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This post on Twitter made me feel seen...
What does it say about me that my latest book is completely unmarketable and unpublishable, yet I'm so in love with it that I can't keep myself from working on it and continuing to polish it, day after day? This doomed love is a love like no other.
I'm doing this too. Granted it's not a memoir. But I don't exactly have a marketing platform either - mainly because I'm leery of them?
The difficulty with publishing one's work - is the marketing. Marketing is a bitch, unless you have a six figure deal and a huge marketing budget where you can employ experts to do it all for you. Most, actually the vast majority of writers, traditionally and non-traditionally published do not have that luxury. Scalzi - an A-list sci-fi writer - spends a good portion of the year traveling about on his own dime to various locals around the world doing book signings, conventions, etc. In and out of hotels over-looking parking lots. When he's not doing that? He's doing interviews, blogging, and on social media - selling his brand, and of course writing books. My father non-traditionally published, but balked at marketing. His books are read, just not broadly, and now after his death people are bugging my mother for the rights to them. She's ignoring them.
My uncle has also non-traditionally published a lot of books, and finally in his seventies has a publisher interested in traditionally publishing one or two, and got stories in a literary publication. I have a lot of frustrated writers in my family.
I suck at marketing, promotion, advertising, basically anything that involves persuading people to buy my work and/or selling it. I'm a buyer by profession not a seller. I have no idea how to sell anything. My brother can sell things, I can't. I did not get the salesmen gene. I'm not charismatic, I have no patience for haggling, and I don't understand pricing. Negotiating yes, pricing no.
If it were up to me? I'd just give my work away for free. [Kind of like my father ended up doing. So that tendency must run in the family?] This is why I have a day job. I'd have starved as an artist. I don't know how to market myself let alone my work. Look at this blog? Do you see any marketing? Or anything remotely resembling an attempt at it? Are there links on the side? Is it pretty? Do I use a lot of HTML? No.
Also do I have a website? No, I have wordpress. And it's not quite as pretty as this. I'm on Twitter - but branding eludes me. I try on a brand, then forget what it was. I also have a tendency to get snarky, which kills the nice tweet brand. Facebook? I've never really known what to do with it, outside post pictures to it, and random comments. I mainly play on private monitored fanboards within it? I tried selling my book on it, and gave up. Instagram? Eh, again more into photos, and I do not do vids. TikTock - I avoid, and am afraid of.
The internet is a weird thing. It's kind of a gift and a curse at the same time? On the one hand - instant communication, on the other - not necessarily nice instant communication - in fact, a lot of communication you'd just as soon do without. Plus far too much of it. (I have over 19,000 personal emails that I can't get rid of.) OR it's certainly easier to market oneself - but it's also scary and so easy to get yourself scammed. Al Gore was right in 2000, we really needed to regulate the internet from the get-go, I think it's too late to try and do it now?
What does it say about me that my latest book is completely unmarketable and unpublishable, yet I'm so in love with it that I can't keep myself from working on it and continuing to polish it, day after day? This doomed love is a love like no other.
I'm doing this too. Granted it's not a memoir. But I don't exactly have a marketing platform either - mainly because I'm leery of them?
The difficulty with publishing one's work - is the marketing. Marketing is a bitch, unless you have a six figure deal and a huge marketing budget where you can employ experts to do it all for you. Most, actually the vast majority of writers, traditionally and non-traditionally published do not have that luxury. Scalzi - an A-list sci-fi writer - spends a good portion of the year traveling about on his own dime to various locals around the world doing book signings, conventions, etc. In and out of hotels over-looking parking lots. When he's not doing that? He's doing interviews, blogging, and on social media - selling his brand, and of course writing books. My father non-traditionally published, but balked at marketing. His books are read, just not broadly, and now after his death people are bugging my mother for the rights to them. She's ignoring them.
My uncle has also non-traditionally published a lot of books, and finally in his seventies has a publisher interested in traditionally publishing one or two, and got stories in a literary publication. I have a lot of frustrated writers in my family.
I suck at marketing, promotion, advertising, basically anything that involves persuading people to buy my work and/or selling it. I'm a buyer by profession not a seller. I have no idea how to sell anything. My brother can sell things, I can't. I did not get the salesmen gene. I'm not charismatic, I have no patience for haggling, and I don't understand pricing. Negotiating yes, pricing no.
If it were up to me? I'd just give my work away for free. [Kind of like my father ended up doing. So that tendency must run in the family?] This is why I have a day job. I'd have starved as an artist. I don't know how to market myself let alone my work. Look at this blog? Do you see any marketing? Or anything remotely resembling an attempt at it? Are there links on the side? Is it pretty? Do I use a lot of HTML? No.
Also do I have a website? No, I have wordpress. And it's not quite as pretty as this. I'm on Twitter - but branding eludes me. I try on a brand, then forget what it was. I also have a tendency to get snarky, which kills the nice tweet brand. Facebook? I've never really known what to do with it, outside post pictures to it, and random comments. I mainly play on private monitored fanboards within it? I tried selling my book on it, and gave up. Instagram? Eh, again more into photos, and I do not do vids. TikTock - I avoid, and am afraid of.
The internet is a weird thing. It's kind of a gift and a curse at the same time? On the one hand - instant communication, on the other - not necessarily nice instant communication - in fact, a lot of communication you'd just as soon do without. Plus far too much of it. (I have over 19,000 personal emails that I can't get rid of.) OR it's certainly easier to market oneself - but it's also scary and so easy to get yourself scammed. Al Gore was right in 2000, we really needed to regulate the internet from the get-go, I think it's too late to try and do it now?