This post first appeared in The Cape Cod Children’s Writers Blog on January 23 2014.
I have never moved my work very far simply because marketing has always been, for a self-published author, much too daunting for me. Just panacea of online information on how to go about it makes my head hurt and venture back to funny Facebook videos. The amount of courses and presentations on marketing just here on Cape Cod, is overwhelming to me. Okay, I’ll just admit it – it’s not the amount of work or the money that’s involved – I just don’t enjoy doing it. Nowhere in any class or presentation on marketing have I ever thought oh that looks like fun! I love writing – this blog, children’s books, maybe a novel in the future. I love art – illustrating and doing cover art for both myself and other authors. Recently I fell in love with formatting books and putting them up on Amazon. I took a course on that this summer at the Cape Cod Writers Center Annual Conference and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I even spent the eighty dollars on the CD E-Pub Template that simplified the whole experience, but marketing? One word. Ugh.
Okay, by now you must be wondering why, if I’m such a marketing hater, am I writing this post. Simple. I found a friend and author who made marketing a self-published book both easy AND fun. My fellow Cape Cod Writers Center board member, Kate Conway, just self-published her first young adult novel and I’ve never seen a marketing plan like hers. I was fascinated from the get-go when I found out she brought her characters to life – not only in her book – but into real life – as in using local high school students to represent her characters and marketed the whole thing like a movie. So cool. There were photo shoots and posters and the kids attending book signings – well what local high school student is NOT going to buy this book featuring their friends? The photos and posters (one which is a huge banner that hung in the Cape Cod Mall like a Twilight poster) immediately attracted me. That looks like fun! Now THIS is marketing.
Another thing Kate does is teach hour long writing classes to high school students at local libraries for free AND hold a book signing! Whoa! Teaching (my first passion) at a book signing. Genius. Guess that’s one way people will show up to your event. (Every author hates the thought of no one showing up to their signing, but just accepts it as “going with the territory”.) I applaud Kate for finding a way around that. To know I have twelve kids coming to learn about writing takes away that fear and turns the event into something I’d look forward to.
If that isn’t enough, Kate wrote a blog post that was also published with my article, P is for Passion Click Click Click , in the latest edition of Cape Women Online, entitled Book Marketing 101. In it she details, step by step, including costs, how to market a self-published book. She makes it so clear and easy that I can actually get excited about doing that with one of my own books someday. Kudos to Kate Conway, author of Undertow , for changing the way I now look at marketing.
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