Choices for Authors: Marketing vs. Writing

This post is the sixty-fifth post in a series about writing a novel. You can check out the list of past topics at the end of this post.

You can’t write a book and expect it to become an instant best-seller. It takes time and effort before most authors make consistent sells. And the only way to do that is to market yourself and your books.

Your newly published novel is out there, jumbled up with millions of other available titles. You must do something to make your book stand out and become discoverable by your target audience. But how much marketing do you need to do and how much time do you spend working on your next masterpiece?

The amount and type of marketing is dependent on each individual author/book. There simply is no one-size-fits-all plan for marketing.

If you are a new author, the best advice I can give to simply keep writing. By having multiple books, you increase your credence as an author. With each published book, you broaden your appeal and add credibility to your name. There are many readers who scoop up every title an author has written previously if they like your book. I know one author that said it took until her eighth book before she had established enough of a following to really take off and need less marketing.

Notice that I said LESS marketing. I don’t think there is any author that gets away with NO marketing. Even the big names like John Grisham and Stephen King have some marketing done for them if only to announce their latest release.

Many self-published authors do not have a team of marketing strategists behind them. If you can afford to hire someone, it will free up your time for writing, but most new authors don’t have that option, and many have a very small advertising budget.

Of course, the best tip for any author is to write a good book. Good word of mouth is the best advertising.

But I think one of the biggest problems that I and many other authors fail to do is establish a marketing plan. Many authors don’t even figure out who their target audience is. You need to find who will be interested in your book and then target that market.

But no matter how you market your book, remember – marketing takes time. Not just the time to do it but the time to see results. Your ad this week may not cause a spike in sales, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t work. People often need to see something – a new author, a new book – multiple times before they take the time to investigate to see if they want to know more or perhaps even buy the book.

You must continually market to be successful. Remember that this is a marathon and not a sprint. You need to be in it for the long haul. You need to be a relentless self-promoter. Unfortunately, many people don’t have the time for that. But anything you do whether it is something daily or just something once a week will help.

It ends up being a personal decision on how much time you spend on marketing. But know that every minute you spend marketing isn’t just about increasing sales. It is about building brand awareness. That brand is you, the author. So, unless you are independently wealthy and can spend all your time writing, you will need to schedule some marketing time to let the masses know about your book.  The key is not to spend too much time on marketing that you have no time for writing your next book.

Previous topics

#1 – Deciding to write a novel – Writing Myths

#2 – Three areas to develop before starting to write a novel

#3 – Finding a Story Idea and How to Know if it “good enough”

#4 – Developing Characters for your Novel

#5 – Major characters? Minor Characters? Where does everyone fit in?

#6 – Developing the Setting for your Novel

#7 – The importance of developing conflict in your novel plot

#8 – To Outline or not to outline 

#9 – The importance of a story arc

#10 – The importance of tension and pace

#11 – Prologue and opening scenes

#12 – Beginning and ending scenes in a novel

#13 – The importance of dialogue…and a few tips on how to write it

#14 – Using Internal Dialogue in your novel

#15 – More dialogue tips and help with dialogue tags

#16 – Knowing and incorporating back story into your novel

#17 – Hinting at what is to come with foreshadowing

#18 – Tips for writing different scenes in your novel

#19 – Dealing with Writer’s Block

#20 – Killing a Character in your Novel

#21 – Keeping things realistic in your novel

#22 – Establishing Writing Goals and Developing Good Writing Habits

#23 – Using the five senses and passive voice in your novel

#24 – The benefit of research in fiction writing

#25 – Novella or Novel, Trilogy or Series – decisions for writers

#26 – Avoiding Plot and Character Clichés

#27 – Novel Writing – Endings and Epilogues

#28 – Fantasy Novel Writing – World Building, Dragons, Magic and More

#29 – Finishing your First Draft

#30 – Your Second Draft and Beyond

#31 – Picking Stronger Words and Watching out for Homonyms

#32 – Omitting unnecessary words in your novel

#33 – Beta Reader, Proofreaders and Copy Editors

#34 – Knowing your grammar or at least using a grammar checking program

#35 – Using a Revision Outline during your Novel Editing

#36 – Editing Techniques: Taking a Break and Reading Aloud

#37 – Publishing Options for your book

#38 – Self-publishing an ebook decisions

#39 – Picking Your Book Title and Your Pen Name

#40 – Investing in an eye-catching book cover

#41 – Writing an awesome book blurb

#42 – Deciding on Front Matter for your novel

#43 – Deciding on Back Matter for your novel

#44 – Formatting your eBook for publication

#45 – Pricing your e-book

#46 – Selecting Categories and Keywords to improve your Novel’s visibility

#47 – Book Promotions: Cover Reveal and Pre-Orders

#48 – Publishing your novel with Amazon and KDP Select

#49 – Publishing your e-book with Smashwords or Draft2Digital

#50 – Marketing your E-book

#51 – Finding your Book’s Target Market

#52 – The importance of Book Reviews and how to get them

#53 – Is it worth it to offer your book for free?

#54 – My results from offering my novels for free

#55 – Amzon’s Kindle Countdown Deals explained and my results

#56 – Selling your book through book ads

#57 – Using a Book Trailer to promote your novel

#58 – Offering your novels or short stories as a box set

#59 – Deciding whether to offer your book as an audio book

#60 – Taking your book on a virtual book tour

#61 – Writing your Author Bio and selecting an Author Photo

#62 – Setting up your Amazon Author Page and International Amazon pages

#63 – Choosing between an Author Website or Blog

#64 – Holidays work for settings and book promotions

Quote of the week – January 30

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. ~ E. L. Doctorow

Dying too young…

On a recent Saturday morning, I noticed a post on our neighborhood community board that my neighbor’s son was missing. He is a high school senior and had gone out with friends the previous evening to a restaurant to celebrate a friend’s birthday but didn’t come home.

Now, I am an author and have quite a good imagination, but I can’t even fathom the panic his parents must be feeling. (Even if I thought I could imagine it, I am sure the actual feeling is a hundred times worse.) It is every parents’ worse nightmare. He wasn’t answering his phone and none of his friends knew where he was. They had left at 10:30 p.m. – each in their own cars – to go home.

Even though we live in the eighth largest city in the United States, the surrounding neighborhoods are a pretty tight knit group. A photo of Kyle and his car were quickly posted on the community board as well as Facebook where everyone was sharing it to get the word out that Kyle was missing.

I’ve known this neighbor for many years but since we live several streets apart and our kids are different ages, we only see each other occasionally. When his children were younger (and mine mere babies), his wife was on our homeowner association’s activity committee with me. But I didn’t feel comfortable being in the group of neighbors and friends who gathered at their house to show their support.

In fact, my husband and I talked about it. If I was in their situation, I don’t know that I would want a huge crowd around. We both felt the same when another neighbor’s granddaughter drowned in their pool. Many people gathered at the hospital, but we felt that it would have been overwhelming or possibly distracting to the family. (She survived and is doing fine.)

So, we stayed up-to-date by texts (with friends who were with the family) and the occasional update post on Facebook. All day Saturday there was no word. The police were involved in the search. There was no note saying he ran away or was suicidal. There was no activity on his debt card, but the family couldn’t get his cell phone company to help them access the location of his cellphone. They even called in a private investigator to help.

I woke up Sunday to find Kyle was still missing. Then around noon, a jogger found his car at the bottom of a 20-foot deep drainage ditch. The wreck couldn’t be seen from the road. This was a road by the high school and one that Kyle probably had driven hundreds of time. Whether he was speeding and just lost control or was distracted by a text on his cellphone, we do not know at this point. And while this was not the result any of us wanted, after 36 agonizing hours, his parents at least knew what happened to him.

And as you would expect, his parents are crushed. Kyle was just seventeen, looking forward to high school graduation and had already enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. He loved knife smithing and was involved in his church youth group and in mission work with his church. From the stories other tell, he was an exceptional young man and will be sorely missed.

I’ve tried to put myself in his parents’ place. I’ve tried to imagine not seeing my son again, to see his room but know he will never be there again, to never see his smiling face or hear his laugh. And it is impossible to imagine and something I hope I don’t have to deal with for many, many years. But the problem is you never know when a tragedy like this will happen. We never know when we say goodbye to someone if it will be for the last time.

And while I still have a few years before Jase is driving and I have to worry about car accidents, there are so many other dangers, ones you cannot even imagine, out there. The same weekend Kyle died there was a news article online about a 12-year-old girl who had a snow fort collapse on her, killing her. I remember reading once about a child who stepped onto the end of a bike rack that wasn’t secured properly to the ground. It flipped over, killing the child.

We can’t shelter and protect our children or loved ones all the time. But a death like Kyle’s reminds me to hug my kids a little tighter and give them one more kiss or “I love you” before they leave for school. I employ everyone to appreciate their friends and family now and hope that you have many more days together.

Super Easy, Barely an Inconvenience

Six years ago, I wrote about the question why and how it can improve your storytelling. As in why are your characters doing this? Why are they going here? Why would he do/say/think that?

These are routine questions that my husband asks as he reads drafts of my novel. And while his questions are sometimes annoying, they do make my story better. And they have changed how I write because as I write, I am already looking for what scenes he is going to question.

Another way to get good at questioning the character motivation/action or plot of your work-in-progress is to check out the Pitch Meetings on the Screen Rant YouTube Channel. In this series by Ryan George, a pitchman (Ryan) presents movies to a studio executive (also played by Ryan). The movies may be current or slightly older, but either way studio exec Ryan questions and points out flaws.

When asked to explain a flaw, our pitchman sometimes answers “I don’t know,” “because,” or “because they are (or aren’t) the main character.” And sometimes a plot flaw is brushed away because it is “super easy, barely an inconvenience.”

Check out this section of the “Jurassic World Pitch Meeting.”

This “super easy, barely an inconvenience” thing happens a lot. I was watching Criminal Minds the other day. The agents opened a closet to reveal a bunch of boxes containing old records. They needed to find an old patient who may be the unsub (bad guy). Did it take them long? No, it was super easy, barely an inconvenience as they opened one box and found the file right away. I know TV shows are under a time constraint but it wouldn’t have been hard or time consuming to show their search taking longer.

Here are two other short clips that show a movie’s flaw. The first is from Captain America: Winter Soldier.

If you really want a good Pitch Meeting with lots of flaws. Check out the one for Ready Player One. (The book was better than the movie and didn’t contain a lot of the flaw that the movie did.) Here is just a snippet of the Pitch Meeting.

So, don’t take the easy way out. Give your characters challenges. And make them work for their goal. Question everything they do because your readers sure will. Rarely do people do something without a reason. And yes, that reason may only make sense to them but at least there needs to be a reason beyond it is what you (the author) want for the story. Always, look for the flaws in your story and answer the question “why” and you will add realism and believability of your story.

Quote of Week – January 23

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” ~ Terry Pratchett