1
PUBLISHING DEPARTMENT
PUB 350: Marketing for Book Publishers
Instructor:
Jamie Broadhurst
jamie@raincoast.com
604-448-7124
HC 2142
DRAFT
Course description:
Students of PUB 350 will study the best practices of contemporary book marketing. They will learn how
publishers estimate a potential readership for a particular book, how they attempt to place that book in
sizeable quantities in different retail channels and how they attempt to trigger an “information cascade” that
will cause the book to become the one of the select “hits” that dominates bestseller lists. Publishers attempt to
do all this for less than a dollar per book.
The course is divided into three sections: an analysis of the major changes within the book market over the
last decade, the rise of the blockbuster marketing techniques developed as response to these challenging
market conditions and finally an extended overview of other marketing techniques that attempt to rectify
limitations of blockbuster marketing.
Required Texts:
•
Long Tail The Revised And Updated: Why the future of business is selling less of more, Chris
Anderson, (Hyperion, 2008) ISBN: 9781401309664
•
Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century, John Thompson, (Polity
Press, 2010) ISBN: 9780745647869
•
One Fall 2012 new release of your own choice. Must be published in first it’s format and published no
earlier than July 2013.
•
Supplemental articles provided by instructor.
Evaluation:
First Assignment; due October 7:
In-Class Test; November 29:
End of Term Essay; due December 2:
Class Participation;
30%
30%
30%
10%
The School expects that the grades awarded in this course will bear some reasonable relation to established
university-wide practices with respect to both levels and distribution grades. In addition, the School will
follow policy T10.02 with respect to “Intellectual Honesty” and “Academic Discipline” (see the Current
Calendar, General Regulations Section).