I’m a Writer, Do I Also Have to be an Entrepreneur?
By: Angela Kaufman
Tags: Publishing, Book Marketing, Indie Authors, Book Promotion, Writing

Maybe you just want to write out of a love of the craft. Maybe you take great joy in story-telling. Maybe you want to tell your unique story.

“But I’m a writer, I’m not into all that marketing.”

If you’ve said the above before, there are some harsh truths about the world of writing and publishing that you need to understand. Are you sitting down?

Planning to write for the joy of it is fine if writing is your hobby. If you write as therapy and catharsis, or even if you want to someday leave stories to your children, but don’t otherwise care who reads your words, then relax. You truly don’t need to give any f**ks about marketing.

If you plan on having wide distribution, if you want to become a bestseller (for real, not the Amazon variety) or if you want your work to have a broad impact, then I hate to be the bearer of bad news.

But.

You will have to dabble in marketing and business. Even just a little.

I know it’s unfair. I know you put all your heart and effort into the fun parts of writing, the research, craft, story structure, plot, characters. I know you’ve spent a fortune on various editors and book designers. But it’s not enough.

The days when a writer could simply show up with a polished manuscript and expect a publisher to do the rest came and went before I was born. That ship has sailed, and in it’s place, is the expectation that writers be responsible for our own fact checking, much of our own editing, our own marketing plans and business model.

But how much time do you need to devote to marketing? And how much of the business of publishing do you need to understand?

That largely depends on your goals.

If you want to get published, even by a smaller publishing house, you will need to think like a business person. Whether your book is fiction or nonfiction, a prospective publisher wants to see that you’ve given careful thought and consideration to how your book will reach audiences and how you’ll convince people with a million distractions in their lives that they should invest money, and time, in your book.

There are some great books out there on writing book proposals which provide insights for those of us who are writers first, business people second (or not at all). One is Mike Larsen’s How to Write a Book Proposal. Linda Lowen, of Always Wanted to Write, recommended this book to me when I was searching for a publisher for Queen Up and it was indispensable. Fortunately, at the time I had already been in business for myself for about five years and was familiar with the ideas of marketing plans and business plans.

That’s not to say I love those ideas, but I knew the nuts and bolts.

Just as editing requires you to kill off your darlings, so too does marketing require you to forget that you already know how amazing your book is and pretend you’ve never heard of it. You’ve got to find a way to not only make a compelling case for getting others to read it, but to also figure out who those “others” are.

But my book is for everyone…

Long before I knew the first thing about marketing, I started to create a Tarot deck based on guinea pigs. I painted the first twenty or so cards and wrote up the accompanying booklet. Then I went online and submitted a proposal to a small publishing company.

It’s no wonder I never heard back from them and if you’ve found a deck based on the amazing world of Cavies, it’s not mine. But please let me know, I’d love to buy it.

Among my many mistakes in this early proposal was a common flub that enthusiastic artists make when asked “Who is this work designed for?”

Rather than having the slightest clue what a niche market is, I went on for paragraphs about how everyone young and old would love a Tarot deck with guinea pigs. I stopped just short of suggesting that if you don’t want to consult a Tarot deck with furry little rodents on every card, then you have no soul.

You may pat yourself on the back as a writer for being clever enough to come up with a story that appeals to all audiences, but your potential publisher won’t. A publisher wants to see that you understand markets and that you have spent the time doing research and analysis. That you understand what demographics read the types of stories you’re writing and at what rates.

In short, they want to know that you’ve Moneyballed your book.

I know, it sucks. I hate it. Personally, I think the idea of a niche audience is the first strike in the destruction of an educated populace, but most unfortunately, I don’t run the world.

And the reality is, anyone who decides they want to read your book can read it. They don’t actually have to be the target you describe to your publisher. Yet in a world of limited marketing resources and overabundance of people knocking down the door to get their stuff noticed, a niche market helps your publisher figure out who is likely to buy your book and how to most easily and succinctly tell said audience that your book exists.

And then there’s the launch and follow up…

If you’ve ever started a Facebook Page or a website, you know that throwing something out into the ethers doesn’t mean much if no one knows it’s there. Thanks to ease of self-publishing, thousands of new titles are available for readers every day. If your goal is to have a modest following and a few steady fans who rabidly await your next publication, that’s fine.

It will still take some regular efforts to make sure your audience knows you exist and are interested in reading your book. This may not be important to you, for example if you intend to write for your own enjoyment, or to create books to give to family and friends as gifts.

But if you hope those who have never heard of you will read your book, it takes some effort to capture the fleeting attention span of the average person in a saturated market. You’ll need to take some time to understand your potential reader, based on understanding books they read similar to your own.

But my book is one of a kind….

Ok. But it isn’t. There is nothing new under the Sun. Finding comparable titles works to your advantage. Study how similar books are marketed. What wording is used, what events their authors attend or facilitate and so forth.

You may also invest time and energy forming relationships with bookstore owners. This way, you have a better chance of staff being able to appropriately showcase and talk up your book. When I traveled across the country over the course of almost two years, promoting my book Queen Up, I learned that although some aspects of my book made it more difficult to niche than I anticipated (a crossover self-help book based on four Tarot Archetypes).

Yet when I had the opportunity to meet with store owners or facilitate workshops, the audiences were larger than when I showed up someplace to simply sign books. Which is how I ended up with great connections and experiences marketing the book in the Midwest, while a bookshop forty minutes from my home which I did not have a relationship with had placed the book on a shelf nestled next to The Satanic Bible.

Marketing is too big a job to do all on your own. The more people who understand your book and can help you spread the word, the better. And this takes time and effort. Enter social media.

For better or worse, these days a publisher will probably not give your proposal a second thought if you don’t have a social media presence. Just when you thought you would influence people with your writing, traditional publishing expects you to become an “influencer” online long before your book will even get consideration for publication.

If constantly posting trite nonsense isn’t your thing, you can always try to make your content more meaningful, especially as it pertains to your book. Yet audience building is a job all on its own. You can consider hiring a professional to manage your social media account, or can consider an app like Hootsuite to schedule posts in advance.

At the very least, having a social media page, a website and an email list are important. Consider this your marketing starter kit. Fortunately, many platforms are user friendly and come with tutorials. So it is a matter of scheduling time into your day to build audience and stay on their radar, without overdoing it. Expect that not all of your email subscribers will actively engage with you. If you have a thousand people on your list, expect one hundred seventy eight people to open your emails. If you have twenty percent or more open rate, you’re in good shape. Platforms like Mailchimp or Constant Contact give you analytics so you can tell who opens your emails.

Remember, it is not only considered a major faux pas, but is also considered spam to gather people on an email list and send email direct from your gmail account. It’s best to have an email content app with the option for readers to unsubscribe.

These are just a few points to consider. In the changing world of the pandemic, online events are taking the place of book conventions and live author events. You may also want to go on a blog tour or seek reviews from people who love to read and blog about books in your genre. If you pick a few of these strategies and continue a steady effort, you can help your book get discovered by potential readers without throwing tons of money into high end marketing packages.