I have been thinking a lot about how much book marketing and publicity is expected of authors. Conversations with traditionally published authors usually centre around this subject. Those who have published one or two books inevitably express surprise that their publishers haven’t done more to promote their books and that so much is expected of them. Authors further down the line with more books under their belts have got used to how trad publishers work, seem to understand the limitations and are happy to work within those limits. These authors are clearly happy with everything else (or maybe almost everything else) that they get from their publishers.
On the other hand, self published authors know upfront that, apart from writing their books, promoting them will require the lion’s share of their time. That’s not to say they enjoy this more than trad authors, but they certainly walk in with their eyes wide open. Having spoken to many authors over the years, I knew that most don’t really enjoy promoting their own books, and the poll I did on Twitter certainly confirmed that. Two out of three authors don’t like it.
Yet, promote their books they must!
Now, I don’t think anyone does their greatest work when doing something they don’t enjoy. I remember this from trying to do Geography homework at school or making 70 identical salads every morning when I worked at Pizza Express. Agh. So, how can authors either reduce the amount of time spent marketing books or find more enjoyment in doing so?
I certainly don’t have all of the answers but here are a few thoughts on this:
A few years ago I interviewed two very successful self-published romance authors, Bella Andre and Barbara Freethy - they said that they both allocated specific times of the day when they dealt with marketing and the business elements of publishing their books. They scheduled their social media and then used these allocated times to respond to comments, questions and anything else that happened as a consequence of their posts.
I also spoke to an author who was a full-time teacher and she sat in her car during her lunch breaks to respond and post on social media.
Do you manage your time efficiently? Do you know how you could improve this?
Doing this successfully requires planning your marketing content so you can schedule it.
Do you have a marketing plan, however rough, that you work to?
Are you permanently ‘on’ social media? (*looks in the mirror*). Could you consider limiting your time on social media? Turning off notifications or removing apps from your phone might help. There are apps you can use that will lock you out of social media for chunks of the day (you decide) so you don’t get tempted to pop back on Twitter or TikTok etc.
Do you know whether the marketing and publicity you are doing actually works? It is certainly more motivating to know you are meeting your objectives, be that book sales, or any other metric.
Do you know what you are trying to achieve with your marketing activity? What are your metrics for success, and do you know how to measure them?
Understanding this will give you some clarity on whether you are prioritising your activity well. Are you trying to have a presence on too may social media channels? Could you drop one of them? Or perhaps you aren’t spending enough time on something you know is getting results, be that publicity outreach, speaking to booksellers directly, your author newsletter, or whatever.
Are you prioritisng the activity that gets results?
And back to the poll, can you prioritise the marketing and promotion that you like the most (or hate the least)? Could you consider outsourcing some of the areas you don’t enjoy?
I hope these thoughts focus your thinking around the marketing of you and your books. I have post in my author Facebook group about this, so go and check out how other authors are managing this.
Since starting Byker Books back in 2008 I've tried numerous different marketing strategies with various (and usually never repeated) levels of success. It appears to me that most sure-fire way of succeeding in publishing - in the UK at least - is to be famous. The rest of us can only keep plugging away...
The biggest challenge is figuring out what actually works, especially if you're starting off with small numbers where the signal can easily get hidden by the noise. And once you do get an idea of what works, it might not (probably won't) keep working. I wouldn't mind doing marketing if I had any idea of what actually helped but it does seem to be all rather random.