Update of A Guide to Organic Chemistry Mechanisms
Jan 2007 Filed in: Publishing | Website
I think I am arriving at acceptable web content. I did receive a question about putting some sample pages up. I had started doing that around Christmas, but I had wanted a more sophisticated way of doing it than just a string of pages.
Woof, woof
My next task is to begin to market the book in a sensible manner. I wanted to create a poster that I could post at different colleges and to try to place the book in college bookstores. I was considering different marketing options. One option is to make local sales to colleges in a small-scale operation. In order to attract a wider audience, I should submit TLOC to the Journal of Chemical Education. In order to do that, I need to go back through the book and correct a number of errors that are still present. (Now that I haven’t been working on writing it for some time, my brain should stop adding words that aren’t there, my most common error.)
I did a search on “how to market a book”. One of the top hits was a rundown of what to do and what not to do. High on the not to do list was a mailing. This is one I had planned to do. Now, I am not so certain. However, I can do this on a small scale without spending large sums of money and check the results. Another on the not to do list was place paid ads in publications. On the to do list was increase web traffic. The author detailed how his book was first almost entirely on the web. He then removed parts of it and that improved his book sales.
Another aspect that he spoke of is the cost of publishing. He advocated using a Print On Demand service. I knew there were many that were on the internet, but I followed up with Lightning Source Inc, his POD server. I’ve concluded this shall be my route in the future. This is going to result in some changes in the format of my book. While I wanted to have a lie-flat book, LSI doesn’t offer that option for their POD service. So, for now, I’m going to abandon that idea. If there are requests, I can always find another printer to do that job.
Finally, he mentioned how he improved his Google hit rate. Because organic chemistry just isn’t going to rank highly with any Google searches and because there are so many colleges and universities that use organic chemistry in their titles, it is difficult to see how I can improve my ranking in this basic area. Therefore, direct advertising is the next best option. I have been using Yahoo Marketing. I think I am beginning to pick up hits there, but I probably would be better off to switch my keywords over to Google. The other strategy is to improve my web content. Right now, I am using my orgoforum to attract hits, which it is doing. What I need to do is to increase the content that I place there to increase the wash over to my website.