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[onewaystreet]

My first book will be coming out at the end of this year and I think I remember reading in some thread that I can't find anymore that a good strategy for promoting your book is to arrange for there to be a conference panel on your book's topic right around its release date.  If I'm remembering that advice right, my question is: do you organize and/or present on this panel yourself, or do you try to get a friend to head the panel instead so that it doesn't look quite so self-promotional?  And is this generally done at big conferences like MLA or only at more specialized, subfield conferences?  Thank you for any input!

[astoryteller]

I've always thought of conference papers as works in progress—a step well before publishing as either an article or a book. But I've been wondering the same thing. I have a book coming out soon and would love to talk about it at a conference. I look forward to hearing what more experienced forumites have to say: is a recently-published or about-to-be-published book an appropriate topic for a (non-keynote) conference panel or paper?

[larryc]

Be shameless, promote your books! Organize a panel, git as many big shots as you can, promote the hell out of it.

[systeme_d_]

In my field, folks generally get their friends to do it.
They propose a roundtable at the annual conference that is devoted to discussing Book X.

Of course, if the book is not sufficiently significant, and the members of the roundtable sufficiently distinguished, then the roundtable might not be approved by the steering committee/chairs of the section under which the roundtable is proposed.

That's why it works best if your friends are on the steering committee, and they propose the roundtable as a "special session" that doesn't need anyone else's approval.

[onewaystreet]

Hmm, definitely don't have friends on any steering committees, and since I'm fresh out of grad school (and pretty definitely not landing a TT job for next year, grumble grumble), the only relative big shots I know are my old committee members and such.  My book is coming out from super fancy-pants UP;  does that help at all with its "sufficiently significant" factor?  Or does my own newbie, unemployed status cancel the press's luster out?

Looks like this panel organizing promotion idea is not quite going to work out for me...

[watermarkup]

It might be a matter of disciplinary differences and shades of meaning.

If you wrote King Harald the Basketweaver: Danish Baskets of the 11th Century, it would seem very normal to me if you organized a conference panel on "Basketweaving at royal courts in medieval Europe" at your discipline's annual conference, and that seems like a decent way to get your book mentioned. You give a paper about Harald, and your two friends give papers about Harald II and Harald III, and if you do things right, it looks like you're all part of a hot new subfield of basketweaving history.

On the other hand, if you tried to swing "A special roundtable session devoted to King Harald the Basketweaver by Oneway Street," it would seem frighteningly narcissistic. Those kinds of sessions (in my subdiscipline's annual conference, at least) are for books published at least 10-15 years ago at a minimum that have become widely influential.

[larryc]

Hmm, definitely don't have friends on any steering committees, and since I'm fresh out of grad school (and pretty definitely not landing a TT job for next year, grumble grumble), the only relative big shots I know are my old committee members and such.  My book is coming out from super fancy-pants UP;  does that help at all with its "sufficiently significant" factor?  Or does my own newbie, unemployed status cancel the press's luster out?

Looks like this panel organizing promotion idea is not quite going to work out for me...

Don't be such a quitter! Just email the big shots you would like on your panel and invite them. "Hi, I am organizing a panel on underwater basket weaving for the American Obfuscatory Conference and wonder if you would like to participate, either as a panelist or as chair or commenter? I would be presenting on blah blah blah, which is the subject of a chapter in my forthcoming book from Fancypants Press."

"If you can't participate, can you recommend someone I should invite? Thanks so much..."

Go for it. Because here is the thing--every big shot who says no has still just been flattered by you and become aware of your work, in one fell swoop. Life goes to the bold.

[heptameron]

Wow, that is a fabulous idea, OP.  Do it!

[onewaystreet]

Update:  Well, I submitted a CFP for next year's MLA conference on a subject that is NOT "A special roundtable discussion of the brilliant work of OneWayStreet" but that is related enough to what I talk about in the book that I will certainly have the opportunity to pitch it a bit in my talk.  I'm thinking I'll wait a bit to see what kinds of submissions I get just based on the CFP, but if no big enough shots express interest (do big shots ever express interest on their own, or do they always have to be cordially invited?) then I will be bold and start sending out emails.  Thanks for the words of encouragement;  I don't think of myself as a quitter since I have had to work against so many obstacles to get certain things accomplished in my life, but it's a good lesson that sometimes, "quitting" can be in the details!

[larryc]

You invite the big shots.

[seniorscholar]

You invite the big shots.

At once: since the MLA receives proposals for many more special topics panels than it can accomodate, a listing of your participants when you send the application (in March or April now? it's been a few years since I did it) will help your chances more if it has at least one big name on it.

[astoryteller]

"do big shots ever express interest on their own, or do they always have to be cordially invited?"

I'm not familiar with the MLA, but when I issued a session CFP for a major history conference as a postdoc, I had a bigshot respond (plus other more-senior-than-I-but-not-bigshot scholars).