The story behind Caltech’s first speculative fiction anthology - part 3
Marketing the book!
Dear readers,
I have finally finished writing up the story of how I and other members of Caltech’s creative writing club (TechLit) brought the anthology Inner Space and Outer Thoughts: Speculative Fiction From Caltech and JPL Authors into the world. If you missed the first two parts of this tale, you can find them here:
The final segment of the story behind the Caltech anthology: marketing
Going into the publishing process, we (the TechLit club) had no experience with marketing of any kind, but we at least understood that no one would read the book if no one knew the book existed. Despite our limited time and financial resources, our narrowly focused campaign achieved the following outcomes:
The book was featured on the front page of our local newspaper, the Pasadena Star-News. The paper featured it a second time following the anthology launch celebration event at Caltech.
We have sold over 1300 total copies. 1096 copies were purchased through Amazon (about half ebooks and half paperbacks). We have not diligently tracked how many additional paperback copies were sold at events (conventions, book fairs, etc.) and by commission through local bookstores, but 150 copies would be a conservative estimate. We also sold 87 copies of the audiobook, half to libraries and half to individual readers.
A few other notable outcomes:
In August 2023, the book reached the #1 paperback bestseller slot at the historic Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena.
The La Cañada Flintridge Book Club, in the town where NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is located, selected the book as their May 2024 read.
The Caltech Office of the President acquired 80 signed copies to give as gifts to distinguished visitors to the campus.
Several of the anthology editor-authors have been invited to speak about the book at writing convention panels and other events.
We TechLit members gained publishing industry connections and built mentorship relationships with some incredible sci-fi author alumni!
What we did (and what we could have done better)
By the book release date (April 2023), a majority of anthology editors had graduated or otherwise moved on from Caltech/JPL, and I myself was scrambling to finish my PhD dissertation and graduate. Suffice to say, we didn’t have a huge amount of time to dedicate to marketing. However, I think the time we did invest was well-spent.
We advertised primarily to the audience that we felt would be most interested in the book: Caltech and JPL affiliates and alumni, as well as the broader Pasadena community. We predicted that readers in these categories would need fewer encounters with the book to engage with it because they already had a personal connection to it. Additionally, we had access to free advertising channels within this market (Caltech/JPL mailing lists, Caltech Magazine, and the local press).
In particular, our events stimulated large waves of sales. A few of us put a lot of effort into organizing a public book launch celebration in Caltech’s Beckman Auditorium. This event (sponsored by the Caltech Office of the President and the Caltech Graduate Student Council) featured a few story excerpt readings followed by a Q&A with a panel of authors, where audience members could ask any questions they wanted in the realms of science, creative writing, and the intersection of the two. The recording of this event is available on Youtube!
This event was followed by a reception with free food and a book signing. Besides providing a space for us authors to interact directly with readers, this reception was a wonderful opportunity for TechLit members and our friends and families to celebrate this huge thing we had accomplished together.
A week or two ahead of this event, I sent a media advisory about the event to our local paper, Pasadena Star-News. Their editor sent a reporter to publish a front-page story about the book and the launch in advance (free advertising - yay!). We also advertised this event and the book release in tandem via all the internal and external Caltech/JPL mailing lists we had access to.
Over four hundred people reserved tickets, although actual turnout was probably less than half of that (perhaps we should have charged some small amount like $5 as a commitment device?). But overall, this was a super fun time and it generated significant engagement with the book.
A couple of months later, we did a similar event at the Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena:
Something I wish we’d had more bandwidth for is getting reviews and blurbs. Leading up to the book release, we email-blasted Caltech students asking for volunteers who would read the anthology and post a review on Amazon and Goodreads in exchange for a free paperback copy. In retrospect, we should have sought reviews earlier and through industry standard channels like NetGalley, because Caltech students are really busy and many of those who signed up were not able to finish the book in time. It would also have been nice if we had sought out blurbs from prominent authors and scientists beyond our anthology contributors to feature on the back cover. Lastly, I wish we had tried for a review in Locus magazine; we learned about this option after it was too late to do so.
I’ll stop there, but if you think of specific questions about our strategy, comment below and I’ll be happy to answer them.
This concludes the story behind the Caltech anthology! If you haven’t had a chance to check out the book yet, it’s available to purchase as a paperback, ebook, or audiobook, and you can also request it from your local library in any of these formats. Additionally, you can read my two stories (“Teaspoons” and “The Bittersweet Magic of Neuroplasticity”) on my website.
Thanks for reading! If you’d like to get updates about my future stories and books, events, my career journey, and the occasional personal anecdote, please subscribe below. :)
Love,
Rachael