Book Marketing Strategies

We were recently asked by the Nonfiction Authors Association about how we are marketing our books here at Chesapeake Press. Here’s what we told them:

The book Are You Smarter Than Your Parents About…Civics? 101 Questions About Our American Government by PJ Jaeger is designed for classroom use. One teacher writes one of the questions on the board on Monday and expects his students to research the answer by Friday, or carpool quizzes where kids will ask the adults the questions and check their answers. In the process, they absorb information about our Constitution, presidents, and federal government.

But we printed a pack of cards – book cover and QR code to our website on one side, questions and answers on the other side. We sold a few packs, but the cards were much more useful as a selling tool. We’d invite visitors to our booth, or librarians in line at ALA, to pick a card and quiz the person standing next to them. People loved this, kept the card, and many bought the book. We also discovered an unexpected audience: 20-somethings who bought the book for game nights and sang “It’s Only a Bill” and the Federalist Papers song from Hamilton to us, trying to answer questions.

We’ll do it again for the next book Are You Smarter Than Your Parents About…American Presidents?

Marie Daley is the Managing Editor at Chesapeake Press.