Marketing! Gasp! Even writers have to do it
Write Better Now
Quick note: This post is part of the series about making a living as a writer. To see all the related posts, look up LIVING AS A WRITING as a search on the main site and you should be able to find all the articles.
Growing up, it was very much part of my culture and my upbringing that believed that you did not brag about yourself. You did not brag about your family. If someone praised you, you were immediately self-deprecating or made a joke or praised them.
To not do so?
Well, it would bring bad luck.
Or you’d look like a braggart, which was some sort of massive evil.
I’m not saying that was right. I’m just saying it was how I was raised. So, when it comes to marketing myself or my books? It pains me. Literally, it makes me anxious.
We recently asked people for money for our local daily paper, The Bar Harbor Story, that we put out for free (because we want news to be available to everyone, not just the people who can afford it). In that appeal, we said, “Hey, if you’re into this and making sure we keep doing it and that it stays free, donate. If you can’t afford to donate, do not stress! You’re our point.”
This was HORRIFYINGLY uncomfortable for me even though I obviously need money to pay bills and I write more than a million free words of news every year now and the paper takes up an exceptional amount of my time—time I could be doing something else that makes money.
But the thing is? People donated. And they were kind about it. So kind. When you write about local politics (and get some nasty emails that go with that), you sometimes forget that people can be so incredibly kind and supportive.
So, what does this have to do with making a living as a writer? Well, it has a couple things going on:
You have to value your work and time and yourself to remind people they can pay you (sometimes).
You have to survive and eat and have shelter and things.
You have to get past your fear and potentially learn a new skill.
For me, that new skill is marketing. How about you?
Spoiler: You can hire someone to do this marketing thing for you. There are people who specialize in marketing novels and writers.
If you are cheap or do not have this money at the moment to invest in your writing business (cough, me), you can take some classes (free or paid) and try to learn on your own, but it’s so important.
Why?
People can’t read your book/poem/novel/essay/blog if they don’t know about it.
People can’t pay you if they don’t know you have something amazing for them.
“Success often hinges on the ability to balance creative expression with a strategic approach to marketing, self-promotion, and adaptation to the ever-evolving landscape of modern publishing,” agent Mark Gottlieb told Forbes.
Marketing your book can happen in a lot of different ways. You can do interviews in papers, blogs, podcasts. You can send out emails to all your friends and readers (and start a email list especially for that). You could pay for an ad on social media or on a site that sells books.
A lot of writers spend half their day writing and half their day dealing with the writing business (marketing, emails, research, connecting, podcasting, reading books, taking course to get more skilled etc.).
If you want to make a living as a writer, you have to think of writing as a business as well as an art—usually. There is always an exception or two.
Here’s the thing: you have to want to grow.
You have to develop more skills and learn more so that you can stretch and grow. That’s true about the art of writing and the business of writing.
A great way to do this is to look at other writers who are successfully making a living and noticing what they do.
Look at their books, courses (if they have them), events, interviews. What are they doing? Can you do it, too?
Look at authors to model who are working similarly to how you want to work. But also branch out and think about how other professions market goods.
“You must have a strategic plan. The most successful authors think like business people. There is a strategy behind the book, multiple revenue streams beyond the book, and as always, the author is their own best secret marketing weapon. Not the publisher, not the PR firm, and not the agent, but the author,” Ashley Bernardi, founder and CEO of Nardi Media, told Forbes in that same piece.
RESOURCES
The Successful Author Mindset.
How to market your book via Reedsy (Has an ask for you to hire them at the bottom, but the content is free)
How to market your book via Forbes (same as Reedsy)