Publish with Quality Publishers. Quality publisher lists are often created by by funding bodies, professional associations or university faculties for their staff.
Highlight Societal or Educational impact. List:
Library holdings (local or international). Use WorldCat (available through Chester Fritz Library - link below), a discovery service for North American/global libraries.
Prizes and awards.
Invitations and readings.
Citations in policy or practice documents, University textbooks, course reading lists.
References to new editions or reprints, translations into other languages.
Altmetrics. Mentions in the media, social media, researcher communities. etc.
Book Reviews. Books published by quality publishers attract reviews in quality journals.
Sales. Number of sales, local and/or international sellers and bestseller lists.
Usage Statistics. Downloads or loans of a particular title from selected libraries/repositories/publisher websites.
Databases with book and book chapter metrics:
Scopus
Bookmetrix on SpringerLink: Published by Springer for Springer books and book chapters, developed in partnership with Altmetric. Provides number of citations, downloads, book reviews, readers, and the number of online mentions in policy documents, news outlets, Wikipedia entries and social media networks. For an example, look at the Second International Handbook of Science Education.
Journals, books, series, and protocols in biomedicine, life science, clinical medicine, physics, engineering, mathematics, computer science, humanities, and economics.
The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota publishes high quality peer-reviewed and popular books. It uses digital and print-on-demand technologies to publish timely works in the digital humanities, broadly conceived. Whenever possible, we produce open access, digital publications, that can attract local and global audiences.
A selection of larger distributed publishers from the University of Chicago Press. Dozens of other publishers are carried within their catalogs, and marketed and sold to the book trade and the public.
A wiki page listing University Presses with reviews by users/authors who have experience with the publisher. Read reviews from authors around the world, or add your own.
The Social Psychology Network's page containing a web directory of academic publishers, including links to psychology listings, searchable catalogs, contact information, and order forms for examination copies.
Want to publish a book? Are you considering self-publishing, or are you hoping to land a big publisher? How do you find one that has expertise in your area of work? In the the country where your audience is? How about finding one in your own city? Does it really matter, in these days of instant communication? Your call.