Book Marketing

There isn’t just one way to do it. The fact that there are many different book marketing strategies is your opportunity. Find a way to look at marketing in a way that you can enjoy it.

You want to be successful, right?

• It’s not about embracing someone else’s idea of marketing and carrying it out with due diligence.
• It’s about finding an effective marketing method that you can embrace with a passion and make it your own.

Most indie writers are artists at heart, not businesspeople. Yet self-publishing success, both on and off Amazon, depends on effective book marketing.

• That doesn’t mean that you have to switch from artist to salesman to sell books. That’s like hammering a square peg through a round hole.
• It means you have to view marketing as an art or craft to master, and pursue it with passion. That will fuel your self-motivation.

Look at this article. It’s about book marketing. I didn’t use $ signs for the picture. I left my artistic hat on and turned marketing into a rose.

You, too, can wear your artistic hat successfully both as a writer and an artist. Successful indie authorship is a combination of writing and marketing, both of which are driven by passion and feature creativity.

The business side of marketing books can seem dull and boring to writers. Many indie authors think of the following features when they first encounter marketing:

• Advertising.
• Self-promotion.
• Screaming loudest.
• Generating hype.
• Judging a book by its cover instead of its content.
• Salesmanship.

Actually, most of the things on the above list aren’t effective when it comes to book marketing.

If you approach marketing as something that’s dull or boring, you’re definitely not going to succeed at it.

• Again, this doesn’t mean you have to get excited about something that you naturally feel is boring. That has inherent limitations.
• Rather, it means that you have to find a way to look at marketing that makes you inherently passionate about doing it.

Fortunately, marketing does have highly artistic and creative elements that can appeal to writing artists:

• Marketing is about sharing your passion with others.
• It’s a chance to interact with others and let them discover your excitement about your book. (Let them ask you what you’ve done lately, rather than advertise what you’ve done. This distinction makes a huge difference.)
• It’s an opportunity to put readers in a positive mindset before they open your book. People you interact with in person and who enjoy the interaction are more likely to look forward to your book with a good frame of mind.
• You can wear your artistic and creative caps when you get involved in the cover design (a big part of marketing—it’s part of the packaging). Even if you hire a cover artist, you’re still involved in the design of your cover.
• Blogging is a great match for marketing books. You love to write, right? Not only that, you get to interact with people who read your blog. You get to be creative coming up with ideas for posts and finding images to use.
• Creativity is a great tool for catching the attention of your target audience and engaging interest in your book. When you talk to people, you have the chance to show your creativity in the conversation.
• Imagination can also be a helpful marketing tool. Come up with a creative marketing idea and you’ll enjoy carrying it out; others may enjoy your creativity and check out your book.
• Even your curiosity can be a benefit here, such as your curiosity for how to think of marketing in a way that doesn’t sound like salesmanship. Use your creativity to find other ways to think about marketing.
• Branding is an art form. Pursue it as an art. Brand an image for yourself.
• You can even approach marketing as a scientist. Come up with different hypotheses about marketing strategies and test them out.
• Embrace book marketing as an art form and strive to master the craft.

If beauty truly lies in the eye of the beholder, then you have the power to see how beautiful marketing can be.

Chris McMullen

Want free information about book marketing? Find all my marketing posts by clicking here.

Copyright © 2014 Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

• Volume 1 on formatting and publishing
• Volume 2 on marketability and marketing

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