How Marketing & Publicity Can Set You Apart As A Writer
With the number of books published every year, being a selling author requires more than simply being an incredible writer. Even before your book hits the bookstore, you need to perfect the art of marketing and publicity. Wait, what? Yes, you read that right. For every project you undertake, it’s never too early to start thinking about how you are going to promote and sell your work and set yourself apart as a particular author brand. Marketing and publicity are two different things, but to keep from repeating both throughout this article, I’ll just call them collectively “marketing,” though I’ll differentiate when needed.
Boost your industry presence and reach readers with a focused marketing strategy
To sell a book, readers need to know about it. The visibility of both you and your book are equally important. One is a product. The other is a career. Without the right industry presence, even the best books can go unnoticed. I’ve read numerous books that I wonder why they aren’t bestsellers and I really think it comes down to a lack of promotion: marketing and publicity. No matter how good the book, you still need to reach readers and somehow lift yourself and your book above all the noise. Creating a focused marketing strategy gives your book a leg up. Thinking about press coverage, social media campaigns, and newsletters are a few of the examples that authors can use and, if you read just these three items again, you’ll see that they require very little financial investment on the part of the author. They will take your time (unless you want to pay someone), but these activities are within the reach of every author. If you haven’t already discovered it as you’re going through your career, the onus of getting the word out is on you, not the publisher. Consider yourself the sole support for helping your book(s) succeed.
Start building your book's buzz now
Promotion and building the value of your book needs to start now, wherever now is for you in your writing. Most authors wait too late to begin to think about marketing. Many writers think that after they write their book and give it to their agent or their publisher, their work on that book is over. Not true. It’s only continuing. I say continuing because already you should have been building anticipation and buzz for the book on three fronts: on you as an author, on your current work-in-progress, and on any of the other books you already have available. When someone Googles you, you need to be all over the Internet. Book influencers already need to be aware of you or, at the very least, should be able to find material about you quickly, along with the project you are currently working on. Doing all of this before you have something to sell might sound crazy, but it’s not. You’re laying the groundwork for what is to come. Again, when do you need to start? Now. Right this minute.
Become a successful author with a winning book and marketing plan in hand
When you write, you’re going to create basically two documents: one is the story you are writing, the other will include the ideas that come to you about how you are going to market the book. You’ll write these in unity. Just as you’re going to go back and do subsequent drafts of your novel (for example), you’re also going to go back and do multiple drafts throughout the writing process on your marketing plan. What you’ll have at the end of it is a superb book and also a superb (and totally unexpected) marketing plan to give to your agent and/or your publisher when you submit your work or when they ask you for it (which they will at some point, guaranteed). Having it ready means it is polished. It also lets your agent and publisher know that you are something unusual, that you’re a strategic thinker, and you’re probably going to be a great partner to work with in making a profit and success for both you and the publisher. We all love the win/win.
Publishers protect their cash cows, but that doesn’t mean you are not an asset
We all hear about how publishers put all their resources into promoting their star authors while letting everyone else float aimlessly around or even drown. To some extent that is true. Top-selling authors are a publisher’s bread-and-butter. If you haven’t proven yourself, you are not necessarily an asset at this point…and could very well be a liability. This is all part of starting out or working your way up until you prove yourself as someone on whom they can rely on to be an income producer for the company. In business, that’s totally understandable. So how are you going to get your prospective agent’s or publisher’s attention? By having that marketing plan ready. By showing you are not only an incredible writer, but you’ve got a marketing mind, as well. Trust me, this is going to set you apart. Letting your agent or publisher know that you’re willing to promote the book as much as they are lets them know that they have an equal partner in the success of your book. This is true whether you’ve been in the business for years or this is your first time out of the publishing gate.
The technical difference between marketing and publicity
As you plan your marketing document, let’s take a moment here to differentiate marking and publicity. Marketing usually requires paid advertising, whether that is print, billboard, online, whatever. Publicity comes from doing media interviews, speaking publicly, getting reviewers to review your books, that sort of thing. Unless you’re hiring a publicity firm to do the work for you, publicity is something that any author can do. Let me mention the best thing for selling your book: word of mouth. This comes from writing a great book and then letting everyone know about it through this long-term buzz while you are writing it, editing it, submitting it, waiting for it to be published, and finally shouting to the world when it finally hits the light of day.
Marketing is fun if your heart is in the right place
Meeting readers and viewers (I’m also a filmmaker) is a highlight for me. I don’t view marketing as a chore. I see it as a chance to connect with those people who like my work. I see it as a chance to make new friends and hear their stories. To me, it’s fun. People are fascinating. To do a promotion for a project is not about me or my book, film, or album, it is about hearing the stories of those who have come to the event. Viewed in this light, every appearance is a chance to make new friends (and I’ve made many lifelong friends this way). Readers love to see you succeed. They love to learn what it means to be a writer. They find you a fascinating oddity. They like to have “discovered” you. They love watching your career take off and remembering back when. This should take some pressure off you. Marketing is not about selling books. Marketing is not about making you famous. If you are authentic, marketing is about sharing a passion for stories, about having great conversations, about coming together as a group with common interests and common loves. Nothing feels greater. As you create your marketing document (while you are writing), look at these as opportunities to connect with other people. As they say, writing is isolated and lonely. This is your chance to get out of the house and meet the very people for whom you spent those lonely hours writing.
Like being an author, being a marketer is long term
As you saw, marketing starts even as you start writing the first sentence of your new book. Bad news / good news: it never stops. Building a career is not a sprint. I’m not even sure it is a marathon. For some of us, it is a long slow walk across the continent. But no matter the speed, it is something that we must continually do. Everything you do keeps you and your collection of works in the public eye. How do you keep it going? You continue to engage with your readers through public appearances, interviews, social media interaction, and even answering emails. Let your readers know that they matter to you – and make sure they sincerely matter to you (if not, look for some attitude adjustment) – and they will stay with you for life. Like your writing career, think of marketing in the long term. It’s something you do every day, just like writing. It’s constantly making new connections and lifelong friends.
You know best how to market your book
We’d really like others to do our marketing for us but think about it: if you have a child, who knows the child better than you. A book is certainly not the same as a child, but the principle holds. As you write the drafts of your book and you have that marketing document right there beside you, focus on who would be interested in your story, its themes, its characters, its message. You have an understanding of your book that no one else has. Better than anyone, you know your book’s potential (if you’re being honest). You know the kind of reader who would be attracted to this book, who needs this book. You’ll find, as you near the end of this writing process, that you have an incredibly clear idea of who your target audience is and, because of that, you’ll already have determined simply by association the type of marketing campaign you need in order to reach that demographic. You hold a lot of power relating to the success of this book. Grab that power. Use it. You, above the publisher or anyone, knows what makes your book special and whose life would be affected or changed by reading it.
Who would want to read your book?
It’s long been proven in sales and brand building that a shotgun approach does not work. Niche marketing is key. We’ll talk more about that later in future posts. So, I’ll ask you again as I have asked before: who would want to read your book? Who would benefit or find their life changed? Who would be entertained? Knowing this reader is your gold. It’s knowing who is going to want to read the book based upon the premise alone. It’s knowing who will read this book and probably share it with their friends or post about it on their own social media. It’s knowing who will reach out to you to let you know that your book affected them positively (and you’ll love getting these messages in your inbox). So, as you think about your marketing document as you write your book, think about your ideal reader’s profile, gender, age, interests, habits, and maybe even the areas where you might reach them (Facebook, for example, has a decidedly different demographic than TikTok). Knowing your reader is your target. By knowing your target, you can build your marketing roadmap. And by building this niche roadmap, you’ll go on a journey you never imagined.
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