Using the web to promote your popular science book
sara abdulla
Monday, 26 February 2007 13:21 UTC
What cool online things have you tried to broaden the reach of your title? What impact did they have?
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Hi Sara—as you know I have written an SF novel called The Sigil. It is currently doing the publishing rounds, but I also sent it to some SF contacts. One of them, Vonda McIntyre suggested I upload it onto the iFiction site ran by SF author and computer scientist Andrew Burt. My agent supported this idea enthusiastically so I did so, and The Sigil is available here for free, and it is beginning to get some interest (I’d be interested to learn what people think about it). Indeed, I seem to be getting feedback to the effect that prior online publication may enhance the chances of future print publication: publishers value word-of-mouth as a way to judge the market. Not quite straight science publishing, I know, but the phenomenon could be more general.
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I’ve just started making short films on all things climate change for YouTube and similar. So far, the only thing I share with Attenborough is my first name!
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Wow. What great ideas both. Henry—you’re right, sharing full text online ahead of print is very popular in SF, with Cory Doctorow leading the way. Dave, you’re on YouTube now? Does your total media domination know no bounds?! Did your Amazon guide pay dividends, do you think?
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The biggest thing I’ve done is to set up the popular science website (www.popularscience.co.uk) to make my (and other popular science authors’) books more visible, and to advertise talks, events etc. In the past I’ve also used Google searches to some effect. For example, my book A Brief History of Infinity came out in November (2003), so I emailed as many companies as I could find on Google with the word “infinity” in the title asking if they’d be interested in using the books as a Christmas/Holiday gift to special customers etc. One US company bought 150 copies.
Cheers,
BrianP.S. – Sara, where’s your photo?
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Brian, your ‘infinity’ idea is genius, and a new one on me. On another matter, I was lurking on the psci-com discussion list yesterday (for those in public engagement with science) and saw a canny mention of authors’ or publishers’ websites offering support material for reading groups. There should definitely be more of this. Why should fiction get all the book group fun, eh?
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How has Dave’s amazon.com guide been promoted? I notice it has received 186 views in ~8 months… which is frankly not a lot for such a hot topic. I think it’s an excellent guide and has a clear appeal; by contrast, my blog, on which I say nothing of real interest and certainly nothing very topical, received about 1000 views in the same time frame.
Dave, I think you could really increase your views (and hence sales) by just getting a bit of blog loving going on – if people linked to your page, you’d quickly see more traffic.
(Sorry if this is all very obvious – I was just surprised to find such a useful page on such a topical subject only getting 186 views in 8 months.)
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Book groups are a great idea. A member of a book group in my local village asked if I’d anything they could read, so they went for my book on Light, Light Years – seemed to go down well, and the had me along for a Q&A session in exchange for a pint. Admittedly, not exactly Richard and Judy territory, but it’s a start!
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One other thought; I’m a top 1000 reviewer for Amazon.co.uk and I often review colleague’s books. Generally the Top 1000 / 500 reviews go to the top I think.
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On LabLit.com, we support unpublished fiction writers who use science or scientists in their fiction by publishing their work (or extracts from longer works). So far the response has been great.
And just a quick plug for Nick Evans, a British physicist who’s written a novel about his world and is offering it for free online. You can read a brief Q&A about him and his book, and find links to the novel, here.
If anyone knows of a struggling ‘lab lit’ writer, send him/her my way!
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