Enduring self promotion

As you may be aware (I think I mentioned it once or twice), my book Metaphors of Ed Tech came out last week. Unless you’re a major author or published by a publisher with a massive marketing budget, it means a certain amount of self-promotion falls to the academic. For (some) academics this is extremely uncomfortable, and goes something like this “cough, oh, sorry to bother you, I appear to have published a book, it’s probably nonsense, no need to worry, thanks, sorry again”. Which is a shame because books take a lot of time to bring to fruition, and readers may even like them.

I follow a Facebook group, Books of Horror, which many independent horror authors contribute to. Through this I’ve come to appreciate how much hard work the modern author has to put in to getting their book noticed. It’s not enough to write a good (or not-so-good) book, authors are required to engage in multiple online communities, develop websites, attend conventions, run Tik-Tok, Instagram, Twitter accounts and generally be their own marketing manager. So with this partly in mind, here’s what I attempted for my own book:

Podcast with Terry Greene on Gettin’ Air. To be fair, Terry contacted me and it’s always fun to talk to him.

Edsurge podcast and article – I discuss how metaphors shape ed tech with EdSurge’s Jeff Young

DS106 radio show with Maren Deepwell. We had a lot of fun playing tenuously related metaphor tunes and chatting on DS106 radio:

Social Media. With the aid of images created in Canva by Maren, I posted something every day last week on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. I apologise to those who follow me, but by the end of the week, you would at least be aware the book was out there.

Spreadshirt shop – a non-profit (to me) shop where you can buy mugs, t-shirts etc with that lovely Bryan Mathers artwork. Be the envy of your friends.

Blogging – I mean, no surprises there.

I don’t know if this was too much, not enough, or not the correct activities. I’m up for more suggestions. I’m not sure we’ll do an audiobook or podcast series this time, like that for 25 Years of Ed Tech. People really liked it, but that was down to Clint Lalonde and Laura Pasquini and took a LOT of organising. As academics we sort of engage in a form of slow-burn marketing through conferences, research papers, citations, networking, etc. But there is probably something we can learn from the more social media adept authors out there also, while not being toooooo annoying.