In last week’s post (Promote or perish…a series about blatant self-promotion (BSP)), I talked about my planned retirement and my next stage of development. I am formally embracing writing as a full-time endeavour!

While I know some of what I need about craft or publishing, I do not have a good handle on marketing. I know that I have to do it; I even know that I’m in charge of it for me (as most authors are these days), the authentic me. Which, if done right, can give me a direct pipeline to readers.

Many business elements compete for attention

It’s easy to get bogged down in “business” decisions that clamour for attention before marketing is considered. One of the biggest? Whether you are going to quit your day job and go all-in, or merely write in your spare time, cajoling the muse to appear on command whenever you have a stray few minutes. I decided long ago that my approach was to dabble on the margins until I retired and could do it full time, which is soon. Other people ask which business model they’ll attempt, from Big 5 submissions to DIY / self-publishing. Do I need help getting set up? A coach? Craft lessons? Editors? They are all important.

If and when marketing gets attention, it is often in the form of “what’s my brand?” (as I discussed last time), or specific tactics like taglines, mailings or swag. Or various platforms to use. There’s often no real strategy involved; it’s just a shotgun blast of marketing into the abyss. I will discuss tactics later in my development, when I talk about various stages such as pre-launch, initial launch, series launch and maintenance.

For me, since I think in frameworks, I know I want a marketing framework, but I hesitate to formally call it a strategy yet. Joyce Spizer would argue that I need the plan 12-18 months before I launch the first book, and while that is compelling, I don’t have enough details yet to call it “anything,” but I often ask myself, “What resonates?” in what I read. I do know that my approach will be predicated on three principles:

1. Marketing is a line item for my budget: it’s non-negotiable, and it’s going to cost me actual dollars, and, more importantly, time and concerted effort;
2. Marketing is a means, not an end: the goal is to help readers connect to my authentic self and my stories;
3. Marketing helps build relationships and overcome a transactional focus with readers.

That third element resonates strongly with me across my current day-to-day work. I manage relationships with a set group of stakeholders, aka clients, and almost all of the work is about moving the relationship from transactions to lasting partnerships. I need to learn to convert that approach into marketing as a writer. I found the first item resonates, too, about needing to budget for it. Writing the book isn’t enough. Some writers even earmark part of their advance from a publisher just to ensure they have a budget for their own promotion.

As time goes on, maybe I’ll get to the stage where it is budgeting per stage of each book (as Kristine Kathryn Rusch suggests) or building the structural assets of email lists before the posture (as Kevin Kelly might suggest), where your marketing tools become assets of the business you are building as a writer. I’m not there yet, I know. Nor am I even ready for Dean Wesley Smith’s advice on sales copy and what I should include on the back cover of my future books, where it’s okay to SELL HARD, rather than the constrained approach everywhere else. As long as the spending is legitimate and battle-tested, not falling for pie-in-the-sky or snake-oil promises. And I do like the idea that having a budget is also a sign that you are serious about investing in your own career, as Jeffrey Marks once argued for attracting cost-matching investments in the print era.

The marketing division of Me, Inc.

There are many people in publishing who believe that commercial success depends more on coordinated marketing / publicity than on writing quality. That good books don’t find best-seller lists; best-seller lists find books that have been marketed well. Some even want to embrace a full-on P.T. Barnum approach to marketing, in which publicity takes precedence over quality. While that may have hidden grains of truth, it is far too cynical for my tastes. If it was true, there would be no reason for anyone other than James Patterson, John Grisham or J.K. Rowling to write books, and every advertised book would be a giant success. I will agree that successful writers have to know the appropriate genres, emerging trends, and at least the basics of marketing’s impact.

But while marketing might help get you the first sale, it is quality and word-of-mouth that will likely drive the second. Just like the best way to increase the sales of your first book is to write a second one. And a third. Or as Michael Connelly said in an episode of Castle (S03E21 – The Dead Pool):“Know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote 23 more.” Of course, frictionless sales and continued access as a business approach make a big difference, even if they aren’t part of marketing.

As I work through these issues for myself, I find myself thinking of the classic idiom that 50% of all money spent on advertising, marketing, and the like is wasted. Except nobody knows which 50%. 🙂 Most experienced writers agree that effective book promotion requires strategic thinking about which tactics to deploy and willingness to test and adapt, not merely maximizing effort expended.

Perhaps a simpler way for me to interpret it is that outcomes are not guaranteed and everything we try is an experiment of sorts. Paid advertising can be very high-risk and costly for writers, as most types of marketing available to us “normal people” are hard to target to the readers that we’re trying to reach. A recent post on Threads was from a woman who was experimenting with social media ads for her books, and after spending the money (several hundred dollars), and running the experiment for most of a month, she had precisely one targeted sale she could point to as directly related to the marketing.

By contrast, free alternatives such as press releases, social media, and podcasts might seem more “efficient” simply because even one sale won’t be offset by a counter-investment. Most examples of online efforts suggest that author-pay promo platforms rarely earn back their fees, at least not directly or immediately. The long tail of sales may pick up, particularly for ebooks, as many readers add books to their TBR lists now and read much later, but there may be no bump in sales. Free giveaways cause jumps in product movement, but not always in actual book sales.

There’s a third popular refrain. “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” That any coverage, any visibility, beats none. And there is some evidence to support that…early on in the Kindle days, even BAD reviews on books tended to boost sales. A study back in 2010 showed that new authors, those who were still unknown, could see a 45% increase in sales after a negative review, simply by raising awareness of the book. The first step to sales is that the buyer has to know your book exists. A real book by a real person. Hard to say if that negative review option is true anymore; the evidence is more mixed now and harder to come by with multiple sites hosting reviews.

In the end, though, it comes back to the earlier point. In most businesses, you can’t control outcomes, only cost and process. But there’s one aspect I can control as a writer where I am the brand, the product creator, a solo practitioner, and an entrepreneur, all rolled into one.

I can control myself and build my reputation

With much of the result out of my control, my performance measurement background starts to kick in. If you can’t control the outcomes, you focus on inputs and outputs.

When you research the field, it’s easy to find things you shouldn’t do. Don’t use paid reviews or keyword-jack rivals; when you’re found out, the backlash will be swift and harsh. Don’t pick online fights, particularly if someone left a negative review. Chalk it up to your book simply not being right for that reader. Just as not everyone likes the same brand of orange juice. Don’t market yourself in a way that looks like you’re piling on or exploiting a tragedy, like promoting a story about a school shooting just after a Columbine-like incident. In fact, not only shouldn’t you use real people, but you shouldn’t make it look like you’re basing it on real incidents that would make someone think, “ewwww”. That also extends into writing advice like don’t put kids or pets in harm’s way, either. If it’s only gratuitous or sensational, leave it out.

Why for all of those? Because you don’t want to look like a schmoozy self-promoter who will use any hook to sell a book. At times, that is simple. Think about every bad experience you’ve ever had with someone pushy trying to sell you something, where you rejected the product because you weren’t ever going to buy something from THEM. They could have had the greatest product in the world, but their behaviour turned you off. Don’t be like them. Don’t over-promote, don’t over-hype, don’t over-sell.

Ultimately, I have found in conversations with experienced authors that it takes a while before the “don’t” rules start to quiet down. The noise lessens. Lessons learned start to emerge about what worked, over things to avoid that didn’t. Shakespeare himself might have written, “All that glitters is not gold”, with a lot of the “don’ts” focused on the bright shiny objects that pop up quickly, rather than the “dos” representing the slower dull lustre of a mindshift.

My first and best asset is my potential reputation. If I reframe promotion as relationship-building instead of pushing transactions, most of my anxiety lessens. Back in my youth, I tried to sell circus tickets by telemarketing. It was depressing as heck. Some people were good at it, most were not, and I hated it, so it’s not surprising that I wasn’t very good at it. I lasted two days. Throughout my normal career, I have preferred to deal with direct partner clients over the open public.

I like the advice about seeing it as joining a larger writing community rather than simply entering an industry. A global community of creatives trying to manage the commercial side of their business. Like most good communities, I will focus ideally on long-term loyalty to the group, contributing before looking for a return or short-term profit, and mutually helping and learning. The quieter lessons learned suggest that readers are like most consumers — they can detect a money-focus over a relationship focus.

Instead, I need to focus on my professionalism, respect for others, and warmth. In my nonfiction writing, I can build off my credibility of thirty years of lived experience as a policy and program analyst, as well as a large, deep platform of prior blog posts. I don’t have that on the fiction side, yet! But I hope to let restraint and quiet confidence lead readers to develop interest in me and my stories naturally rather than pushing sales.

I will pay a price for that choice, as C. Hope Clark would suggest, of choosing my comfort zone over being actively visible, perhaps an introvert in an extrovert’s clothing. However, that move would never feel authentic to me. In the beginning, I will likely prioritize a small number of simple approaches over several channels to see what works in general. Start small, experiment, learn.

Mostly? I need to be me, find what works for me, and I need to be present. One of my guiding principles in life is that I believe there is no such thing as a casual conversation or encounter. Every moment is a constant interaction of you with the universe. It is the hardest lesson for me to remember and to remain present. To respect the encounter first and always.

As a new writer, I welcome those new encounters with a plan in my hand and respect in my heart. For readers, writers, booksellers, librarians. For the larger creative universe that I’m embracing.

I’m not quite ready to say, “1, 2, 3, ready or not, here I come”, but I’ll practice my announcement once I get a frog out of my throat. (This is why I write, I couldn’t make it on the comedy circuit.)

I could close this post with a question for other writers about which parts, if any, resonated with them. Instead, I am asking readers. What do you look for when you engage with an author? What works for YOU?