{🙀The "you" in this post is mostly me waving a finger at myself 😼}
“I just want to write.” I’ve heard this often, and sometimes
that came from inside my own head.
If you want readers, you want to publish. Whether it’s
traditional by a commercial
publisher (i.e. be published) or self-publish, publishing means to make public.
“I don’t want to have to sell, I want to write.”
Yeah, right. Then write, baby, write. Keep it in the drawer,
and then write some more. For the drawer.
But if you want to share your writing with anyone other than
dutiful family and patient friends, you must market.
Let’s face it. If you want a crack at the door of the large
and medium size publishers, you need an agent. You have to market your work to
a legitimate agent, who will be compensates when your work sells.
That’s the least you must do. So no need denying you’re
a marketer right there.
If you self-publish, you become a full time marketing team.
No getting around that.
In other words, the notion that a writer is not a marketer
needs bursting from the get-go. It’s a matter of how and how much.
Embrace it, and go forth.
11 comments:
Marketing is a huge part of being an author. It isn't easy. Sometimes we put a lot of effort and money into it, and don't see the results.
Yes, at the very minimum there's the process of querying either agents or editors. That's marketing our stories right there.
Some marketing I enjoy, simply because I enjoy sharing what I like or find worthwhile with others who I think will benefit. I especially like sharing with kids. More than once, parents have had to 'drag' their kids away from my table because they were having such fun with my puzzles they didn't want to leave. That kind of response makes marketing a joy. But obviously it's not all like that and I have my reluctance also.
Every single author I know says marketing is hard. Saying, buy my book is sort of hard. Probably best to engage a marketing company.
I can well imagine kids at your table with fun puzzles.
We are conditioned to avoid self-praise, and marketing invariably feel like such.
Ev, I love the image of you surrounded by kids. Yes, I also enjoy sharing my stories with kids.
Mirka, I think doing the activities that come naturally to us, that support book promotion, I think they're the best. For me, it's always going to be teaching.
I still detest having to invite everybody I can think of to my book launches, but it's necessary. And amazingly, a few of them are still coming! The only part of book "marketing" I like is visiting schools, which in Canada typically doesn't result in too many book sales, but maybe kids then take your books out of the library, possibly.
A lot of marketing is now virtual/digital, and still, as always, publishers posses the lion's share of effective marketing. But the first step remains with the author, i.e. getting it out of the door to an agent or editor. "Publish" means market.
I may need to get another dog to help me promote my next book. It was so much easier to ask him to do it for me!
We want to share our creativity with the public, but we don't want to have to be the marketer of it.
Blowing your own horn just... blows. Much better to have a dog bark it for you :P
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