A Review of the BookMachine CAMPUS Course
The publishing industry is dynamic, fast-paced and continually changing each year. Whether you are new to publishing, looking for a career change from a different industry or looking to boost your knowledge in a new sector, BookMachine’s new CAMPUS video courses are a great starting point. There is a wide selection of video training from academic publishing to audio, to design and editorial, to marketing, publicity, rights, sales and so much more. This month, our digital marketing and content manager Jade decided to take her publishing skills to the next level as she trialed the BookMachine CAMPUS video course, read on to find out how it went.
What is BookMachine?
BookMachine is a global community that has been bringing publishing people together since 2010. Founded by the wonderful Laura Summers, BookMachine started as just a small group of publishing colleagues who came together to talk and share insights about the industry. Over the last 10 years BookMachine has grown to host in-person events with hundreds of industry folk to deliver training courses. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company's goals pivoted and they began to offer fully online programmes - which made their content a lot more accessible to anyone no matter where they were. Since then, BookMachine have launched the BookMachine App, hosted over 50 online events and have most recently launched the CAMPUS video course.
How does the BookMachine CAMPUS Video Course work?
CAMPUS is a fully flexible, industry-specific video course for professionals who work in publishing looking to grow their skills and develop their career. You can learn on the go or from the comfort of your own home as this programme has been designed to fit easily into your work and day-to-day life.
Each course is no longer than 1 hour and is split into five 10-minute modules that you can mark as completed to track your progress. New videos are added annually and enable you to grow the skills you need over time, often courses for specific departments can be helpful to watch one after another. For example, if you are interested in developing your marketing knowledge then I’d suggest starting with the ‘Running a marketing campaign on a limited budget’ and then watching the ‘Facebook & Instagram marketing campaigns that drive results’ to help build on the skills you learnt in the first course. If you are looking to jump into the world of BookTok then CAMPUS offers two courses: ‘Getting started on TikTok’ and ‘A marketer’s guide to using TikTok effectively’; both of which will give you valuable insight into setting up a TikTok account to creating valuable content that will help boost your publishers book sales.
What courses have I completed?
In the last month I have completed two courses on BookMachine CAMPUS, including ‘Running a marketing campaign on a limited budget’ and ‘Book publicity: how to get media coverage’. I took both of these courses because I have been wanting to further develop my marketing skills outside of social media as well as to further understand the role of publicity in a book campaign.
Overview of ‘Running a marketing campaign on a limited budget’
Led by Ellie Pilcher, an award-winning Marketing Manager at Avon, this course will focus on helping you use what you have already (author, cover and title) to conserve your budget and get effective results from your organic campaigns. It will teach you how to map out your audience, keywords and targets and develop creative brainstorming techniques. If you would like to reach your audience in new, creative ways without paying for advertising, then this is the course for you.
Did I find it beneficial?
Before taking this course, I found it hard to find training that would teach me about marketing on a lower budget. I have previously watched many of The Book Marketing Society’s masterclasses and although they were extremely insightful and helpful the majority of these courses were based off of larger publishers which in turn have higher budgets for their marketing campaigns.
I was particularly interested in this course because I also work for a small independent press, Neem Tree Press, where we run small-scale marketing campaigns for our book titles across adult fiction, adult non-fiction and middle grade titles. I found this course very helpful especially in terms of learning about the marketing timeline and really developing the specific audience for a book. Ellie gave excellent advice that was understandable and actionable. The examples she used in terms of creating a specific audience were easily transferable. I would highly recommend this course to anybody working in the industry who wants to get an insight into marketing on a low budget.
Overview of ‘Book publicity: how to get media coverage’.
Over the last 10 years, opportunities for publicity have changed. With the decline of print publications, more opportunities online, and increased competition for coverage from other publishers and brands, this course will show you how to research and plan your PR campaign, build your publicist toolkit and communicate with journalists to put the spotlight on your brilliant new book.
This course is led by Lyndsey Mayhew who currently works in the Marketing and Publicity team at Welbeck where she looks after comms for its brilliant non-fiction list and the new wellbeing imprint Welbeck Balance.
Did I find it beneficial?
I knew very little about book publicity before taking this course and wanted to build on my knowledge. I found this course very easy to learn from as Lyndsey broke each 10-minute video into a separate module with step-by-step actions on how to set up a publicity campaign, and how to create a toolkit with specific folders for each book asse., I found this very organised and loved that she was teaching us how to be efficient. I really enjoyed learning about how she communicates with journalists and builds on this relationship when doing publicity outreach for a book campaign. It was very helpful to learn about the overall publicist and journalist relationship and how not to overstep or ask too much from them. This course provided a valuable insight into a side of publishing that I didn’t really think much about before and Lyndsey was very positive and enthusiastic which made it easier to learn.