18. PROMOTION & SALES

In many countries, signing books are sold by the production companies themselves. However, little or no attention (or funds) are usually available at the end of the production line, for promotion and sales. Many companies don’t have a catalogue, and sell their productions only to members of their organisation, or to members of the Deaf community. As a consequence, public libraries and the general public are rarely aware of the existence of signing books in their country, and/or of the publication of new titles.

Black box

People who pick up your production in a library or in a bookstore, are hardly ever able to watch the video before they buy, or lend it. The cover of the video-box or CD-ROM should therefore be attractive as well as informative. For bookstores and libraries to include your productions in their catalogues correctly, they must be able to find certain information on the outside or inside cover of the video-box or CD-ROM:

the title of the production;
the author - and in case of a translation: the title, author and publication year of the original production;
a clearly visible indication that this is a production in Sign Language;
the name and address of the publisher;
possibly: the name of the producer;
publication year;
duration of the video;
the target group e.g. age-group;
name of the signer(s);
with / without voice-over;
with / without captions;
a short description of the contents;
a short description of the visuals;
if applicable: a table of contents, with time-codes;
last but not least: credits and thanks to organisation(s) that financed the production.

Promotion

Promote your production(s) through flyers, catalogues, a web-site. Try to include the mainstream community in your promotion activities: public libraries, mainstream organisations, etc..

Include pictures and screen-prints in your catalogues. Show videoclips of your productions on your website.

Make a video-catalogue on videotape or CD-ROM, with short clips to illustrate your productions.

If there is a national database for sign language material: submit your information to this database so people will be able to find you and your productions

Price

The price range for signing books varies from distributed freely, to over 100 Euro per production. Many sign language productions on the market today are cheaper than comparable mainstream productions. Viewers in your country may not be used to paying high prices (or even: to paying at all) for information in sign language.

For most productions, outside funding is therefore indispensable. When you apply for funding, include funds for marketing, promotion, and after-sales services in your budget.

Protection

You may also have to include 'protection' in your marketing plans. Protection against illegal copying and unauthorised use may vary from a copyright statement in the trailer of your production, to making it technically impossible to make unauthorised copies.