It’s no secret that I’m about to retire, nor that I’m going to do a lot of writing when I do. Many of the things I wanted to write over the years were incompatible with my job as a public servant. Equally, having a full-time job was not conducive to becoming a full-time writer. But to be clear, I’m not complaining. I had a good job and a good career. I’m just making a bold leap into writing with intentions at a later age than most.

In my daytime job, I have primarily been an analyst, with a subspecialty in frameworks at different points in my career. I see frameworks, I think in frameworks, I live in frameworks. Much of what I have written in the non-fiction realm so far, or at least that is public, is tied to some framework that I have created to help me understand my world — I see something, I want to understand how it fits into a larger system, and I write about it as I construct a box around it. It is a prerequisite for my voice as a nonfiction writer.

Today, I’m starting that leap forward into being a more official member of the fiction and non-fiction writing communities. And one of the biggest gaps in my toolbox is the one that everyone has to do. Being comfortable with marketing myself and my work.

Some call it blatant self-promotion; some call it simply marketing. I don’t have much experience with it, but I am not without exposure to the field.

Over the last 25 years, I have been following discussions in places like Murder Must Advertise (thanks to Kate Derie and Jeffrey Marks), ThePassiveVoice.com (former home to lawyer David Vandagriff, aka PassiveGuy), Dorothy-L back in the distant past, and consistently for the last fifteen years, the business stylings of Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith. Add in Joanna Penn and Jane Friedman too. Saving emails. Noting tips. Considering options. Oh, and collecting 65K emails before they disappeared into a digital black hole back in the day, which I have just used Claude to help sort in ways far faster than my manual reading process.

I also went to Bouchercon for the first time this past year, enjoying the food, sights, and sounds of New Orleans while dipping my toe in the world of conferences and hoping to learn from others. When I came back, with all my notes in hand, feeling like I had learned so much, Kevin Kelly then dropped a great tome on Substack with all his lessons learned about self-publishing, making most of my notes about the business side of writing and publishing redundant. Yet marketing remained somewhat nebulous.

With twenty-five years of planning, and blogging on the side, I know what’s right for me for most of the business model, and I know what I’m going to do on the writing and publishing side.

Yet the gap has always been the answer to the original question…how am I going to handle the marketing side?

Apparently, I am in charge of marketing

All the way back to the turn of the millennium, authors have consistently said the same thing. The old and mostly mythical days of the Big 5 publishers wining and dining new authors before sending them out on giant book tours, handling all the publicity decisions and mostly giving authors addresses to show up at are gone. The model has shifted slowly from big publishers starting to focus only on high-end books/authors and even that dwindling over time; the efforts of smaller presses and indies trying to show they could get in on the digital revolution and do more for authors (even with smaller budgets) that rose and then shrunk in the 2000s and 2010s.

Now in the 2020s? Publishers and agents want to know what YOU are already doing, what platforms you are on, and how they can “add incrementally and strategically” (aka cheaply) to what you are already doing and planning, before they even consider taking you on. How are you investing already? Admittedly, the pressure points divide by type of work … fiction writers can get away with saying what they’re GOING to do tied to the author and the book (not a general “sparkles and balloons” description), but they still need a killer book; non-fiction writers have to say what they’re already doing and how the material is the platform.

Obviously, if you are self-publishing, you already know that you are in charge of EVERYTHING in your “business” of being a writer. That’s part of the decision as to what publishing path you chose or ended up in by default. I remember talking to authors in the late 2000s who were still with big publishing and them saying, “Oh, I would NEVER do any of that, that’s *sniff* not a job for real authors!”. And they were right, they wouldn’t and didn’t do that…which is why, after they got dropped by their publisher and their agent, their writing career ended. They never pivoted.

Even at the 2025 Bouchercon, I was surprised by the continuing undercurrent that the only world that matters is that of big publishing, and MAYBE you could consider “small or indie” because they COULD be chic or hip in some way. But never self-publishing, of course.

Yet it doesn’t matter because, regardless of the path, they all agreed on a certain almost inalienable and timeless truth.

Nobody else will market you or your books for you; the job is yours by default. Promote or perish.

Self-published, print-on-demand or indie might have to fight harder to overcome industry biases and perceptions, but every author has to blatantly self-promote (themselves or their books) SOMEHOW. Publishers won’t do it for you; agents won’t do it for you; booksellers won’t do it for you. It is a business necessity if you want a sustainable writing career.

Which has always been a giant mental block for me. I am an analytical introvert. I don’t want to be out doing readings and trying to sell my books at fairs, bookstores and markets. Blech. It isn’t because it seems “unseemly” (no pun intended), it’s just not FUN for me.

I know enough not to be fooled by the scammers out there who advertise themselves as “promotion/marketing consultants” who, for a few thousand dollars, will do everything for you (always check Writer Beware, the ALLi watchdog, or Reedsy, although even Reedsy has issues; I’ll come back to this in a later post as some of the scams don’t feel like scams). Ninety percent of them make the other ten percent look bad, and even the ten percent will act like the traditional consultant. If you hire them to tell you the time, the first thing they do is borrow your watch.

Or, in this case, they’ll mine your social media, want to see your website, ask for your mailing lists, etc. — all the things you could do yourself, except you’ll be doing it to give to them, in order for them to turn around and do it “for you” and charge you the cost of the ongoing subscription service.

I know that I have to do what is right for me…the authentic me, not the imaginary me I might have thought was out there leading the life of an extroverted author.

Authenticity is not simple sincerity

There’s an old business adage about sincerity: The key to success is sincerity…and that once you fake that, you have it made in business. And that kind of cynicism does show up sometimes in tips and tricks about blatant self-promotion (BSP).

I have to remind myself sometimes that writers are surprisingly cooperative about telling others about what they think works or not. At Bouchercon, I overheard an ex-military intelligence guy talking about how he had planned in advance for the conference to identify ways in which he might persuade participants to talk to him, and to open up about the secrets of the writing and publishing industry. Adapted interrogation techniques that would help him infiltrate and glean intelligence from recalcitrant sources, so to speak. He was amazed that the solution was to walk up, say hi, tell them he was a new writer, and listen.

Every group out there seems to have a healthy number of Nike writers in it. The “Just do it” crowd. They’ll say, “Here, just do these four things.” Doesn’t matter to them that it’s a totally different audience. Doesn’t matter that it isn’t you. Doesn’t matter that you’d rather be intimate with a rabid ferret than join a writer’s group. They often believe “this method worked for x, it works for everyone”. While I gently call them Nike writers, it’s also the self-help guru Anthony Robbins’ approach to self-improvement — find someone getting the results you want, do what they do, get the same results. The advice works for some people because that’s how they already think. Except that’s not me. It probably isn’t you either if you’re reading this post.

As a result, though, of the prevalent advice of Nike writers, many writers assume that marketing is a necessary evil that has to mean cold calls, schmoozing, networking, and a ton of face-to-face work, faking sincerity where they can, despite the fact that many writers are introverts. They don’t want to do ANY of that stuff. Meet people? People you don’t know? Ewwww!

I’ve read enough alternate approaches to know that I simply don’t need to do it and that not all techniques work equally well for everyone. Sorry, Nike. Good thing you don’t make typewriters.

Which led in a sort of backward way to a key realization for me…I need to be authentic in three dimensions.

First and foremost, the synthesis of all those other non-Nike writers’ opinions is generally this…we all make choices to start writing and what business model we will run. We’re in charge. So we each get to decide what WE are comfortable doing and NOT doing. If being in a room with 500 other authors scares you, don’t go to conferences. Focus on things that you can do from the comfort of your own home. All your choices are YOURS. If it doesn’t feel true to you, you aren’t going to do it well and people can tell. If you hate public speaking? You’ll probably suck at it. And readers will be turned off. On the other hand, if you’re witty as heck in short blogs? Go NUTS doing THAT.

Which means I have to lean into my strengths and comfort levels. With mild self-nudging, of course, so that I can’t simply say “Oh, I don’t know how to do THAT, therefore I can’t”. I can learn. I just need a framework for my marketing. Ah, now we’re in my wheelhouse. Hence this series. I’m going to build myself a framework of “options” and choose the ones that I think might work for me.

The second part of the authentic spin from my readings is that readers want to see YOU. They want to know about YOU, the writer. Enough about your life so you seem real and not just a cardboard cutout or a face with a book blurb. Your writing experience, process, views on your characters, etc. The Rick Castle complaint of S01E01, “It’s all the same. They all ask, ‘Oooh, where do you get your ideas?’ Nobody ever asks anything new.” Because most just want a glimpse inside your world. So be yourself. Share appropriate bits. Put a favourite recipe on your blog if you want.

Me? I practically live on my blog. There are over 2M words about me and my thoughts in the two websites, and the framework for them works. Writing on Polywogg, personal on ThePolyBlog. With enough interaction between the two to keep things interesting. I know that I did some of that “build” for my website content with a bit of an eye to the future. I already know my boundary lines, and what I’m willing to share or not. I’m not looking for an agent or a big publisher, but if someone wants to know about my platform? I have 20 years of data, my friend. I’m good.

If I’m totally honest with myself, I’m leveling up across all the categories already with the primary intent of ensuring each category on both websites is the “authentic me”, not a generic version of myself.

The third dimension for authenticity, if I put more of an “entrepreneurial” hat on for a second, is adapting the various business model elements, including marketing, to what is right for me. Not Nike solutions if I’m not an athlete.

Nor am I going to get suckered into trying to farm everything out to others. Not the least of which is that it all costs money and ROI is shaky. Back in the mid 2000s, some estimates were that the average book sold less than 500 copies, and in some genres, less than 100 copies. The estimates used less than stellar math or methodology, yet even a long-tail build to say 3000 copies sold is not compatible with early outflow of cash for doubtful marketing “help” or because you think “you have to spend money to make money”. You already spent a lot of money — your time writing the book, and you didn’t farm that out. There are places where you can farm stuff out efficiently and effectively; I don’t think marketing is one of them, particularly if it is farming out the control. You can’t delegate being you. I’ll willingly spend money on improving the product, not the after-market upsells.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t honour the hard-won lessons of authors who went before me and came to the conclusion that you absolutely must write what you love, rather than chasing the latest fad or market trend. If you’re not passionate about what you’re writing, if you don’t feel compelled to write it even, the subsequent enthusiasm to sustain book quality and reader connection will fall short of authentic engagement. And in the end, I have to be me. My voice is all I have to offer that’s unique. I have to make sure it is always my real voice.

With great responsibility comes great power

I know, I know. That is NOT the line from Spider-Man movies. Yet the inversion is apt.

There are benefits to being in charge of everything. Rusch, for example, has got her rights back to a number of books, and she has rebranded them, updated them, approved them, and deployed them. With no one at a marketing or publishing company telling her to wait six months. Huge percentages of authors over the years have complained that one of the downsides to support from a publisher is that it is rarely “cooperative” support — they aren’t consulted much on cover design, marketing schedules, or even publishing plans. That’s “the company’s job”, and authors are encouraged to stay in their lanes. Until after it is published, when the company wants them to do more, more, more marketing and engagement.

You also have a greater chance of directly controlling any contract rights to the terms YOU care about rather than arguing about standard boilerplate from larger publishers with significant default rights grabs that always benefit the company, not the author.

Yet the biggest change over the last 20 years is the viability of self-publishing…more tools, more platforms (albeit in a dominant-player market), and almost all of it digital work you can do from your house with no human interaction required. And self-publishing gets higher royalties.

You now have a direct pipeline to readers. You are marketing directly to readers, not through a corporate entity that gatekeeps and hides behind a wall of mystique and so-called respectability. People can run marketing experiments, they can target sub-markets and niches, and they can write books that big publishing wouldn’t take a gamble on. Steampunk mystery with a cat as the protagonist? Kind of niche, and no publisher will touch it because it won’t earn out the cost. But you can write it and put it up for sale yourself, with your own marketing. I’ve talked to more than a few authors over the years who were quite happy with their sales, thank you very much, of 1500 copies of a book with a significant portion of the royalties. That’s them writing authentically about a passion-driven topic. And able to reach the cat-loving steampunkers looking for a good mystery.

Marketing is more important than ever if self- or indie-published, but that extra work and tradeoff — the great responsibility — comes with far more power and control than you would have with a large traditional publisher.

An obvious conclusion

You make all the decisions.

You need to be marketing you, the authentic you, over a single book or product.

And the increased responsibility comes with greater power for you to reach your audience directly.

Where does that leave you? The popular conclusion of the 2000s and even the 2010s was that

YOU are the brand.

A sharper 2020s conclusion, and a stretch of the word brand, is that

MY brand is what MY audiences recognize as ME.

I know my authentic self — a single frog with multiple writing personalities. I just need to find my audience. Or since I have multiple “product lines”, my audiences, plural. Or if I’m quoting Kelly and Rusch? Find the real / true fans. I have readers, sure, but I haven’t converted them into “owned fans” from Kelly’s perspective.

Like many of you are or once were, I’m new to this “real” writing life and figuring it out as I go. Feel free to tell me where I’ve gone wrong; it’s all grist for the mill as I start my new life.