People ask me – a lot – how to start learning about global health. I never have a good answer. Usually I send them to Karen Grepin’s blog and suggest they take a look at the various textbooks on Amazon. It’s not a satisfactory answer. Karen Grepin is fantastic, but a blog’s a very different format from a book. And a textbook is no one’s idea of a good time.
Just about twelve months ago, I got an email announcing the new TEDbooks series – short, opinionated ebooks meant to be read in a single sitting. I messaged the TED folks immediately, offering to write the book I’ve been wishing existed. They took me up on it, and I’ve spent the last year writing, re-writing, and picking out some fabulous pictures from Glenna Gordon.
It came out this week. “What’s Killing US,” is a brief guide to major global health issues. It is meant to be both an overview and a starting point. If you’ve been thinking you should probably know more about global health, I wrote this book for you. The book is part of the TEDbooks ebooks imprint, and it’s available for Kindle, Nook, and the iPad. You can find the links to buy it here.
As you might expect, I am very, very excited about this. To celebrate, I want to give away a few copies of the ebook. (It’s only $2.99 – I can afford it.) Leave a comment with a suggestion for how I can promote the book, or a link to your tweet about it – and I’ll enter you into the contest. I’ll pick one comment out of every ten that I get as a winner.
Oooh, please! Tweeting also @clstal Thanks!
My suggestion: Give Dr. Blattman and Duncan Green copies. Wide viewership will direct many thousands to your work. Could branch out into the Marginal Revolution audience as well, also a wider viewership that traditionally would not follow aid blogs.
Congratulations on the news! I’m excited to get this on my Kindle, it’s where I put all of my public health and disease books for better note-taking.
Recommendations: use the GoodFinder to promote a short article/snippet of the book that will include links to buy the book on Amazon. I’ve found it to be really helpful when promoting some of my articles and it reaches a very diverse audience that would be most interested in this sort of topic.
Advertise through global health career newsletters and graduate school email lists (i.e. BU)?
Promote it at Farmer’s Markets and fitness centers
Unfortunately, that’s not an option because I live in Tajikistan. Novel idea, though!
I’m so excited to read your book because I want to work in global health one day! I am a college student and would love to hear you speak, so perhaps you could do a book tour of college campuses.
Congratulations Alanna!
My ideas are fairly conventional, but they seem to work. Ask everyone who subscribes to your newsletter and blog and who follows you on twitter (aka people who think that what you write about is important and/or interesting) to do one or more of the following five things for you:
1. Tweet about the book
2. Share the book on Facebook
3. Share the link to the book on their blog
4. Email two (or more) friends who might be interested
5. Buy two extra copies and give them away
Sometimes people just need to be told, “this is what you can do to support my book”
I’ll happily do all five.
Marianne
Congratulations Alanna! I look forward to reading the book. http://goo.gl/kpSPf
Give some copies to International Medical Corps field staff!
Have Tweeted @visualdichotomy. I’m a student interested in development (I wrote the Visible Children post that got a lot of press) and subscriber to your newsletter, and would love to read this!
already on my kindle and started reading. congratulations on a very concise but comprehensive, very professional book!
Get schools to promote it by email – there’re alot of students who want to learn about development, health and policy but don’t know where to start. A convenient link in their email may start an adventurous journey for some.
just got a kindle and would love to read your TED piece. public health issues are so critical, and should tie into so much of the programming developed in the field. an easily accessible piece like yours should hopefully help people understand things in way that they can apply to work – i know it will for me!
promote it through undergraduate institution email lists, especially ones with global health programs already in place like Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Rice, Emorty etc. I’m a student at Rice and I know that there would be a good amount of student interest here!
you could also offer a book giveaway in exchange for a photo or essay contest on the importance of younger generations teaching themselves about global health.
post excerpts of the book on other global health blogs or pages.
I’m putting together an expat blog (for the “nontraditional”, i.e. non-company-supported) expats, and I’m going to grab a copy from Amazon in the next couple of days, so I’ll do what I can with my (so-far-meagre) readers to mention this, and push it along. 🙂
this book is exactly what i have been searching for. As a health consultant and public health nut, it is a must read!!
to promote it…. send it to professors and universities… if they put it on their syllabus as part of the curriculum, lots of students will buy it and read it 🙂
Why are we running out of antibiotics? (video) http://t.co/hgJplB1R – also see @alanna_shaikh’s book What’s Killing Us http://t.co/feuGuTc9