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What A Hard Sell Communicates To The World
Through attunement, buoyancy, and clarity, we are touching on the humanity of our readers through conversations. We're seeing them as real people, not as numbers.
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Why Is Marketing Such A Dirty Word For Writers?
If writers' only marketing strategy is to lambast the world with "buy this" tweets or auto DMs or any other annoying, repetitive, empty hard sell strategy -- one that ignores who their readers are as humans -- then they will be disappointed in the results.
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Nine Things I’ve Learned About Book Marketing
No one successfully markets the same way. The path is self-discovered. You can't market the way I do and expect the same results. Every marketing plan should be individualized for the author and the book.
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How Good Marketing Is Like Good Parenting
The writing of the book was the pregnancy. You conceived the idea in a romantic, intimate moment. You developed it secretly in the dark. You wrote while stuffing your face with all kinds of snacks. You tried to explain your characters and your plot to others and they just didn't understand. And the length of the ms got bigger and bigger. And you wondered will I ever get this done? Will I be waiting for the arrival forever?
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Ten Local Resources That Could Help You Sell Books
Selling books is hard. But assuming that your book is an excellent one, it's free of grammatical and artistic errors, it has a nice, professional cover and you've done all you can do to make it a great book then you can sell it.
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Five More Reasons You May Hate Marketing And What You Can Do About It
If we are to have readers, we have to go find them, convince them that our stories are worth spending money on and do it in a somewhat civilized way.
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Five Reasons You May Hate Marketing And What You Can Do About It
We'd rather not market at all. We'd rather hide behind our computer screens and only have the kinds of relationships that require us to type words.
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How Book Marketing is Like Flirting, Dating, and Getting Engaged
By Rebecca Waters You’ve written a book. You may have a publisher or agent. You may have decided to publish the book yourself. Whatever path you take, there are marketing decisions you will make that will help or hinder book sales. This post examines stuff not in your book. It is a look at the cover: the front and back of your book. It describes marketing in terms of what people see when they pick up the book or scroll through a pile of possible reads on Amazon or Goodreads. This is often your first contact with readers outside your mom and a close circle of friends. Marketing is like…
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Top 10 Ways Marketing Your Books Is Like Exploring A Jungle
by Katharine Grubb, 10 Minute Novelist Some authors would call marketing an adventure. Yet other authors would call marketing a long, torturous, mosquito ridden trek full of disease, peril and snakes. In some ways finding buyers for your books is easier than exploring the Amazonian jungle. If you have studied, worked, created, drafted, revised, edited and completed a novel, it’s unlikely you took the time to learn the skills to sell it. And because it seems hard, as hard as hacking your way through a rain forest, you may have a negative opinion of it. You may think that to sell, then you may have to be annoying to buyers, like…
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Top 10 Ways To Get Your Readers To Fall In Love With You
According to an interesting article on WikiHow, “How To Fall In Love” you can find yourself in a satisfying relationship in a few not-so-easy steps. I’d like to suggest that authors follow their advice to be “in love” with their readers. And hopefully, readers will fall in love with them too! Boost Your Self-Esteem. For those looking for romance, this means exude confidence, know who you are, and stop comparing yourself to others. This will make you attractive to others. Writers should do the same thing. Take the time to make yourself into a good writer. That means that you need to seek out challenging mentors and coaches that can push…
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Top 10 Ways Good Marketing Is Like Good Parenting by Katharine Grubb, 10 Minute Novelist and Mother of Five
Becoming an author is like becoming a parent. The writing of the book, was the pregnancy. You conceived the idea in a romantic, intimate moment. You developed it secretly in the dark. You wrote while stuffing your face with all kinds of snacks. You tried to explain your characters and your plot to others and they just didn’t understand. And the length of the ms got bigger and bigger. And you wondered will I ever get this done? Will I be waiting for the arrival forever? And the big day comes! You get your little bundle of joy from Createspace or some other expert labor and delivery establishment! You count all of…
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Top 10 Reasons To Treat Twitter Like A Big Cocktail Party by Katharine Grubb, 10 Minute Novelist
Imagine yourself in a packed football stadium — one of the big ones like Gillette or Lucas Oil. Now imagine that every one in attendance at that stadium is shouting at the same time. They aren’t shouting to players on the field, they’re not even watching the game, instead, they are trying to get the attention of the people on the other side of the stadium. Everyone in the stadium, including you, wants attention from others. Everyone wants to be known as clever. They want subscribers or followers or friends or likes. Everyone in the stadium wants the attention of everyone else in the stadium. This isn’t a great way…
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Top 10 Ten Ways To Be There For Your Readers By Way Of ’90s Television
I firmly believe that your readers can be your friends. I think that if you are a wise author, you are looking at your readers not as someone who bought, read and reviewed your book, but someone who, could potentially turn into a raving fan. The term raving fan was coined by Kenneth Blanchard to describe a customer who enthusiastically promotes a company or service and would be a lifelong fan of the people behind it. In the writing world, we can have raving fans too. A writer who has raving fans will have an army or coalition of people who will always buy what they publish, they will always leave…
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The Book Launch Checklist To Make Your Next Release Awesome!
Congratulations! You have a new book to sell! Are you doing everything you can to promote it? Some of these points are no-brainers, like have a great cover. Some, though, are optional, like having a live release party at your local coffee shop. All of them will require YOU to look at YOUR book and YOUR needs and decide what YOU can do. I’m also going to assume that your starting point is AFTER your book has been written, rewritten, revised, edited and proofread to death. If you don’t have a quality product, please, please, please, go back and make it one. You aren’t respecting yourself, your art, your readers…