Marketing professional publications to the post-secondary education market: a case study of the publications of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

The publishing division of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) aims to increase the use of its professional books as course texts in colleges and universities by conducting marketing activities in this area. The report looks at CAMH’s role as a publisher, including the relevance of its mandate and publications to this post-secondary market. It then reviews CAMH’s past marketing approaches and strategies of other publishers who market to the post-secondary market. In order to gain a better understanding of CAMH’s educational market, a survey was conducted among 29 instructors of post-secondary mental health and addiction courses to determine how they choose and use their course texts. Findings showed that course texts are an important part of the learning curriculum; that instructors value Canadian-based texts that are closely aligned to course topics; and that instructors are generally open to receiving information from publishers.