My Love/Hate Relationship with Marketing

“No one loves your book more than you,” is the quote I got when I went to a marketing class on how to market your own book. “No one knows your book better than you,” they go on to say. “Who better to market your book than you?”

Although I am very blessed that my publisher puts my books all over the world for me, (thank goodness), I still have to do a lot of my own legwork. My understanding is that these days, author’s doing their own marketing, is more of the norm, rather than the unusual.  Running around with my book in my hand, asking people to let me do signings, or handing out first chapters in hopes that someone will read them and love them, does not come easy for me.  Of course I love my books. I love my characters and have become very attached to them. As a matter of fact, when it was suggested to me to let the series go, because it was too untraditional, I couldn’t imagine putting Lilly to rest before she has even been out of the gate.

I have learned a few tricks over the past few months, thanks to my very kind and more experienced writer friends, but still I must confess that there is so much more that I need to learn. Press packages, bookmarks, printers, posters, who will let you do signings, who won’t…are all things I have yet to learn. Time is of course, a major part of good marketing. Finding the time to spend on it is crucial and those of us with children, husbands or significant others and jobs know…time is a word not often in our vocabularies. But I have seen it done and am optimistic that learning as I go can be successfully accomplished.

Thank you to all of you who have helped me with new ideas and opportunities.

“Ah but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for.” -Robert Browning