Marketing for the self-made

Hey-O! You’ve almost made it through the whole week. I’m proud of you. Really. I know some of you had incredibly rough weeks, and I’m glad that you made it through in one piece. Even if you don’t feel like you did. You’re alive. You’re here, reading this post. And I’m glad you’re here.

Tuesday, we talked about marketing for traditional publishers. Today then…

How Self-Published Authors Market Books

I’m not going to lie to you. I promised that I was going to be positive this month and tell you all the good things about either side of publishing, but I’m also not going to lie about how hard it is to do some of these things.

Marketing is harder, for self-published authors. It just is. Mostly because you’re working by yourself to market your book, sometimes without as much knowledge of how to market or where to market.

But you know what?

When you’re marketing your own book, you get to decide who you market to.

That’s something you don’t always get to do, when you go the traditional route. And being able to set your own target market means that you get to go out and reach those people yourself—which can be a lot of fun. You get to be the one to set up events, to run ads and hit the streets, and you get to decide what your campaigns are going to be like. You won’t have anyone dictating to you about what you need to do or where you need to do it.

The nice thing about this, is that if you’re going through a rough patch in life or your day job is just taking up too much time right now, there’s not going to be someone hounding you to do the events and ads you need to do.

The bad thing about this… is the same thing.

It is more difficult to get noticed by as many people, if you’re not signed with a well-known traditional publisher. But it’s also a really good learning experience. It’s a way to get yourself out there, to make yourself be more adventurous and outgoing—which is what a lot of us need to do. 

It's also a great way to get your platform started, which will make your work more appealing to traditional publishers (if that's the route you're hoping to eventually go). 

For me, marketing Telekinetic meant going to as many events as I could and hounding as many friends and family members as possible, but that wasn’t enough. See, I’m not lying. I could’ve done a lot better with Telekinetic, if I’d put my time into it. Which is what you have to do, if you’re going the self-published route. You have to put the time in, or you’re never going to get seen.

But when you put that time in, when you get to where you’ve got it down and you know what you’re doing when it comes to marketing, you’ll be able to use that same platform to springboard your next book—all without someone telling you what to do.

I’d say that’s pretty nice, in the long run.

[love]

{Rani Divine}