Schools cover an amazing range of possibilities: daycare centers, K-12, adult education and community colleges, four-year institutions, universities, special-education programs, even home schooling and vocational programs. They all have potential as large-scale buyers.
Orders will not pop into your office, however. They will dawdle in. Promotional material sent now may result in an order six months or a year downstream. But that order could be for dozens, hundreds, even thousands of books. And it isn't necessarily a one-shot thing. Reorders are likely to roll in each new semester. Another reason this is an attractive market is that most sales are made on a "short discount," meaning that you allow only 20 percent off the retail price.
Perhaps you're thinking, "My book wouldn't sell to schools; it's not a textbook." You may be in for a nice surprise. The wide variety of titles that are appropriate in today's academic circles is amazing. For instance, the General Books Department of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich promoted the following for college use: Hitler's Secret Service (history and civilization), Of Love and Lust (psychology), All Our Children (sociology), Zen Catholicism (philosophy and religion), The Company She Keeps (women's studies), and the novels The Voyage Out and Jacob's Room. And because self-publishing is merely a microcosm of trade publishing, our Complete Guide to Self-Publishing sometimes serves as a text for university classes on publishing.
To help educators appreciate why your book would be appropriate, stress any benefits that make it more likely for adoption. These might include chapters arranged a certain way to make it easier, inclusion of exercises and quizzes, or review questions at the end of each chapter.
Even if your work is not suitable as a text, it may be used as related material for course planning. Such books are called supplemental texts. We were fortunate in introducing Discover Your Roots to the San Diego Unified School District. This contact netted us ongoing sales since various junior and senior highs picked up the book as a supplementary text in history classes. Supplemental texts also find a fertile field in continuing education. Adult learning programs cover a lot of unlikely subjects, some of which may dovetail with your book.
Call the board of education at the nearest large city to determine who is in charge of curriculum for the subject area of your book. In our case the curriculum consultant was impressed with the examination copy we provided and invited us to supply him with a quantity of fliers to distribute to schools in the district. Needless to say, we were happy to cooperate.
A specialized mailing list is the perfect means of reaching your target market. Two main firms offer detailed breakdowns of faculty. One is QED (Quality Education Data). Its catalog contains a quick reference guide to the entire education market and QED has both mailing lists and database services. For instance, with its new educator e-mail marketing service, you can have your message delivered to the desktops of such educators as pre-K teachers, guidance counselors, athletics coaches, plus teachers who cover English, fine arts and music, math, science, social studies, you name it. Reach QED at 800-525-5811 or visit them online at www.qeddata.com. The other company you want to check out is Market Data Retrieval, which has four areas covering K-12, colleges, Libraries, and day care. Call 800-333-8802 or visit www.schooldata.com. Consider renting a small subset to test your mailing's effectiveness before rolling out with the larger list.
The resourceful author or publisher, however, may be able to come up with a list using more creative tactics. Try calling the State Board of Education (usually in the capital) and ask for its publication department. Many times the BOE will sell you a list of schools on labels or send you a book with a list that you can keyboard into a database yourself. Sometimes these lists are free, other times $10, and in one case, a publisher got a wonderful CD with 15,000 school names for $100.
The best time to mail to colleges is the beginning of summer for the fall semester and prior to October for the winter semester. Educators will expect to receive an examination copy on which they can base a decision. That doesn't mean you automatically have to send books to everyone. Prepare a mailing piece and, as part of the qualification to receive a complimentary copy, require that the following information be provided:
Title and nature of course
Estimated number of students
College upper or lower division course (Freshman and sophomore classes are larger and thus more profitable.)
Starting date of the class
Approximate date of "adoption" decision (Kids, pets, and books are adopted.)
Source of the decision