How to sell your popular science book in the age of influencers and podcasts

A friend of mine, Greg Gbur, has a new book out. It looks fascinating, its title is Invisibility: The History and Science of How Not to Be Seen. I needn’t tell you much more about it, it does what it says on the tin, as they say. Gbur is a physics prof who specialises in optics and has a way with words. It’s a guaranteed great read. Anyway, Greg was lamenting on social media how hard it is for a popular science author with a book out to get that very message across. There are so many books published every week, so many people chattering and chuntering on about those books. Any attempt to promote it and get the book into people’s shopping basket or onto their Kindle seem doomed in this age of influencers and endless podcasts vying for our attention. It was different back in my day, says the grand old man whose book Deceived Wisdom was in book stores back in 2012! Actually, it wasn’t that different, I did my best with promoting it as did my publisher, they got me spreads in various papers and there was an option to do radio interviews (they’re like olden-days podcasts but you can’t pause or rewind them, hahah). I thought about some of the things I did to help sell my book and at one point it was riding high, above books by Sir David Attenborough and Professor Brian Cox that were on the market at the same time. Indeed, I think the relative rate of sale on Amazon outstripped those two giants for at least a week or two. My publisher was pleased....
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Other Science Source Type: blogs