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Underground Spaces Unveiled: Planning and creating the cities of the future authors, Antonia Cornaro and Han Admiraal, share tips on how to promote a book at events.

ICE Publishing at the Frankfurt Book Fair
How we are promoting our book 'Underground Spaces Unveiled'
  • Updated: 02 Apr 2019
  • Author: Antonia Cornaro and Han Admiraal

As we are both active professionals engaged in lots of meetings, workshops, events, conferences etc, we always try to utilise these events to highlight the book.

Even before the book came out, we were getting geared up to present it at various targeted events, so when it was published in March 2018, we immediately had a road show lined up of conferences and workshops, i.e. in Vienna, London and Dubai. At the Dubai conference we had our presentation filmed which has been a great way to give interested people a quick introduction to the book.  



At events we give an input statement to our presentation by referencing something from the book. Recently, for instance, we were co-hosting an event on logistics in Belgium, and we had the idea to introduce the invited expert speaker by referencing the relevant logistics case study from our book. We also handed out flyers and bookmarks that we had specially designed and printed.

At another recent event in Switzerland Antonia was asked to speak on "cities of the future" so it was an ideal opportunity to include a couple slides and statements from the book.


We have created a dedicated website for our book which we keep up to date with info on events. It also includes insights into some of the chapters, media releases etc. It is ‘the home of Underground Spaces Unveiled’, so it’s the book’s website rather than the authors'.


A screen capture of the website the authors have created for their book.

For UK events, we try to involve ICE Publishing to sell books at a special discount, we also work with our publisher across social media. 

An example of a book's social media image provided to the authors by ICE Publishing Marketing. This particular design was prepared for Christmas 2018.

Apart from our personal accounts on LinkedIn and Twitter, we have created a Facebook page and an Instagram account dedicated to the book, where we bring relevant stories and updates on happenings around the book. That way we can reach large communities outside of our traditional professional networks. We have also written a blog on LinkedIn .

Occasionally we give the book as a gift to important people such as politicians, journalists or famous architects or designers or planners who can be carriers of our message and who would not necessarily come across it in their day to day life. We also use an online listing of universities that carry it in their libraries so that we can monitor where and how it's being used in academia. 

Our aim is to also contact art and museum book shops where our book would fit well into their assortment. Contacting museum and art gallery bookshops to see if there is scope for them to display our book, is still on our to do list.

When we won the  Gerd Albers award for "best book" from ISOCARP in October 2018, we made sure to include the book's new status as an award winner in our promotion of it. 


A picture of the authors accepting the award for their book. This image was supplied to ICE Publishing Marketing so that it can be featured on the book's flyer.

At the moment we are commissioning Goodreads to have our book peer reviewed which will happen over the next few months.

We are also constantly on the lookout for new opportunities to promote the book, ideally through live presentations. Recent new invitations came in from China and Mexico as well as other places throughout Europe. This is always a great opportunity to bring different parts of the book to a live audience and get them interested in purchasing a copy.

Recently we have been approached by renowned universities to teach a course on the subject and are reviewing the terms. We are intrigued by the idea of teaching this subject to students who will be the future professionals to implement underground space development in shaping the cities of the future.


Find out more about becoming an ICE Publishing author and about Underground Spaces Unveiled: Planning and creating the cities of the future