While at Imaginarium 2019, I ended up going to more workshops on marketing than I had planned. I realized creating awareness of a novel presents itself as a whole separate part of the publishing process than its creation.
I managed to come away from the conference with several pages of notes. I want to share just a few things I heard. Most of this is geared toward a writer who plans to take the self-publishing route:
- An author needs a solid marketing plan-He must ask himself, “Why am I writing? Who is my target market?” He must know the psychographics of his audience—that is he should know their aspirations, hobbies, values and so on. The author should know who his “competition” is. Authors are not necessarily competing against each other, but they should know what is already out there and ask themselves how they can produce a unique product.
- An author needs to create a proposal-Even self-publishing author needs a proposal. It helps the author focus on her marketing plan. An author also needs to ask herself why she is qualified to write her book.
- An author needs to build a community-He should work on his fan base before his first book is even written. He should have an author’s website.
- An author should lead people to her author website– Her social media, be that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on, should link to her website.
- An author should not give away intellectual property for free– Meaning, an author should not just give away free books or offer free chapters on his website. I also heard at this same conference authors should have free stories and such ready to give away. A good compromise would be to have free items on website such as pages of world-building, descriptions, and character sketches related to his novel.
These were just a few marketing tidbits I found interesting. I think getting a book out there is harder than writing it.
Here are some past posts on marketing:
Photo by Startup Stock Photos from Pexels
Andrew M. Friday 