More Than Writing

One thing many would-be writers don’t account for when they dream of seeing their name on the NYT Bestsellers list is the fact that to sell books you have to do a lot more than write a great book. You have to know how to sell that book. The publishing house (if you have a publishing house) isn’t going to do it, so you have to learn how to be your own marketing super guru. Think about it, if nobody knows that books exists, nobody is going to buy it. So writing the book is only the first part of the job. Selling the book is the second, equally important, part of the job. This is where something I like to call, new age promo, comes in.

New ago promo is a way for an author to promote her work without ever leaving the comfort of her home. But there’s a right way to do new age promo and a wrong way to do it. By wrong, I mean ineffectual. So what I’m working on now is mastering my new age know how. I feel like I’ve got a long way to go. I’ve never done a blog tour, I don’t maximize my relationships in my writer’s groups, and I could use a few pointers with social media.

I’ve spent the better part of the day getting a handle on the social media end of things. I just created a Twitter account and am slowly getting the hang of how to use it. I still don’t get the purpose of hashtags! All in all, it’s an exciting time to be an author. There are so many venues of publication that are open to us that were never open to us before and there are so many venues available for us to promote our books. Back in the old days it was all about the book tour. Today, things have changed. I think book tours are still a major part of a writer’s arsenal, but they’re not the only part. Blog tours and promoting on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have given writers an opportunity to reach hundreds, if not thousands of readers with just one post. I can’t wait to see what the next ten years bring!

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• Five Mistakes KILLING Self-Published Authors (warriorwriters.wordpress.com)
• Having what it takes to be a writer – success and failure. (stephaniehaggarty.wordpress.com)
• My Real Writing Life (droppedpebbles.wordpress.com)
• My innovative marketing strategy (mattwestwriter.wordpress.com)
• Social media more effective in promoting Tamil literature (thehindu.com)
• The New World of Publishing: How to Get Started Selling in 2014 (deanwesleysmith.com)