A fellow author shared a personal experience on her blog that resonated with me. She’s a great writer. She self-published several books and is also traditionally published with a small house. There are awards on her wall for all her hard work. With all those books under her belt, she went to one of the larger writer conferences this past summer and made an appointment with the editor of a prestigious publishing house. She hoped to gain their interest and a contract.
Despite her fantastic writing and numerous books, let’s not forget awards, the editor told her without hesitation that her sales didn’t justify taking a chance on her. Her platform wasn’t large enough to garner the kinds of sales they expected from their authors. Heartbreaking.
Unfortunately, this is the truth of the matter. Like my friend and most authors, I too am struggling with this same quandary. Not only do our books need to be stellar to catch the eye of the larger, therefore, more lucrative publishers we need to market the dickens out of them and have the numbers to prove it.
That platform consists of multiple social media streams with sizable followings. You must interact on group sites and post every day about things, other than buy my book. And that doesn’t include making memes and producing ad copy. Writer’s newsletters must be engaging and offer something of value beyond information about the author.
Then we must find the right places to draw attention to our books in order to increase sales. Free on Amazon requires so much more than arranging the dates to be free. We have to spread the word everywhere that it’s free. Place ads to announce it’s free. It makes my head spin.
Do you often repeat the mantra, all I want to do is write? Don’t we all wish that was true?
My goal for 2020 beyond staying on tasks with writing is increasing those numbers; sales, newsletter subscribers and followers. If I can get notoriety through other creative means then awesome. I lack the ADD drive of some of my fellow writers and have hired someone to help with my social media marketing. Even so, there are still things I must do, personally engage with followers. *sigh*.”Don’t get me wrong, I love people, but I prefer to interact face-to-face rather than on social media Call me old fashion.) So, I will cling to a motto that has helped me in the past, inch by inch everything’s a cinch, yard by yard everything is hard. I’ll take on what I can without making myself crazy and lose my creative muse and in time I hope to reach my goal. When I do I might be as nervy as my friend and pitch one of the big five publishers and see where that lands me.
What are some marketing tips you can share to help build a platform?