The Joy(lessness) of Marketing

I recently came across a very interesting reblog by Derek Haine aimed at authors and titled 28 (Better) Things No One Tells You About Publishing (originally posted by Scott Berkun). One of the points it raised was that authors should write a blog at least once a week in order to build up a following and that this should be started before your book is even finished. Well failed on that one! But this is the start – the challenge will be finding the time to do it so frequently.

Having now self-published two novels many of the points raised by Derek are very pertinent to the self-published author, but I thought I would focus on some of his points that have already struck me.

The first point made by Derek is that selling books is harder than writing them. Man, do I know that! What a joy it was to lovingly hold that printed copy of my first novel in my hot little hands. All that time spent nurturing the words from my mind into my computer. All those long hours during my commute to London and early Saturday and Sunday mornings. All that work put into it by my lovely friends editing and proof-reading it for me. But at last, there it was – on the web. Out there for the world to see – but no-one did. It might was well have been hidden under a haystack! I had discovered that selling books is definitely harder than writing them.

And so onto point two and three (paraphrased); you can upload your book onto the web and have it on sale in minutes, but don’t get lost falsely depending on others. No one can stop you from writing a book and selling it except yourself, but promoting it well is another matter. However publishers struggle with that too and publishers only invest in big PR for famous authors. Well that’s both heartening and disheartening! I have found the whole PR thing both difficult and time consuming, but publishers also struggle with it (that’s the heartening bit – as they are supposed to be the experts). The disheartening bit is that they will only invest big money on famous authors. As a new author that puts me in a place somewhere between somewhere and nowhere. I’m not famous so no-one will invest in a PR campaign of me, therefore I get no publicity, therefore I will not get famous (not that I necessarily want to – maybe a topic for another blog), therefore no-one will invest in my PR campaign. I’m starting to get dizzy going around in all these circles.

The solution apparently is that my reasons for writing must transcend fame and wealth as neither are likely [to happen] from writing alone. That’s a shame as I’d rather like to make a go of this writing lark!

Oh, well looks like the office beckons.