On the marketing and publicity side, book subscriptions can increase book sales as well as visibility. Readers get to discover books and genres they normally wouldn’t pick up at the bookstore. In return, authors, especially new and up-and-coming authors, are able to get their books into the hands of their target audience.
A compelling book cover does more than look good: it reflects the story, genre, and tone within, creating an authentic experience for the reader. By blending graphic design with branding principles, authors and designers can make covers that resonate and build anticipation.
Independent bookstores have survived and thrived by embracing community, curation, and creative convening. Learn how these three strategies can elevate your marketing in the post-digital era, offering a personal touch in a world of mass production.
In the spring of 2025, there was a gap in our publication schedule while a project team waited to acquire their next manuscript. We took this opportunity to prioritize backlist marketing. . . . Quickly we realized there was room to improve our overall backlist marketing system.
THEMA is a system used for categorizing books by their subject matter. Like Book Industry Standards and Communications (BISAC) or Book Industry Communication (BIC), THEMA codes classify book subjects, making the process of classifying titles simpler. Unlike BISAC or BIC, these codes are not solely used in a specific region like Europe or North America. Due to THEMA being a multilingual system, it can be utilized on an international level.
The press kit should give a grand overview of the book itself but in the most condensed way possible. It’s important to touch on themes and highlight the very best of the book and its author. These things all add up, and scoring reviews is great publicity for us and helps us sell more books.
Sometimes a book moves through its journey from acquisition to publication quicker than the average two-year timeline, and in the case of our Multnomah County Library Writers Project titles, like the forthcoming The Blue Line Letters, we are on an expedited one-year publication cycle. As the book’s project manager, I’ll take you through what I have been working on with the project team in the first several months of its publication process and give you a glimpse into what comes next.
This fateful upheaval of the current social media landscape means big opportunities to innovate the book marketing mix. Publishers need to be proactive in forming strategies to reap the unique splendors of a new host of social media platforms, and one channel is especially promising: Geneva.
Thorn City is Ooligan Press’ forthcoming suspense/thriller title. Now that the developmental edit and title generation have been completed, the book is moving on to the next steps. During the Winter 2023 term, the heavy copyedit was sent to the author for review and the Thorn City team has been working on the persona exercise, marketing plan, and cover design brief.
Although I’ve been learning a lot about the different facets of publishing at Ooligan Press and in the Book Publishing Program, I wanted to learn more. So, when I heard the 2023 PubWest Conference was happening in Seattle, I jumped at the chance to attend.