It’s Friday night, time for another blog post.
I’ve attended many writing workshops and local conferences. I’ve listened to numerous authors talk about their books and what they’ve done to get published. I have a growing following Twitter promoters for self-published authors to help them market their work. I understand how important marketing is for any book. You can write an awesome book, but if nobody knows about you’re not going to get the sales you anticipated. Marketing is important, but I’m not a marketer, I’m a writer. History doesn’t write itself.
I know extremely little about marketing a book. Notice all the emphasis I put on that word. I’m not avoiding learning about marketing a book. I’ve registered for and attended a couple of webinars and read blogs on book marketing. But still, my knowledge on how to market a book lacks greatly. I’m a writer, not a marketer.
What I am doing is probably not right. From what I gather, there are thousands of ways to market a book. I’ve taken the first steps. I have a website in my name, an email address in my name, an author Facebook page, a Twitter account. Am I using them properly? I don’t know. I’m not an expert on how to market on Facebook or Twitter. I’m thinking of adding more social media accounts. But which ones? Instagram. Pinterest. Linked In. MySpace. There are probably more. Which are good and which are bad for an aspiring author? Can they be tied together so that a post on one flows to all? I don’t know. I’m a writer, not a marketer.
There are classes and workshops all across America and the world teaching the English language and how to write. There are probably just as many classes and workshops on how to master social media. I see a difference between them. Once you learn how convoluted the English language is with its array of dangling participles and prepositional phrases at the end of sentences, you harness that knowledge and avoid the mistakes. Being a master of social media is, I believe, a continuing process that binds you an outlet(s) for as long as that outlet is relevant. Earlier I mentioned MySpace, a forerunner of Facebook. If you took the time to master MySpace, it is all for naught. I believe it is still operational, but it is not a viable marketing tool. So you go master Twitter. Oh, but wait, Twitter is slowly losing its grand power to reach the masses to market your book. So you go master Facebook. Until something replaces it. I hope you see the pattern. If you choose the wrong social media, you’ll have to learn a new one. And the next one after that. All the while, your sales lag in obscurity. To me, that is a massive amount of work for aspiring authors. We are writers, not marketers.
Granted, there are authors who are wonderful marketers. I applaud them. But not everybody can do that. Some people have a different thought process. For us to learn, comprehend and understand the proper ways to market an author’s first book, we would need to obtain a BA in marketing from a university. Most authors do not want a BA in marketing. They want an MFA in creative writing. I ask for publishers to judge us on the manuscripts we submit, and not how grand our social media present is. As a publisher, you hire people to market books. Let them do their job. And let us do our job. We are writers, not marketers. After all, history doesn’t write itself.
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What I’m Reading – Many readers I know like to inquire what their favorite author is reading. At the end of each blog post, I’ll let you know what I’m reading. I may not be a published author yet, but I hope my choice of reading material inspires you to read. I finished The Last Raid of the Daltons by David Stewart Elliott as well as The Branches of Time by Luca Rossi. My reviews of both books are on Good Reads. Next week I will be reading Way of Wonder: Wisdom from G.K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist. I encourage you to read a variety of topics.