Marketing is literally the worst thing in the world. There, I said it. It’s out there and the whole world can see it.
I have a pretty solid plan to market my upcoming book, most of which comes from stuff that I learned from the release of “The Godslayer.” I have a better idea of what to do and how to do it, something that I didn’t have before. This is very, very important. I also know what things that I shouldn’t be wasting my time and money on anymore, which might be more valuable.
I’ve had a difficult time sleeping over the past week or so because I’ll be laying in bed and thinking about ways to make my book a success. These lamentations have led to some really positive discoveries and also led to a lot of sleepless nights. It’s the good with the bad, right?
What I’ve discovered is that there are lots of people out there who want to give out advice on how to market a book but don’t have any actual advice to give. I’ve seen countless blogs taking advantage of the fact that this is a topic that is heavily searched for by many authors only for them to just give boilerplate advice. Believe in yourself? Interact with your audience? Have a blog? Use social media? Great! None of those things should be news to a writer in 2015. There are even people who are looking to sell you advice in the form of an ebook, seminar or one-on-one coaching session on how to market your book.
Now, I’m not a fan of judging people (who am I kidding, I’m a writer, that’s all that I do), but these people are awful. They are the pond scum marketing themselves as a new age cure of the publishing world and will often tout how they are a “successful author.” Successful authors aren’t trying to sell impressionable, young, confused and scared writers snake oil. Unless they are and I’ve missed the memo that an important part of being a writer is trying to make a quick buck off of people looking for advice.
I understand that it’s not easy out there for writers and that it’s not a field that yields crazy salaries. In fact, it’s a profession that is full of disappointment, heartache and endless hurdles. But man, this stuff is just sad. I’ve met some wonderful people out there in social media who are going through these same struggles, but it’s hard to ignore the bad ones.
This all being said, I’ve come up with a pretty solid plan to market this book and I’m looking forward to executing it and seeing how it all works out.
The exciting stuff that is happening is that I’ve started on the follow-up to this book already. I had a rough time getting into it, but now it has started to flow out of me again and it is very easy to remember why I love writing so much. I’ve never had a chance to write anything that sprawls quite like this series will, which is fun. There are going to be some unresolved issues in the first book, but I’m thinking big picture here and have already started working on these issues in the second book. That’s the kind of stuff that excites me.
Oh yeah, don’t forget to sign up for my mailing list (on the left bar) where I’ll only bug you for big announcements on my stuff and when I put stuff on sale. That’d help me out quite a bit so I don’t have to pay Facebook to “amplify” posts to actually reach people.