that reason, we recommend focusing your social media efforts on Twitter, but if you’re active on Facebook and interested in sharing about your book, here are a few tips!

  1. Post about your writing process: If you’re still working on your manuscript, post about the writing and editing process to let people know the book will be coming soon.
  2. Use your book cover as your cover photo: We can provide you with your book’s cover image, or with a bespoke graphic sized to Facebook’s specifications that features the cover and information about the book.
  3. Share your book’s Amazon link: When linking to your book, it’s best to use the Amazon link rather than the link to the NYU Press page. The more people visit a book’s Amazon page, the more Amazon’s algorithms recognize its popularity—this will help the book appear higher in searches, and could even prompt Amazon to order more stock to meet demand.
  4. Share quotes from your book: We are also happy to provide graphics highlighting quotes from your book—just send us 5-10 short quotes you think stand well on their own, and we’ll make graphics for you.
  5. Share your book’s discount code: We can send you a special discount code offering 30% off your book. You are welcome to share that code as widely as you’d like!  
  6. Share photos of your book: It’s always fun to share photos of your book at different points in the process—we recommend posting photos when you first receive your author copies, when you come across it in a bookstore, or when you participate in an event.
  7. Share any media attention your book receives: Be sure to post links to reviews, interviews and excerpts.
  8. Promote events: Facebook is a great platform for sharing event information—if you are participating in an event at a bookstore, the store will likely create an event page, but if not, you can always create one yourself. It’s an easy way to share the details of the event and keep track of how many people might attend.
  9. Weigh in on current events related to your book: Share or comment on news stories related to your book’s topic to help position yourself as an expert on the area. 
  10. Show support for other authors’ books: If your friends or colleagues have published books, share information about them—they might reciprocate! 
  11. Respond to people who engage: Always thank commenters when they express interest in your book, and be sure to answer any questions about the book or its availability! If you get a question you can’t answer, just ask us! 

If you’re interested in Instagram…

If you already have an Instagram account, follow us at @nyupress, https://www.instagram.com/nyupress/.

If you don’t already have an Instagram account, consider starting one: https://help.instagram.com/454502981253053/.

If you’re interested in how you can utilize Instagram for your book or your author events, peruse some helpful resources below. If you have a specific question, do not hesitate to reach out to Lauren about Instagram.

The Rules of Instagram: 

https://www.impactbnd.com/dos-and-donts-of-instagram

https://annamcnaught.com/blog/the-unwritten-rules-of-instagram

The Basics:

https://www.lifewire.com/instagram-tips-for-beginners-3485872

VIDEO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPZYRgPu2Lg

Bookstagram:

8 Tips for Bookstagrammers

https://www.page-anchor.com/blogs/pa-blog/the-complete-bookstagram-guide-12-bookstagrammers-tips-for-success

Publicity

The Basics

We will send review copies of your title to media outlets and any personal media connections you provide. Depending on the profile and intended audience of your book, these outlets can include academic journals, national and local media including newspapers, magazines, websites, and radio programs. Depending on the profile and intended audience of your book, we may send advance reading copies to the media several months before your book’s publication. Our publicity team will work with you (and with your university’s PR team if possible) to develop a publicity strategy and seek opportunities for media coverage of your book. They will also work with you on setting up speaking engagements, radio interviews, and developing and pitching op-eds.

What you can do:

  • Speak with your university’s PR team to see what kind of publicity your school can help set up around your book (this can include on-campus events, outreach to local media, coverage in university news publications, etc.).
  • Create lists of media outlets and contacts who you know or who have interviewed you about your work previously, as well as outlets and contacts who regularly cover topics related to your work, and share those with your publicist.
  • Loop your publicist in on any requests for review copies from media or potential reviewers. We can send out copies so you don’t have to use your author copies. We can also follow up with the media about potential coverage.
  • Keep your publicist in the loop with any book events you plan.
  • Keep an eye on the news cycle and be thinking about where your work fits in (“Could I give an interview or write an op-ed using my research to respond to this?”). Immediately reach out to your publicist to discuss any opportunities that arise.

Op-Eds

Op-eds relate to current events in the news and are published in the opinion section of print and online newspapers and major media outlets. Op-eds must make a strong argument, adhere to a strict word count, and be accessible to a general audience.

What you can do:

  • Keep an eye on the news cycle and be thinking about where your work fits in (“Could I write an op-ed citing my research to respond to this?”). Immediately reach out to your publicist to discuss any opportunities that arise. We can help brainstorm op-ed ideas, give feedback on op-ed drafts, and determine when it is best for you to submit an op-ed yourself vs. for us to pitch it on your behalf.
  • Read op-eds to familiarize yourself with the kind of coverage that usually appears in the editorial section as well as this style of writing. It is different from academic writing in that it must be free from jargon and must focus on one clear point. Make one argument thoroughly, point by point; the more detail the better. If you try to do too much, you can wind up with an article that, in striving to say everything, ends up saying nothing.
  • Review op-ed guidelines for publications that would be a good fit for your work. All publications have different requirements, but op-eds in major media are generally no longer than 750 words.

Interviews

Interview Tips for Authors:

  • Listen to a previous episode or 2 of the program to get a feel for the questions and interview style. 
  • Read over your Q&A and chapter guide. Think about 3 major points you would want your reader to take away from the book, and write those points down so you remember to repeat them during your interview. 
  • Practice explaining, in a conversational tone, the concept of your book to a friend or family member who is not an expert on the topic. This is a great way to see what a general reader will and will not understand. 
  • Avoid academic jargon whenever possible (think: “pedagogy,” “ethnography,” “ontology,” “methodology,” “aesthetics”). Practice briefly defining complex terms (take notes!) and use this during your interview. 
  • Keep your answers short and sweet–you will always have less time than you think you do! This is the best advice I’ve ever received: “Land the plane.” Make your point, and stop talking. Give the interviewer time to ask follow up questions. Remember, it’s a conversation, not a classroom lecture! 

Sound & Video Tips:

  • For Zoom and phone interviews, find a quiet place in your home or office where you will not be disturbed. Avoid rooms with lots of hard surfaces (like kitchens) that will amplify noise and create echoes on an audio recording. Rooms with lots of fabric (bedrooms) or books (offices) will absorb extra sound, and are better recording spaces. 
  • Do not wear clothing or jewelry that makes noise when you move; it will interfere with the sound quality of the recording. Try not to speak with your hands, as this can also interfere with the recording. 
  • Dress nicely for video taped interviews; think business casual or nicer.
  • Bring a copy of your book for video interviews, or prop it up behind you on a bookshelf if you’re doing the interview from your office/home. 

Author Speaking Engagements

A large part of spreading the word about your book is done through author events and speaking engagements. We highly encourage our authors to set up events and speaking engagements as soon as you know your book’s publication date, and well in advance of your pub date. Events must be scheduled for after your book’s pub date to ensure you will have copies of the book there. We are here to support your efforts in any and all ways possible. Here is a list a good practices and other useful information to keep in mind as you go about planning events:

  • We generally discourage bookstore appearances because of low attendance and small sales. We ask that you focus your efforts on events that have a built in audience i.e. college campuses, libraries, historical societies, professional associations, community organizations, etc.
  • Event coordinators usually need about 3-6 months advance notice to plan an event. Event calendars fill up fast, and planning events far in advance allows time to promote the event to audiences.

What you can do:

When thinking about events, you should keep a few things in mind:

  • Do I have contacts (family, friends, colleagues) in this city? Event coordinators sometimes will ask if you have an invitation list, meaning: can you help fill their audience?
  • Does your book have a special tie in to this city/school? Having a local angle also helps in setting up an event at a selective institution.
  • Your schedule and school schedules: Can your schedule afford you travel time? Should you focus on local events? Should you tack on events to your speaking schedule/conference circuit? Are you thinking of having an event during finals week, spring break, or other times that would severely limit event turn out?
  • Travel funds: Will your school help with costs? NYU Press cannot fund travel for our authors. In some cases we can donate a small sum, but this is something we must be made aware of well before you start planning events that require travel.
  • As you are setting up an event, please ask the event coordinator how they handle book sales. Will their campus bookstore handle sales? Does the author? Do they work with an outside bookseller? Do they discourage book sales? Is the Press responsible for coordinating sales? To limit confusion, include your publicist in the discussion on book sales.

Important: There are many moving parts that go into coordinating book sales. To ensure books are indeed confirmed for your event, PLEASE follow up with the coordinator or campus bookstore 3 days before your event.  

  • When you have an event confirmed, please alert your publicist to your schedule. Include in the email the date, time, address, and event coordinator’s name and email address. We will be in touch with the coordinator about coordinating our marketing & publicity efforts for the event.

Other Initiatives

Awards

The Basics

Our awards program ensures that your book reaches book awards committees in your field, giving your book the opportunity to be recognized for the contribution you are making to the academic community. Aside from the obvious publicity benefits of winning an award, award submissions can be a great way to promote, receive recognition, and arouse interest in your book, while also helping facilitate the scholarly circulation of your work within academic associations and societies. NYU Press is here to lead coordination of your book’s award submissions (up to five awards), unless author participation is required per the submission guidelines. Below you’ll find the basic guidelines for this process.

The guidelines

We gladly accommodate for the distribution of your book (and cover submission fees) to awards committees for a total of five awards, but have to cap it here, so that we can provide the same service for all our authors. We’ll choose from the list you provided us in your Authors Questionnaire. NYU Press will ultimately determine the final list for your book, though you are welcome to submit your book for any awards using your author discount on the purchase of your book. 

Sometimes an award requires a party other than the publisher or the author to nominate a title. In this case, we will coordinate with you to select and invite your chosen nominator, and send books to the awards committee as we would for any other award. Sometimes publishers are barred from nominating titles. Though the culture around self-nomination varies slightly from award to award, we’ve found that unless it is not permitted within the award submission guidelines, self-nomination is quite common and viewed favorably by committees. 

Occasionally, membership to an organization is required to submit an award to that organization. In this case, it will be your responsibility to pay the membership fee. Please note that submissions to the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize require written permission from our press director and take extra time to coordinate and process internally.

What you can do:

  • Email us your finalized top 5-10 awards if this has changed from when you filled out your Authors Questionnaire. NYU Press will submit your book to five awards, so if you have a strong preference for certain submissions over others, please let us know their order of priority.  
  • Develop a shortlist of potential third-party nominators for your awards. Some awards require a third party contact for nomination (neither author nor publisher) who is familiar with your field and your work. We find that it can be prudent for authors to field discussions with these potential nominators before award submissions are due. It’s best to initiate this exchange with your potential nominator and reach out to Lia once you’ve secured a nominator and/or letter. We suggest you reach out to these individuals ideally several months in advance of the awards submission deadline, to give them ample time to write you letters of support. We’ll work with the nominator and you to cover any submissions fees and send books to awards committees.
  • If you have changed your mind about which awards you’d like to submit for, and have an addition to the list, please give us at least four weeks notice prior to the award deadline. This will allow us to give your award nomination the attention it deserves! 
  • If you have won an award, let us know! Sometimes awards committees do not have our contact details, and we want the world to know when your work is being recognized! We’ll post to our website and share within our networks.

Exhibits / Conferences

Each year, the Press attends the following conferences:

  • Abu Dhabi International Book Fair
  • African Studies Association
  • American Academy of Religion
  • American Anthropological Association
  • American Historical Association
  • American Oriental Society
  • American Political Science Association
  • American Psychology – Law Society
  • American Society for Criminology
  • American Sociological Association
  • American Studies Association
  • Archaeological Institute of America / SCS
  • Association for Asian American Studies
  • Association for Jewish Studies
  • Association for the Sociology of Religion
  • Berkshire Conference of Women Historians
  • Book Expo America
  • Brooklyn Book Festival
  • Eastern Sociological Society
  • International Communication Association
  • Latina/o Studies Association
  • Law and Society Association
  • Middle Eastern Studies Association
  • Modern Language Association
  • National Women’s Studies Association
  • Organization of American Historians
  • Philadelphia Trans Wellness Conference
  • Society for Cinema and Media Studies
  • Society for the Scientific Study of Religion

Sometimes, we are able to exhibit at conferences we do not attend through our distributor, Ingram, or our partner presses: New Village Press, Monthly Review Press, University of Regina Press, and Wits University Press.

If you would like your book featured at a conference that is not included in the list above, we cannot guarantee that we can send your book. However, we can look into options for partnering with our distributor, or one of our partner presses to potentially send your book to be displayed at their booth. Be in touch directly with Lia to talk through options!

What you can do:

  • Let your marketing contact know as soon as possible whether you have a speaking engagement, event, or author-meets-critic session lined up at a specific conference
  • Let your marketing contact know if you plan to attend a conference that is different from the list that you published with (for example, if you plan to attend American Studies but you published with the Law editor), we will do our best to support you there!
  • Remember to tag us in social media at the conference (@nyupress)!
  • View the current year’s conference plan here: https://nyupress.org/news/conferences/

Author Events

We offer discounts and support for book events that you set up throughout the lifetime of your book. We highlight the event on our website, can create promotional flyers, postcards, and other materials to distribute at the event, and will promote the event through our social media channels.

If you would like to have books available for sale at the event, you have the option to purchase them at a 40% discount, resell at any price of your choice, and keep the proceeds for yourself. If you are working with a bookstore, the bookstore will typically order the book through their own accounts. If they have questions, you can put them in touch with Lia and your publicist!

What you can do:

  • Let your marketing contact and your publicist know as soon as possible when you have an event lined up; if possible please send a link to the event’s web page that we can feature on our website
  • Let your marketing contact and your publicist know if you would like us to send promotional materials for the event
  • If you plan to order books, please allow yourself at least four weeks’ lead time before the event for us to process your order and ship the books
  • If you are organizing a New York City-based event, someone from the Press may be able to attend and assist with your book sales. Please give at least four weeks’ notice if you would like our assistance at a local event.

Amazon & Goodreads

Amazon is an important platform for your book—more people than ever use Amazon to make book purchases, but it also serves as a search engine and is often the first place readers learn about new books. That means it’s important to make sure the Amazon page for your book is as clear and informative as possible, which we work hard to accomplish. The same is true of Goodreads—many readers turn to Goodreads first to discover new books to read, so we are careful to maintain curated pages for each of our books.

Amazon and Goodreads both offer author profiles—filling these out can be helpful in two important ways. These profiles can help readers learn more about you, and they can also help your book gain more visibility. When an author profile is filled out, a book has better chances of appearing in searches across different platforms. Claiming your profile is easy—Amazon and Goodreads offer simple instructions.

What you can do:

If you are posting information about your book online or sharing a link with friends and family, always share the link to your book’s Amazon page. The more people visit a book’s Amazon page, the more Amazon’s algorithms recognize its popularity—this will help the book appear higher in searches, and could even prompt Amazon to order more stock to meet demand.

To fill out your author profiles, follow the instructions provided by Amazon and Goodreads

To help us curate your book’s Amazon page, you can also work with your marketer to develop ideas for Amazon Publisher Content. Amazon offers publishers the option to post graphics or images to a book’s page to give customers a better sense of what they’ll learn. Think about whether any of the items below might be a good fit for your book, and let your marketer know:

  • Infographics: It there are any facts or statistics from the book that might surprise or intrigue readers, the marketing team can put these together into an infographic. Take a look at a sample.
  • Images: If your book contains images that you have the rights to, we can feature those on the Amazon page with descriptions. Take a look at a sample. 
  • Quotes: Intriguing and incisive quotes can help draw in readers. Pull together a list of short but interesting quotes from the book, or highlight to your marketer quotes from reviews that you think should be emphasized. Take a look at a sample.
  • Timeline: If your book offers a historical narrative, pick out 8-10 significant events from the book—your marketer can use this to create a timeline. Take a look at a sample. 

Independent Bookstore Outreach

We have close relationships with many US bookstores including Seminary Coop in Chicago, Book Culture in NYC and City Lights in San Francisco. Partnering with Harper’s Magazine, we hold annual events for our authors at Book Culture on the Upper West Side of NYC as well as make it part of our social media strategy to call out independent bookstores and sellers. We have sent gift mailings to indies across the country with branded bags, special apparel, galleys and other printed material. We send quarterly eNewsletters to a wide range of indies highlighting our forthcoming books. Our team of sales representatives makes regular visits to these stores to discuss new books as well. 

What you can do:

Send us contact information for the stores in your area. We are happy to reach out to them to make sure they’re aware a local author has a book coming out. If you have participated in events at a particular store, please send us their information as well. 

Advertising

NYU Press routinely and strategically buys placements for print and electronic advertising in Harpers, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic, Foreword Reviews, Mother Jones, LARB, and other publications. We have a strong relationship with all of these publications and take advantage of special issues such as themed editions or special editions for large-scale publishing events like BEA, The Brooklyn Book Festival, and the Los Angeles Book Fair. We are able to test different forms of digital marketing with these partners including dedicated newsletter and banner ads. We are very reactive in our advertising strategy in terms of reviews that come in and issues that arise from the news cycle in relation to our publications. We are only able to advertise a limited number of titles, so not every book will be featured in these types of ads. 

What you can do:

To help us find the right audience for your book, you can recommend smaller targeted publications that directly reach the readers who would take an interest in your book. We would be happy to look into advertising options in these kinds of publications.

Coupons / Discounts

All authors can share the coupon code NYUAU30. This coupon will provide readers 30% off the list price when they purchase your book from our website: nyupress.org. The coupon will be on your Book Flyer which your marketing manager emails to you before your publication date, along with other materials we design for your book.

What you can do: Share this code far and wide! Share it on social media. Forward it along (with an announcement) to any listservs you are a member of. Include it in your email signature. Send it to friends and family members! The possibilities are endless! If you have any questions or concerns about your coupon, talk to your marketing manager.

Instructor’s Guides

When we promote and market your book to professors, often the availability of an Instructor’s Guide can be the tipping point for someone to submit a request for a desk / exam copy of your book or even in their choice to adopt it! If you think your book is appropriate for course adoption, you should consider creating an Instructor’s Guide! Let your marketing manager know if you plan to develop an Instructor’s Guide.

What you can do: 

To get started, first it would be good for you to review some other Instructor’s Guides we’ve put together in the past, find some examples below. 

Second, consider how folks will use your book in a course and reflect on how you would use it in your own course. Perhaps it can be a core text, a supplemental one, or even just included on a reading list. Does the structure of your book lend itself to chapter by chapter discussion questions you can include in your Instructor’s Guide? Consider if there are any other materials (besides your book) that could help enhance the discussion your book drives. Did you make a website with your research, are there other books and resources students could enjoy to broaden their understanding, etc.?

Third, write up in a Word doc your Instructor’s Guide and send it to Linnie. She’ll review it and send comments. Once the document is finalized, our designer will create a PDF which we will post on our website for potential adopters to download.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Consider the abstracts and keywords document you turned into your Editorial Team before your book was transmitted as a nice starting point for a chapter by chapter Instructor’s Guide.
  • Images which are included in your manuscript should not be duplicated in your Instructor’s Guide—permissions can get tricky, so best to avoid them all together.
  • We are happy to include any Images you create specifically for the Instructor’s Guide.
  • Our format for the Instructor’s Guide can be very flexible, so if there is something unique to your book that is a selling point you want to emphasize in your Instructor’s Guide—let’s talk about how best NYU Press can support that!

Library / Librarian Outreach

We take special initiatives to reach librarians and have a significant, and growing, in-house list of libraries and librarians across the country. We use Foreword Reviews to send dedicated newsletters to their subscriber lists, solely selecting librarians. We also run pay-per-click campaigns on Facebook and Twitter to target the librarian demographic and other higher education institutions. We aim to encourage local library outreach from authors, in a similar sense to independent bookstores. Our publicity team also connects and targets organically Edelweiss and other publicity platforms. 

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