ABSTRACT
Selling textbooks is a highly structured, competitive business that works differently from trade marketing. Personal contact with publisher's reps is the most effective sales technique for textbooks, but the high cost of maintaining sales forces means that mail-order and Web marketing are assuming increasing importance. For smaller textbook publishers, or for textbooks designed for higher-level courses, direct mail, sample copies, telemarketing, convention displays, and Web announcements usually supplant the sales visits entirely. The narrative leads into the chapter-by-chapter outline, which subdivides the book into parts and shows the cumulative pedagogy through the chapters, and the ancillary features such as boxes, glossaries, and so on that will accompany the narrative. For instance, some people write archaeological textbooks that are slanted heavily toward their particular expertise in Maya civilization or North America, when the subject at the introductory level is truly global.
