Feedback
Welcome!
At Human Kinetics (HK), we have a dedicated internal marketing department made up of staff members assigned to specific subject areas and/or markets. With this focused approach, our team members build familiarity with audiences and know how to best position your title to maximize sales.
We also have marketing and sales staff through our international distributors in the United Kingdom (covering most of Europe, the Middle East, India, and Africa) and Australia/New Zealand, who are charged with promoting HK products. We coordinate efforts with those teams to ensure each product has global coverage when appropriate.
Throughout the marketing life cycle of a project, we want to work closely with you—the author or editor—to leverage your platform(s) and subject matter expertise to give your book every advantage possible.
Below is an outline of the channels we use to market our titles. Every product is unique, so our marketing team will customize the best approach for each title.
Websites
HK maintains a robust website, and marketing efforts will primarily direct traffic to the site to find individual product pages and exclusive content promoting the product. Prospective buyers can find products by searching by title, author or editor, keywords, or ISBN. We also sort products by collections to help customers track down resources covering a certain subject area or topic.
Beyond the HK website, each product will also have a saleable page through other vendors like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Each author is entitled to a free "Author Central" page through Amazon which they can create and manage.
Many of our promotional efforts will be driven by email. We will tap into our current customer base to target all potential buyers who may be interested in your product. Our email database houses over 100,000 contacts who have opted-in to receive messages from us.
In addition to targeted email campaigns to specific audiences, we have a variety of newsletters on fitness-, kinesiology-, and sport-related subjects that customers have subscribed to. Occasionally, we may also rent a targeted email list from a trustworthy vendor or organization which that vendor deploys on our behalf.
Social media
HK is active on several social media platforms, with a continuously growing community of followers and subscribers spread across Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, and YouTube. We even have dedicated Facebook pages catering to different areas in which we publish content, and pre-sorted YouTube playlists, to more closely connect with our audiences.
We will share announcements and content from the book on the most relevant platforms where we can best target our key audiences. If you have a social media presence, we will work to collaborate on posts with you, including providing graphics and sample messaging if desired.
Blogs and live (video) events
One of our most effective ways to drive sales for books is to share author expertise with our audiences. We do this by creating promotional materials based on the content from the book (like excerpts, videos, and infographics). We may also ask to conduct a video or podcast interview with you. As audiences engage with that content, they are more likely to seek additional information about the book itself and consider making a purchase.
Direct mail and print
Printed marketing materials are another contributor to our marketing mix. While these mostly consist of flyers or postcards created for distribution by sales representatives during sales calls or during tradeshows and conferences, we also occasionally create small brochures or pieces that we will mail to a very targeted audience with a very specific objective.
Tradeshows, clinics, and conference exhibits
Each year, HK reviews and selects key tradeshows to host an exhibit where we can gain key exposure for our products. For those shows, we select the most relevant titles to showcase based on the audience profile and book display capacity. For relevant conferences where we are unable to exhibit, we occasionally have an opportunity to work with the host organization to provide a few products that may be used as door prizes or giveaways in exchange for the conference distributing or displaying other marketing materials.
Sales team
The sales team at HK is committed to building personal relationships with our customers across all our markets. For the education market, our K-12 and higher education sales departments are divided by territory covering the United States and Canada. Our team averages personal sales calls to over 100 community college and university campuses annually, as well as making email and phone calls on an ongoing basis.
Our trade sales staff takes a concentrated approach by buyer, with assigned account managers for major retail chains, library markets, and resellers. They will present each title to outlets such as Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million, as well as to Ingram Book Company—the largest supplier of public libraries and independent booksellers. If you have a sales channel you would like to sell your book through, such as a personal or business website or an association that you are affiliated with, we will work with you to discuss partnership opportunities.
We also have a network of sales representatives and distributors in regions throughout the world including Japan, South Africa, the Middle East, India, Brazil, Philippines, Singapore, Mexico, and Malaysia. We seek foreign publishers who may be interested in the language rights for each title.
Why choose HK?
We understand that when you invest your time and energy into producing a book, you want to see it reach the right people. Our marketing team is committed to that same objective. We will work with you along the way, sharing and collaborating on promotional plans to make your title a success.