I am a publisher writer which is astounding and I am deeply grateful. This is the link to my Amazon page: amazon.com/author/conorhcarton
I have been thinking about marketing, what it means for me as a writer and how to do it. Marketing is the process that I use to find an audience, people who will buy and ready my stories. The publishers are doing this work as well, as I have a huge stake in the success of my stories I need to contribute. Finding an audience is hard, I have realised that as a reader I say no much more often that I saw yes to anything. I browse physical and digital bookstores, look at a limited range of books and buy a small fraction of what I look at.
This is a process that every reader goes through, So now I am trying the engage reader enough to get them to commit money, time and attention to my story. This is hard work and I can understand why so many writers shy away from it. They leave their work to find an audience by itself. Some do take on the work and do so somewhat resentfully, they market in an awkward way, their discomfort in the process is clear to the potential readers and it can be more off putting that doing nothing.
The problem is that you have to be positive in marketing, you have to want to connect with an audience while accepting that you will be ignored or declined by nearly everyone.
I do have experience of selling to draw upon, I was pretty terrible at it. the one thing that I did lean was that getting declined was nothing personal. I got a lot of experience at being turned down.
So now when I look at what I need to do I am starting from the fact that I am going to feel like I am, simply howling into the void, getting no response and attracting no attention.
It does not matter, I know there is an audience for my stories, I just need to be persistent enough to find them and smart about keeping them when I have done so.
At the moment I am using some third parties to do most of my marketing, AllAuthor and Write Media, both of which I recommend. My expectations are low, I am a new author with only a single published story. This is foundation setting, they are establishing a profile for me in the crowded space of social media. I have no skills in social media and am very happy to use others to do the work. Right now my focus is on finishing the second part of the Spoils of War and developing a presence, however small, from which to grow.
This writing life is proving to be considerably more complicated than I had thought, which is nice as it is also a lot more engaging than I had imagined. I have a demanding job and find I have little time or brain space to manage my writing tasks. As I get further into them I am making more decisions about how serious I wish to be about my creative work and am discovering that I want to be really serious so rearrangements of my time and workload are emerging. Good.
This is a process that every reader goes through, So now I am trying the engage reader enough to get them to commit money, time and attention to my story. This is hard work and I can understand why so many writers shy away from it. They leave their work to find an audience by itself. Some do take on the work and do so somewhat resentfully, they market in an awkward way, their discomfort in the process is clear to the potential readers and it can be more off putting that doing nothing.
The problem is that you have to be positive in marketing, you have to want to connect with an audience while accepting that you will be ignored or declined by nearly everyone.
I do have experience of selling to draw upon, I was pretty terrible at it. the one thing that I did lean was that getting declined was nothing personal. I got a lot of experience at being turned down.
So now when I look at what I need to do I am starting from the fact that I am going to feel like I am, simply howling into the void, getting no response and attracting no attention.
It does not matter, I know there is an audience for my stories, I just need to be persistent enough to find them and smart about keeping them when I have done so.
At the moment I am using some third parties to do most of my marketing, AllAuthor and Write Media, both of which I recommend. My expectations are low, I am a new author with only a single published story. This is foundation setting, they are establishing a profile for me in the crowded space of social media. I have no skills in social media and am very happy to use others to do the work. Right now my focus is on finishing the second part of the Spoils of War and developing a presence, however small, from which to grow.
This writing life is proving to be considerably more complicated than I had thought, which is nice as it is also a lot more engaging than I had imagined. I have a demanding job and find I have little time or brain space to manage my writing tasks. As I get further into them I am making more decisions about how serious I wish to be about my creative work and am discovering that I want to be really serious so rearrangements of my time and workload are emerging. Good.
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