Every book has its reader, but matching the two requires the efforts of marketing and publicity teams who stay on top of tech, business, education, and cultural trends. We take a look at how STEM/STEAM marketing has evolved in recent years.
“We have focused on direct-to-teacher marketing for our STEAM-themed titles, highlighting how teachers can use them in the classroom to bolster their curricula in engaging new ways,” says Shara Zaval, associate director of marketing and publicity at Sourcebooks. “Along with creating activity kits, posters, and educator guides, we have created full STEAM programs around some of our most beloved series.”
As a case in point, Sourcebooks has run its How to Catch STEAM Week in early November for the past two years. “In
this weeklong program, thousands of students across the country participate in STEAM-themed activities based on the bestselling How to Catch series,” she says. “By creating their own creature, learning about design thinking, building traps, and presenting their work at a STEAM classroom fair, kids ages 4–12 experience all facets of the STEAM umbrella while fostering a deeper connection with their favorite books.”
Phoebe Kosman, director of marketing, publicity, and key partnerships at Candlewick, cites several efforts that are proving effective. “As our MIT Kids/MITeen list has grown, we’ve increasingly grouped books by broader topic, which makes it easier to target educators working on those topics,” she says.
Jess Garrison, senior executive editor at Dial Books for Young Readers, says, “Taking a series approach to these books so that kids, parents, and educators have a full set of the good stuff at the ready—this is what we’ve found to be most effective. One-offs in this space are tougher to pull off. These books are fun to promote because they look so great, and kids love the comfort, familiarity, and joy that comes with a new offering from a beloved brand.” (For more on STEAM series publishing, see “Series Gain STEAM,” p. 20)
Similarly, Amy Burton Storey, marketing manager at Eerdmans, notes that her company’s marketing approach “has evolved into establishing the new Spectacular STEAM for Curious Readers series to formalize a brand around the collection of award-winning STEAM books that we’ve been building over the past 10 years or so. We hope it will let our stakeholders know we’re committed to this category, more great books are coming, and that we’re actively looking for STEAM titles—books tackling specific, less familiar topics that fit within broader curriculum topics.”
Storey also joins the chorus of publishers who credit social media as an important marketing tool. “Social media, specifically Instagram, continues to be a significant factor in reaching not only teachers, librarians, and kid lit influencers but also booksellers and parents,” Storey says. “The broader marketplace outside the classroom is hungry for quality STEAM books for children, and it’s a great way for us to talk up our books to a variety of audiences.”
Magic Cat cofounder and publisher Rachel Williams says that her company takes a two-strand approach. “We want to target consumers with a more specialist interest, often those who will buy the book as a gift, but also want to reach children directly in a space that is accessible to them,” she explains. A strong emphasis on digital outreach that includes collaboration with educators and influencers has been very successful, too. “We’ve seen the power of author engagement. Showcasing the passion and expertise of our STEM authors resonates with readers and educators alike. In a world where discoverability is crucial, it is helpful when parents or children are familiar with creators and/or their content.”
Candlewick is also among those publishers that have expanded creative engagement on social media. “A TikTok video that our social media expert Salma Shawa created about the wind-focused STEAM picture book Great Gusts attracted more than 40,000 views,” Kosman says.
Kosman notes that local, in-person presentations are worthwhile, too. “We love partnering with MIT Open Space Programming for live events with our creators, which draw in families from the community and offer young children creative ways of engaging with our books, including through crafts and activities,” she says.
Tried-and-true methods continue to get the job done for many publishers, including Clavis. “We are doing very targeted marketing with a laser focus on reaching educators, librarians, and parents,” says marketing specialist Deyanira Navarrete. “E-newsletters are still a highly effective way of reaching our audience—we find that our communications have a strong open rate and the content is read thoroughly!”
Along those lines, “Lee & Low proudly continues to produce free, robust teacher’s guides for all of our books,” says marketing director Jenny Choy, pointing out that there are more than 900 available on the company’s website. “These resources are deep dives into the material, allowing teachers to customize the content to fit their curriculum framework and engaging students with the books across subject areas.” An in-house team of former classroom teachers develops the guides, keeping various education standards, such as Common Core, in mind. Choy believes that the guides “are increasingly valuable in this time of rising book challenges and bans because they clearly show our books’ educational value.”
At Candlewick, Kosman cites a similar strategy. The publisher’s Teacher Tip Cards, which Kosman describes as recipe-card–style mini guides that offer teachers an appealing, direct way to deploy the books in the classroom, have been successful and are a popular giveaway at conferences.
And Rich Thomas, SVP, executive director of publishing at HarperCollins Children’s Books, says that as demand for STEM/STEAM titles has increased, his team has produced more roundups and callouts to make discovery easier. “We’ve also done dedicated newsletters/social promotion for titles to raise awareness with consumers,” he says. “We’re big fans of back matter—whenever we can have the author include extra content to the back of the book to enhance the learning experience, we think this is a great value-add.”
