If this post seems familiar, congratulations. This means that either you have been visiting this blog site’s archives or that you’ve been following this blog for five years. I’m drawing a rare—extremely rare—blank today as I contemplate my blog post. So I’ve decided to reach into the archives and remind you of this message:
Excerpted from my January 27, 2006 post
Do you ever feel as though you’ve been up and down every promotional street, avenue and pathway in every world city and you’ve come to that dreaded dead end? You wonder “Where do I go from here?” You feel as though you’ve tapped into every possible promotional opportunity available for your particular book and now you’re stuck. You’ve run out of ideas and resources. You don’t know where to turn or how to proceed. STOP! Don’t start burning books or throwing your computer out the window. Take a break. Breathe… Breathe… Breathe…
There, now don’t you feel better?
We all hit that brick wall of hopelessness once in a while. Sometimes it’s just a matter of exhaustion and stress. It’s nothing more than a strong signal that it’s time to step back and get a fresh perspective. Go take a walk, reorganize your office, putter in the garden, play with your cat, take a nap. You’ll come back to your office feeling a bit less frazzled and ready to resume the task of book promotion.
Most of us, when we enter into this field, believe in the concept: “Write it and they will come.” We rely on bookstores to distribute our books to all of those readers who are out there searching for a book like ours. Once this idea is exposed for the fallacy that it is, the author suddenly feels alone, confused and as if he has been deceived.
When I feel the promotional well starting to dip near the panic level, I open my promotional file. As an author, you do have a promotional file, don’t you—a folder that contains every book promotion idea you’ve ever had? Maybe now is the time to build a website or start blogging. Perhaps you can plan a book signing tour or go ahead and rent a booth at a major book festival this spring. Check into the newsletters out there on the topic/genre of your book. You can learn a lot about your audience and where they are, by reading these newsletters. Contribute articles to some of those newsletters and appropriate magazines. Set up some speaking engagements.
Book promotion is an all-consuming activity. If you are an author, you probably already know this. If you are thinking about producing a book, you need to know that writing is the easy part. It’s what comes after that will keep you busy, test your creativity and stamina and sometimes drive you crazy. So go ahead and write that great book, but also take the time to develop a promotional plan. And create a backup plan. Be prepared so that the next time you see the brick wall coming swiftly toward you, you can leap right over it without missing a promotional beat.
If you’re running out of promotional ideas stop by my website and check out some of the articles there on book promotion. http://www.matilijapress.com