With the number of book review sections in newspapers in decline, selling books is getting more difficult, and nobody has it tougher than scholarly presses.
Duke University Press is facing the changing environment with a strong collection of books and a variety of marketing tools from teddy bear giveaways to developing early buzz for the books on the web.
It's a tradition that a university press' fall catalog includes more popular titles than in the spring. For Duke Press, the fall catalog ideal, says Press publicist Laura Sell, is a book that will be read by the general public but also get picked up for college classroom use. "We always have that goal," Sell said.
There are other highlights in the fall Duke Press catalog, including a book from a Duke faculty member exploring dissident artists in Syria and one from another faculty member challenging how the media portrays disease "outbreaks." Click here for more.
One example of the Press' potential "crossover" books and their marketing tactics is Undead TV: Essays on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," a look by media scholars at the hit TV show and its many afterlives in popular culture.
Sell said interest in the book, which still hasn't hit the stores, has been driven by fan websites such as slayageonline.com and whedonesque.com. "People are still talking about this show even though it's been off the air since 2003," she says.
Undead TV, which will be out in November, was one of the dozen or so books Duke publicists were pitching at this summer's Book Expo America, the annual trade show for the publishing industry, that was held this year in New York City. The show is one of the highlights of the book-selling season and a key place to attract attention to books.
Michael McCullough, sales manager for the press, attended the gathering, which included booksellers, reviewers, TV talk show booking agents and Hollywood scouts on the lookout for books that might be adapted into movies or TV shows. "Serendipity is everything there," he said. "You cram your days with activities but the most important meeting may be with someone you didn't know existed before. Those are connections it's very hard to make any other way."
Also getting early attention is Danny Wilcox Frazier's Driftless: Photographs from Iowa, a dramatic portrayal of a changing Midwest. "There's a lot of interest in Iowa," says McCullough. "Booksellers want him to come in with a slide show and talk about how the subjects come to let him into their lives to take these photographs."
Frazier's book will be published jointly in November with the Center for Documentary Studies.
There was good news at the show on two important fronts, McCullough said. Some independent booksellers told Duke publicists they are featuring university press books more prominently as a way to distinguish themselves from larger competitors.
Duke Press representatives also heard positive comments from officials from Amazon.com, which holds a growing share of the book market. "The great leveling feature of the Internet is that my book might look just as important as a Random House bestseller," McCullough said.
The most recent book from Duke Press to have "crossover" popular appeal was Kathleen M. Barry's Femininity in Flight: A History of Flight Attendants, which was published this past February. Reviewers and readers also flocked last fall to Good Bread Is Back: A Contemporary History of French Bread, the Way It Is Made, and the People Who Make It, by Steven Kaplan.
Both books benefited from accessible writing and compelling topics that appealed to general readers. In Kaplan's case, a bit of chance publicity helped, too. A producer for NBC's "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" happened to read the book and decided that the professor would make a good guest on the show. The hilarious interview became a minor You-Tube phenomenon.
Some of the visitors to the Duke Press trade show booth came away with a teddy bear, a kitschy way to remind booksellers of cultural critic Marita Sturken's forthcoming Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero. Sturken argues that over the past two decades, Americans have responded to national trauma in ways that reveal "a tenacious investment in the idea of America's innocence."
Sell said it helped to have a giveaway since advance galleys of the book weren't available at the time of the convention in June. The book will be published in November.
"People were asking ‘Why is a university press giving out teddy bears,'" McCullough said. "Teddy bears were a great way to get people to slow down."