The 7 Secrets of the Prolific Writer's Block (34 page)

You can try a pseudonym, but that’s a dicey strategy in the Internet age. Eventually you’ll be found out, and in the meantime your ability to market will be impaired. Some writers use pseudonyms to enhance the salability of their books—for instance, some writers of historical romance use old-fashioned-sounding names, and writers who write in multiple genres often use a different name for each—but that’s different because they’re not doing it to hide, and don’t care much if they’re found out.

Marketing is a huge topic, one that people have written entire books, and libraries, on. Below are some general tips, followed by a strategy for getting started. I highly recommend J.A. Konrath’s
The Newbie’s Guide to Publishing
not just for the “how to” details, but insight into the mind and methods of a writer who is also a relentless marketer. Also, read fun marketing classics by authors like Harry Beckwith (
Selling the Invisible
) and Al Ries and Jack Trout (
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
); and you should also be sure to read the works of new media marketing gurus like Seth Godin (
Permission Marketing
and his newsletter) and Adam Singer (his “The Future Buzz” newsletter).

Here are some more tips:

• Work from models.
Don’t reinvent the wheel: find writers whose success you wish to emulate and see how they market themselves. Study their websites, subscribe to their newsletters, read their press releases, and see what conferences they show up at—and how they behave when they do.

• Think in terms of segments.
Novice marketers want to market to everyone, but pros know that that’s both impossible (you don’t have enough time or money) and ineffective. Instead, they market to those segments of the population most likely to buy their product. The three success stories mentioned at the beginning of this chapter show how spectacularly well this works, the segments in question being African-American cultural gatekeepers, rabbis, and CEOs.

• Know your reader.
After figuring out your segments, write “customer profiles” of a typical reader in each segment. These can include age, sex, location, job, education, wardrobe, family structure, upbringing, religion, and whatever else interests you. (Character building: a classic writer’s exercise—see, I
told
you writers could market!)

• Next,
adapt your writing, website, and promotional materials as completely as possible to your target segment’s expectations and needs
, so that when members of that segment encounter you they immediately think, “Yes, I want that.” Specifically, market to your customer’s
needs
, be they for entertainment, intellectual gratification, or life-changing spiritual insights—as well as, on a more prosaic level, content delivered via his favorite mobile platform, or using large fonts so he doesn’t have to hunt for his reading glasses.

Every aspect of your work, marketing, and public persona should delight and powerfully attract your customer, including not just the book content, title, and cover but your website and newsletter (see below).
Marketing lives or dies on the details.
If you use a wrong word, wrong color, or wrong font—or if your messaging is just muddled—you’ve lost impact. If the customer has to fight his way past an ugly cover, confusing book summary, or hard-to-navigate website … well, he won’t. (Most customers spend at most a few seconds contemplating whether to buy a book, especially from an unknown author.)

It also helps if you show up for readings and other events looking somewhat the part. You don’t have to take it as far as Christopher Paolini, who dressed in “a medieval costume of red shirt, billowy black pants, lace-up boots, and a jaunty black cap”
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for
Eragon
readings—although he wound up with a bestseller for his efforts!—but an evocative hat or tie or shirt can go a long way.

The advice to adapt your writing to the needs of the market may raise the hackles of writers who feel I’m suggesting a corruption of the creative process. My advice is to focus on the market as much or little as you want to, keeping in mind that sometimes even just a pinch of marketing can greatly increase a book’s salability.

If your goal is wealth and fame, however, you’ll almost certainly have to have a strong market focus.

Obviously, all this puts some pressure on you to get the marketing exactly right, but don’t get all perfectionist about it. Many writers (and other businesspeople) evolve and refine their marketing message over time. Actually, you never stop doing it: I’ve been working on my current one for ten years and continue to improve it. Which brings us to...

• Persevere.
Marketing builds over time. You often won’t see an immediate result from a specific marketing endeavor, and yet the cumulative impact of all your marketing should be to steadily increase the size of your mailing list (see below), your Web traffic, and of course your sales. This long-term effect can make it hard to tell which marketing tactics are really working; a good guide is when a particular effort actually results in a meaningful online or offline contact with another human being. And, finally:

• Start marketing before you finish the book.
In fact, before you begin it. Start now!

Here’s a simple plan for getting started, and building your audience:

First, start building your email mailing list. This is your most crucial marketing asset because, quite simply, the more people you communicate with, the more you can sell to. So put everyone you know on the list and keep relentlessly adding to it. There’s no upper limit to how many you want—hundreds is better than tens, thousands better than hundreds, etc.

What will you do with the names? Glad you asked. Communicate with them, is what: meaning, send newsletters (see below) and other promotional mailings. For that reason, it’s best to store them in a combined mailing list manager/newsletter program or service. MailChimp and Constant Contact are well-known services that can produce gorgeous emails with fancy fonts, art, etc., but for many writers they’re too complex and expensive. Good content is really what your customers want, and so many writers do well, at least initially, with a program like PHPList that creates simpler emails but that is also cheaper and easier to use.

While you’re building your list, have someone create the first version of your website. Make sure she’s a pro who understands not just HTML and Java but how to use search engine optimization, social media, multimedia, etc., to build traffic and sales.

Remember, you don’t want a boring informational site: you want a hub, a community, a hive of activity. (Recall how Lisa Genova built her site into a hub for Alzheimer’s disease information and support.) You’ll probably want a blog where you can post articles about your work in progress (or the work you hope to be writing), as well as relevant current events and extras that bring the whole experience to life. (Recipes are always a big hit, but make sure you test them or you’ll get hate mail.) Encourage comments and conversations. Ask questions. Pose challenges. Survey. Hold contests. Do giveaways. Do a charity event. And, of course, ask people to sign up for your mailing list.

Now you’ve got the basics. From this point forward, every one to three weeks, repeat this marketing cycle:
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• Post a short article on your blog.
It should be useful and/or entertaining and/or timely. A current events “hook” is great—the article of mine that resulted in the most hits was one that discussed perfectionism in the hit movie
The King’s Speech
.
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• Send it out in newsletter format to your mailing list.
(If you’ve done what I’ve suggested above and subscribed to other writers’ newsletters, you should know how the newsletter should look and be organized.) After the article you can do a
mild
sales pitch if you’ve got something to sell. Remember that “newsletters” that do nothing but sell get trashed, while those that offer valuable and/or fun information are read and retained.

• Then,
link to your post on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
Don’t post your article on any site where you don’t retain full ownership. Besides, you don’t want to build the traffic on Facebook, etc., but on your own site.

• Next,
“syndicate” the article by getting it reprinted on other websites
—always after confirming that you retain ownership, and always with a link back to your own site. Establish cross-promotions with other authors. Konrath is big on the need for writers to promote and otherwise help each other, and he’s absolutely right. Let’s all work together to help all writers succeed!

Reach out to relevant sites and communities. If you’re writing a history of Norway during World War II, for instance, reach out to websites about Norway and WWII.

Then repeat it all again in one to three weeks.

That’s it: A basic, yet effective, marketing engine, designed to help you build your mailing list and website traffic—and sales. Over time, and by studying your mentors, you’ll refine your process so that it works as well as possible.

Beyond all this, you can (and should):

• Do podcasts and multimedia.
  Right now you can register your own “channel” on YouTube for free, and then start filling it with movies. But post these on your own site as well.
  
• Publish articles and short stories in magazines
  , even if they don’t pay well—or at all. Konrath recommends doing this because many magazines have large circulations, and so it’s essentially free, or even paid, publicity. Also,
  publish diverse stuff
  , so that diverse audiences will get to know you. Varying your genre, length, settings, types of characters, themes, etc., is a sure way to attract people who wouldn’t otherwise encounter you and your work.
  
• Get testimonials from influential people and reviews from influential venues.
  See next chapter.
  
• Sell ebooks cheap.
  Cheap yields lots of sales and promotion. See next section.
  
• Give your writing away for free
  ,
  including articles, chapters, Podcasts, etc. If you’re lucky, your free stuff will go viral, but even if it doesn’t, it should help build your name recognition and increase website traffic and sales.
  

Some writers are afraid that giving stuff away will cannibalize their sales, but so far the evidence strongly suggests otherwise.
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As tech publisher Tim O’Reilly famously said, ”Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.”
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• Sell services and products other than books
  .
  Teach. Coach. Edit. Also, if you can figure out how to sell non-book products based on your writing, like t-shirts,
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  that’s even better.
  
• Give public readings/visit bookstores
  .
  I’m conflicted about these, since they are important to building an audience and making sales, and yet expensive in terms of both time and money. (And the time expense isn’t just the time you spend traveling but the time you spend handling the logistics.) Also, they work better for some books than others, and you’ll probably encounter some kneejerk anti-self-publisher bias when you approach venues.
  

But it’s probably still worth doing, if you do it right. Konrath’s done a lot of these, and in
The Newbie’s Guide to Publishing
describes how you can do them on the cheap (stay at fans’ houses, etc.). He also does a lot of quickie bookstore visits while en route to other destinations, and that’s a great, low-cost tactic, too.

If you can get a paid speaking gig from a library, university, school, business, or community organization, that obviously changes everything. (You can also read in people’s houses and they’ll pass the hat around for you, in which case you could get anything from very little to a good chunk of change to show for the night, in addition to book sales and free food.) My approach is to try to get at least one paid gig (or expenses-paid, at least) per trip, and then schedule some free or discounted events around it.

Some writers are also using videoconferencing technology to do low-cost remote book tours, which is just one more example of how modern technology is hugely liberating for writers and readers alike.

As mentioned at the start of this chapter, the purpose of marketing is to bring potential readers to you. Then when they show up, you need to “close the sale,” as the salespeople say. It’s not hard! Greet them: Don’t just sit at your table like a lump or wait for them to make the first move. Hand them a copy of your book and invite them to take a look. Have a fun conversation, ask questions, and LISTEN to their replies carefully (listening provides not just great market research, but a compelling sales tactic; read Dale Carnegie’s
How to Win Friends and Influence People
). Then ask them to buy it, e.g., “Sounds like we’ve got a good fit, here—how about you buy one and I’ll sign it!”

This may be challenging at first, but eventually it gets routine. Watch how other writers handle themselves and you’ll figure out how to do it.

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Yes, traditional publishing is so dysfunctional that it will even destroy a perfectly good product rather than take a little trouble to come up with new ways to sell it. (The Diamant and Johnson stories are from Al Ries and Laura Ries,
The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR
. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2004.)