chance of achieving significant sales if you seem to know
how to promote it from the outset. In your marketing bit
you can assume a reasonably prominent entry in the
publisher’s catalogue in the year of publication, and maybe
a briefer catalogue mention in the year after. But do not
assume that the publisher will otherwise spend any money
on advertising the book, a luxury usually dispensed with in
the monograph market. The effective period for a
monograph book to achieve sales is normally two years.
Sales in the first year are sustained mainly by the catalogue
entry. With big firms the publisher’s reps bring the book to
the attention of librarians and university bookshops, and
promote it at academic conferences. Thereafter sales may be
generated by any reviews of the book in journals. If the
book has not become known to members of the profession
within two years, its chances of further sales are very slim.
It can be very helpful to mention that you will e-mail a long
list of relevant scholars yourself or can supply specialist
mailing lists to the publisher. It is also helpful to promise to
write conference papers to signpost the book at key
professional meetings in the first year it comes out. You
might also point to one or two articles that you have had
accepted in good-quality journals, which will come out well
ahead of the book’s publication and alert readers to its
imminence. But you also need to make sure that (in the
publisher’s mind) this does not undermine the reasons why
people will want to buy your book.
◆ Give a timetable for delivering the final manuscript. Build in a
two- to three-month period for the publishers to send your
manuscript out to referees and receive comments back.
Then build in a further two to three months for you to make
the changes demanded in the referees’ comments.
Promising to be able to deliver a complete manuscript
within six to nine months is best for publishers. (Delivering
more rapidly than this is not much help, because publishers’
catalogues and publicity materials can rarely be redone at
shorter notice.) Stress that the manuscript is your
publications priority and that these timings will not slip.
If you do not meet your delivery date then in theory your
publisher can cancel a book contract.
PUBLISHING YOUR RESEARCH◆ 259