Writers, You Have What It Takes To Market Your Book

In the past two months, we’ve been having the most extraordinary virtual conversations with writers from Ireland to Sydney, and everywhere in between. What’s impressed us about many of these writers and authors-in-becoming are the audiences they’ve built around the content that matters to them.

It is often hardest to get from zero to one—possibly harder than it is to get from one thousand to two thousand, or one hundred thousand to one million.

But no matter what genre you write in, if you’re serious about publishing, you’ll need to be equally serious about marketing. The two have become nearly indistinguishable. And while many writers dread marketing, believing it requires an entirely different skill-set, the art of marketing has a lot in common with the art of writing. Both fields call for creativity, grit, and an understanding of the desires, motivations, and needs of your audience.

Being captive in our homes, there’s never been a better time to focus on this endeavor. We can speak to this from personal experience: we’ve started a private Facebook group, and it’s still small, but we’re taking it seriously and giving it attention because we have big ambitions for it in the long term. Every new subscriber to our community is cause for celebration—one more writer we can hope to educate or impact.

We know that many of you are already well on your way to marketing dominion, but even if you aren’t, here are a few ways you can prove to an agent or a publisher that you’ve got the chops:

• Perhaps you’re penning a narrative nonfiction book, a memoir, or a novel. You’ve published pieces in a host of respectable journals. But do you have a website to showcase all of these clips in one destination?
• The value of having a social media presence is not in showing off; it’s about connecting with other like minds and communities. Follow relevant hashtags such as #writingcommunity, and take advantage of the exchange and engagement, not the soapbox, that social media offers.
• Research the many communities you can reach out to that would be interested in your story idea. To increase your efforts, join online communities that don’t necessarily have to do with writing, but are interested in the subject of your book. The connections you make and the conversations you have could inform both the content and the reception for your work.
• There are so many podcasters now, and many of them are looking for guest experts! Aim high and settle low (as you get started) to begin getting your name and message out there.

What’s a marketing practice you’d like to share with our community? Tell us here!