STEAM Marketing Summary

Each book has its readership, but matching the two requires the efforts of marketing and advertising teams that are up to date with technological, business, educational, and cultural trends. Let’s take a look at how STEM/STEAM marketing has evolved in recent years.

“We’ve focused on marketing our STEAM titles directly to teachers, emphasizing how teachers can use them in the classroom to reinforce their curriculum in engaging new ways,” says Shara Zaval, associate director of marketing and advertising at Sourcebooks. “In addition to creating activity kits, posters, and teacher guides, we’ve built full STEAM programs around some of our most beloved series.”

As an example, Sourcebooks organized its How to Catch STEAM Week in early November for the last two years. “In
This week-long program brings thousands of students across the country STEAM-themed activities based on the bestselling How to Catch series,” she says. “By creating their own creation, learning about design thinking, building traps, and showcasing their work at a STEAM classroom fair, kids ages 4-12 experience all aspects of the STEAM umbrella while cultivating deeper connections to their favorite books.”

Phoebe Kosman, director of marketing, advertising, and key partnerships at Candlewick, shares a few things that have proven effective. “As our MIT Kids/MITeen list has grown, we’ve increasingly grouped books by broader theme, making it easier to reach teachers working on those topics,” she says.

Jess Garrison, senior editor at Dial Books for Young Readers, says, “Approaching these books as a series so that kids, parents, and teachers have a full set of good stuff on hand—that’s what we’ve found works best. One-offs in this space are harder to do. These books are fun to promote because they look so great, and kids love the convenience, familiarity, and joy that come with a new offering from a beloved brand.” (For more on publishing STEAM series, see “Series Gain STEAM,” p. 20.)

Similarly, Amy Burton Storey, marketing manager at Eerdmans, notes that her company’s marketing approach “has evolved to establish a new Spectacular STEAM for Curious Readers series to formalize the brand around the collection of award-winning STEAM books we’ve been building over the last 10 years. We hope this lets our stakeholders know that we’re committed to the category, that there are more great books coming, and that we’re actively looking for STEAM titles—books that explore specific, lesser-known topics that fit into broader curriculum themes.”

Storey also joins the chorus of publishers who are embracing social media as an important marketing tool. “Social media, and Instagram in particular, continue to be a key factor in reaching not only teachers, librarians, and children’s literature influencers, but also booksellers and parents,” says Storey. “The broader market beyond the classroom is hungry for high-quality STEAM books for kids, and this is a great way to get a variety of audiences involved with our books.”

Rachel Williams, co-founder and publisher of Magic Cat, says her company has a two-pronged approach. “We want to reach consumers with more specialized interests, often those who will buy a book as a gift, but also want to reach kids directly in a space that is accessible to them,” she explains. A strong focus on digital outreach, which includes working with educators and influencers, has also proven effective. “We’ve seen the power of author engagement. Showcasing the passion and expertise of our STEM authors resonates with both readers and educators. In a world where discoverability is key, it’s helpful when parents or children are familiar with the creators and/or their content.”

Candlewick is also among the publishers that have expanded their creative engagement on social media. “A TikTok video that our social media expert Salma Shawa created about a STEAM picture book centered on the wind Big gusts of wind “It attracted over 40,000 views,” Kosman says.

Kosman notes that local, in-person presentations are also valuable. “We love working with MIT Open Space Programming on live events with our creators, which bring in families from the community and offer young children creative ways to engage with our books, including crafts and activities,” she says.

Tried-and-true methods continue to work for many publishers, including Clavis. “We do very targeted marketing, focusing on reaching teachers, librarians, and parents,” says marketing specialist Deyanira Navarrete. “E-newsletters continue to be a very effective way to reach our audience—we’ve found that our messages have high open rates and that content is read thoroughly!”

In that spirit, “Lee & Low is proud to continue to produce free, robust teacher guides for all of our books,” says marketing director Jenny Choy, pointing out that the company has more than 900 available on its website. “These resources provide in-depth analyses of the material, allowing teachers to tailor the content to fit their curriculum framework and engage students with books across a variety of subject areas.” An in-house team of former classroom teachers develops the guides with various educational standards, such as Common Core, in mind. Choy believes the guides “are increasingly valuable in a time of increasing challenges and bans on books because they clearly demonstrate the educational value of our books.”

At Candlewick, Kosman cites a similar strategy. The publisher’s Teacher Tip Cards, which Kosman describes as mini-guidebooks in the style of recipe cards that offer teachers an engaging, direct way to use books in the classroom, have been a success 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 grown, his team has created more summaries and announcements to make discovery easier. “We’ve also created dedicated newsletters/publicity for titles to increase consumer awareness,” he says. “We’re big fans of end-of-book materials—anytime an author can include additional content at the end of a book to enhance the learning experience, we think that’s a great value add.”