When you first set out to write your own stories all the focus is on doing precisely that, writing, and quite frankly that’s what I am sure all us authors would like to be spending all our time doing. However, there comes a point, usually when you have something finished and want to find readers for it, when you realise there’s something else you are required to do. That something is marketing and I have been forced recently to accept that my efforts in this department have been woefully inadequate.
It turns out that marketing is something of a dark art and, after several unimpressive attempts to get to grips with it over the years, I recently made the decision that I can no longer do nothing more than pay lip service to it. Instead, I need to take it seriously and give it the time and attention it needs because that’s the only way I am ever going to achieve the kind of sales success I would like.
It has not escaped my attention how often successful indie authors turn out to have some sort of marketing experience from a former life. That experience has clearly been put to good use. There is, I realised, a lesson to be learned there.
I have not been a complete disaster in this area. I can grow my newsletter list and I can run ads that at least wash their face, if not actually go so far as to make a profit. I can also write a respectable book blurb and write blog posts that people actually read.
But I have always done at least some of these things on nothing more than a sporadic basis and their effectiveness has never been consistent. Mind you, I suppose it’s also true to say that nor have they been consistently ineffective.
I think the biggest issue of all, however, has been that I have never properly attempted to join all the individual pieces together into a cohesive strategy. It has meant that, without an overall plan, even when I have had little wins there has been nothing in place to follow up on this and what might have turned into a winning campaign has, instead, petered out. I’ve not really been giving myself a chance.
Well, I’ve finally decided I really do need to make changes here. In recent weeks I have dropped pretty much everything else, except for the writing, and focused almost exclusively on putting in place a proper marketing strategy. This has meant ratcheting up my pace of learning, reviewing what has and has not worked with my past efforts and making some difficult decisions about what I will be dropping longer term so that I can maintain this necessary focus.
I had, in fact, been pulling together some ideas for a few months now and these have given me a solid start in working out what I want to focus on in future and what looks to me like a proper strategy and building blocks to deliver on this has begun to emerge.
I am, however, under no illusions that this will be both a process of trial and error; I will need to learn from my efforts and apply those lessons. I also know I won’t learn everything I need to in the space of a few months and that I am going to have to continue improving my marketing skills from here on in.
Marketing wasn’t part of the job spec when I set out on this wonderful adventure, but it has certainly become part of it as time as progressed and, if I want to up those sales numbers, I know I am going to have to give it the time and attention it needs. Who knows, perhaps I might even come to enjoy it!
All the best,
Ben
Find somewhere quiet and cozy to curl up and enjoy this tempting murder-mystery set in the beautiful Oxfordshire countryside of 1960s England. 'The Hide and Seek Murders'.