Martyn Beeny

Martyn Beeny – Marketer

Forward-thinking and creative book marketer. Top-200 Reedsy Provider. Fascinated by doing things differently to get people to buy books!

Overview

I'm the Marketing and Sales Director at Cornell University Press. I've been in book marketing for more than 18 years. I love finding the best way to market and sell a book to as many people as possible.


I'm also the author of three short books about marketing for independent and self-published authors. You can find them here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0BRL3Y88W


I'm a big idea, marketing strategy kind of person. I'm into content marketing and experiential marketing.


I want to change how books are marketed. I'm looking for new ways to do this all the time. I want to push the boundaries of what book marketing means.


I've worked on trade books, children's books, deeply academic books, fiction and nonfiction, and everything in between. I'd like to help you and your book find your audience and market and then sell as many copies as possible.


I've got lots of experience working on overall strategy, email and website campaigns, social media campaigns, publicity and media efforts, metadata optimization, branding, and more.


I love this stuff and want to put it all into effect for you and your book!




I started working with self-published authors through Reedsy in early 2020. I've collaborated with almost 400 authors so far. I've been so impressed by the knowledge, skills, and enthusiasm of the authors I've worked with. The books they have written have covered everything from poetry to self-help to history to detective novels, and each one has opened my eyes to new ideas and ways of thinking about authors and their books. Each author and book has also given me a chance to stretch myself in terms of how best to market books. I've truly enjoyed my time working with Reedsy authors, and I hope I get the chance to work with you and your book soon!


Ask me about the recordings from the one-day book-marketing workshop I ran in early December 2022. The recordings of the sessions - covering metadata, audience and market research, self promotion, pitching, digital marketing - are now available for purchase.

Services
Non-Fiction
Biographies & Memoirs History Nature Political Science & Current Affairs
Fiction
Children's Fantasy Historical Fiction Thriller & Suspense

Work experience

Cornell University Press

Oct, 2016 — Present

Created overall marketing strategic plan
Developed new Press website with content-marketing strategy as focus
Created podcast program, subject catalogs, email marketing program
Focus on trade books
Early metadata creation and dissemination
Increased lead time for publicity and marketing
Developed new branding for all imprints and some authors
Focused on content marketing, ROI, analytics, content, branding, and sales

University of Nebraska Press

Feb, 2013 — Sep, 2016 (over 3 years)

Responsible for marketing and selling 160 new nonfiction and literary fiction books a year
Ran marketing for 4 imprints, including Bison Books, Jewish Publication Society, and Potomac Books
Developed strategic marketing for 70 trade books a year
Developed new website
Increased sales year on year

South Dakota Historical Society Press

Oct, 2005 — Jan, 2013 (over 7 years)

All marketing and sales efforts for regional fiction, nonfiction, and children's books.

Projects

Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet

Author engagement
Author platform development
Media outreach
Content marketing
2,500+ copies sold

Dagger John

Major publicity and media campaign
Secured coverage in New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Irish Times, America Magazine, The Bowery Boys podcast, Library Journal, Catholic New York and more
BookExpo signing for author
2,500+ copies sold

Solid State

Created overall marketing campaign
ABA White Box Mailing - including galleys and posters
Street marketing campaign at Abbey Road zebra crossing
Street marketing in Liverpool
Email campaign
Social media campaign
5,000+ sales

Portfolio

Acclaimed Beatles historian Kenneth Womack offers the most definitive account yet of the writing, recording, mixing, and reception of Abbey Road.In February 1969, the Beatles began working on what became their final album together. Abbey Road introduced a numb... read more
Desert Rainbow

Bowman, Scott

The Habits of Squirrels

Livingston, Brian

Dead Fish Rising

Cash, Kathleen Ann

The Buds Are Calling

Coyne Davies, B

Starship Doi

Deva, Alex

Like No Other Boy

Center, Larry

In a long, award-winning career writing about golf, Bill Fields has sought out the most interesting stories—not just those featuring big winners and losers, but the ones that get at the very character of the game. Collected here, his pieces offer an intriguing... read more
Born from necessity, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has always seemed on the verge of collapse. Even now, some seventy years after its inception, some consider its foundation uncertain and its structure weak. At this moment of incipient strategi... read more
Antivaxxers are crazy. That is the perception we all gain from the media, the internet, celebrities, and beyond, writes Bernice Hausman in Anti/Vax, but we need to open our eyes and ears so that we can all have a better conversation about vaccine skepticism an... read more
Why do terrorist organizations use children to support their cause and carry out their activities? Small Arms uncovers the brutal truth behind the mobilization of children by terrorist groups. Mia Bloom and John Horgan show us the grim underbelly of society th... read more
Since its composition in Washington's Willard Hotel in 1861, Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic" has been used to make America and its wars sacred. Few Americans reflect on its violent and redemptive imagery, drawn freely from prophetic passages of... read more
Since 9/11, why have we won smashing battlefield victories only to botch nearly everything that comes next? In the opening phases of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, we mopped the floor with our enemies. But in short order, things went horribly wrong.We so... read more
Rozelle: A Biography

Jerry Izenberg

Rozelle chronicles the life and times of the architect of the modern National Football League, Pete Rozelle, who transformed football into arguably the most successful sports league in the world. While he was never considered a serious candidate for the job of... read more
If an umpire could steal the show in a Major League game, Al Clark might well have been the one to do it. Tough but fair, in his thirty years as a professional umpire he took on some of baseball’s great umpire baiters, such as Earl Weaver, Billy Martin, and Di... read more
In 1975, two centuries after her birth, Pope Paul VI canonized Elizabeth Ann Seton, making her the first saint to be a native-born citizen of the United States in the Roman Catholic Church. Seton came of age in Manhattan as the city and her family struggled to... read more
In southeastern South Dakota, wild animals begin to stir as day turns to dusk. A curious raccoon emerges from his bed and starts hunting for food. Tempted by sticky honey oozing from a bee's nest, the little raccoon finds trouble he did not bargain for. The Ra... read more
This is the real story of how George W. Bush came to double-down on Iraq in the highest stakes gamble of his entire presidency. Drawing on extensive interviews with nearly thirty senior officials, including President Bush himself, The Last Card offers an unpre... read more
Until the recent political shift pushed workers back into the media spotlight, the mainstream media had largely ignored this significant part of American society in favor of the moneyed "upscale" consumer for more than four decades. Christopher R. Martin now r... read more
As climate change and development pressures overwhelm the environment, our emotional relationships with Earth are also in crisis. Pessimism and distress are overwhelming people the world over. In this maelstrom of emotion, solastalgia, the homesickness you hav... read more
"Every family can have a garden." -Liberty Hyde BaileyFinally, the best and most accessible garden writings of perhaps the most influential literary gardener of the twentieth century have been brought together in one book. Philosopher, poet, naturist, educator... read more
Darryl Jones is fascinated by bird feeders. Not the containers supplying food to our winged friends, but the people who fill the containers.Why do people do this? Jones asks in The Birds at My Table. Does the food even benefit the birds? What are the unintende... read more
Acclaimed biographer John Loughery tells the story of John Hughes, son of Ireland, friend of William Seward and James Buchanan, founder of St. John’s College (now Fordham University), builder of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, pioneer of parochial-s... read more
In the spring of 2004, army reservist and public affairs officer Steven J. Alvarez waited to be called up as the U.S. military stormed Baghdad and deposed Saddam Hussein. But soon after President Bush’s famous PR stunt in which an aircraft carrier displayed th... read more
Beneath Venezuelan soil lies an ocean of crude—the world’s largest reserves—an oil patch that shaped the nature of the global energy business. Unfortunately, a dysfunctional anti-American, leftist government controls this vast resource and has used its wealth ... read more
The Kosher Capones tells the fascinating story of Chicago's Jewish gangsters from Prohibition into the 1980s. Author Joe Kraus traces these gangsters through the lives, criminal careers, and conflicts of Benjamin "Zuckie the Bookie" Zuckerman, last of the inde... read more
A prowling wildcat finds a surprise in an old dried-up buffalo skull. A group of mice are dancing the night away and not paying attention to the dagers around them. Does the wildcat spell doom for the mice, or will they escape to safety? Dance in a Buffalo Sku... read more
Why did the US intelligence services fail so spectacularly to know about the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities following World War II? As Vince Houghton, historian and curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, shows us, that disastrous failu... read more
Hope and History is both a memoir and a call-to-action for the renewal of faith in democracy and America. US Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel presents his most important public speeches and writings, compiled and presented over eight decades of adventure an... read more
In stark and compelling prose, Thomas W. Jones tells his story as a campus revolutionary who led an armed revolt at Cornell University in 1969 and then altered his course over the next fifty years to become a powerful leader in the financial industry including... read more
Pickup trucks and eagles, yellow school buses and painted horses, Mother Earth and Sister Meadowlark all join together to greet the dawn. They marvel at the colours and sounds, smells and memories that dawn creates. Animals and humans alike turn their faces up... read more
"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."Did you know that these twenty-six words are responsible for much of America's multibillio... read more
In 2010 allegations of an utterly corrupt academic system for student-athletes emerged from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus, home of the legendary Tar Heels. As the alma mater of Michael Jordan, Larry Brown, Marion Jones, Lawrence Taylor... read more
The United States has been the world's dominant power for more than a century. Now many analysts believe that other countries are rising and the United States is in decline. Is the unipolar moment over? Is America finished as a superpower?In this book, Michael... read more
U.S. military conflicts abroad have left nine million Americans dependent on the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) for medical care. Their "wounds of war" are treated by the largest hospital system in the country―one that has come under fire from critics in... read more
Black Elk Speaks, the story of the Oglala Lakota visionary and healer Nicholas Black Elk (1863–1950) and his people during momentous twilight years of the nineteenth century, offers readers much more than a precious glimpse of a vanished time. Black Elk’s sear... read more
Cybersexism is rampant and can exact an astonishingly high cost. In some cases, the final result is suicide. Bullying, stalking, and trolling are just the beginning. Extreme examples such as GamerGate get publicized, but otherwise the online abuse of women is ... read more
And now for something completely different. Professor at Large features beloved English comedian and actor John Cleese in the role of Ivy League professor at Cornell University. His almost twenty years as professor-at-large has led to many talks, essays, and l... read more
Follow the real Laura Ingalls and her family as they make their way west and discover that truth is as remarkable as fiction. Hidden away since the 1930s, Laura Ingalls Wilder s never-before-published autobiography reveals the true stories of her pioneering li... read more

Martyn has 257 reviews

Professionalism

Quality

Value

Responsiveness

Jim J.

Jim J.

Sep, 2024

We had several hiccups, but in the end, it worked out. I did not, however, follow up on the plan which seemed quite thorough but a lot of time-consuming work. I will get to it eventually, but I am working on another project (optimizing patient flow through a healthcare facility).
Steven B.

Steven B.

Sep, 2024

Of the several marketers I sent my brief to, Martyn was by far the most reasonable, approachable, and knowledgeable. His strategy of an hour-long phone interview, followed by an extensive marketing plan (the one he sent me was 28 pages long), followed by a period of time allowing for follow-up questions and advice is eminently sensible, enormously cost-effective, and just plain smart. He is not...
Read more
Paul H.

Paul H.

Aug, 2024

Martyn’s plan exceeded my expectations. He’s a pro.
Jaime C.

Jaime C.

Aug, 2024

Outstanding!
Christopher F.

Christopher F.

Jul, 2024

Martyn had a lot of great ideas and suggestions on how to optimize all the marketing and social media elements I'm using to sell my book. The game plan he came up withat the end helped identify things that I could be doing right now, as well as in the future.

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