The Philosophers' Cocoon

In our newest “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:

I have recently landed my first permanent position and I am about to publish a book with a respected academic publisher. It’s my first book publication. A few of my papers have circulated in the field, but I’m still roughly what you’d call a nobody and I do not anticipate that my book by itself will attract much attention. I’m also not awfully well-connected. Since I’ve worked hard on this book, I’m wondering what I could do to make sure it receives a decent amount of attention. Here are questions that I have in mind, I would love to see what others think:

1) How to maximize the chances that my book gets reviewed? Can I do anything beyond asking the publisher to send copies of the book to journals who do book reviews?

2) More specifically, how to maximize the chances to be reviewed in the NDPR? I feel like these reviews are 10x more read than the others

3) Is it acceptable for an (independently motivated) student of mine to review my book? If so, under which conditions?

4) Can I contact colleagues at other departments and offer them to come give a talk about my book? Is this acceptable only if I offer to pay for my trip? Is it also acceptable if I cannot offer to pay for my own trip and thus expect their department to fund it? If the latter, how to formulate my suggestion/offer without sounding entitled or annoying?

5) The dream is to have an author-meets-critics symposium about my book in a respected journal. How hard is it to make this happen? What is the best strategy to do so? Should I first contact some potential critics, and then journals once I have their agreement? Should I do it the other way around? Or should I do something else?

Huge congrats to the OP on the job and book! I’m curious to hear what other readers think. I’ve published several books, and although I haven’t quite done the best with this, here are a few thoughts:

• On (1): you can reach out to journals directly, which often list book review editors you can contact. If you have some free authors’ copies of your book (which is usually a part of your contract), you can send them off to review editors who indicate interest.
• On (2): I’m not sure.
• On (3): that seems like a conflict of interest to me.
• On (4): I don’t see why not, and I don’t see why you should offer to pay for the trip. If they are interested in having you give a talk, see what they say (about travel costs).
• On (5): My sense is that you should have a list of critics lined up (who have agreed to do it).

Do other readers have any helpful tips or insights?