It’s been a busy week. I took on an editing job and it has consumed me. I do enjoy editing a good book. But it’s hard to keep up with my everyday commitments, such as this blog, when I’m editing. I don’t like to make authors wait for their edited manuscripts for more than a week if possible and I don’t like to have something hanging around in my office for long. So I generally start soon after I receive a project and complete it within three to seven days—depending on the magnitude of the job.
While I’m editing, I typically set aside my blogs, my social media accounts, my email, book promotion and many of the requests and other materials that come across my desk. I finished a 34-hour editing job yesterday. So today, I’m playing catch-up.
Many of you work full-time or part-time jobs or have a full life of volunteering, family obligations and so forth. You write a book as an aside from your lifestyle. And then you try to promote it within the same brief time allotments you devoted to writing the book. It might be just a few hours a day or a week. My life is organized the other way around. Writing, editing and book promotion are my life. I work-in social and family obligations. And still I find book promotion overwhelmingly taxing, time-consuming and energy-draining.
There are a variety of aspects to the process of book promotion. There is the mindset/attitude, activity options, level of motivation and the action element. I think plan to create blog posts these next few days exploring each of these aspects. Stay tuned. Tomorrow, we’ll go into the attitude and mindset of the author facing book promotion.
I’ve been in a position to observe many authors over time and I can tell you that there is a wide array of thought processes when it comes to promoting their books. The two extremes might be: the author who reads everything he can get his hands on about book promotion even before he writes the book. He attends lectures, joins clubs and organizations where he learns from other authors. He actually begins his marketing program before he produces that book.
At the other end of the spectrum are authors who stay confined to their writing room throughout the writing process and emerge one day with a book and not one iota of knowledge as to the market or the concept of bookselling. Some go so far as to believe their books will sell themselves—all they have to do is write it and produce it.
Two extremes, indeed. Visit this site over the next several days for discussions on book promotion for the bold and the bashful, the informed and the clueless, the energetic and the homebound. In the meantime, learn more about publishing and book promotion through the following books:
Publish Your Book, Proven Strategies and Resources for the Enterprising Author
Promote Your Book, Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author
Talk Up Your Book, How to Sell Your Book Through Public Speaking, Interviews, Signings, Festivals, Conferences and More.
All of these books by Patricia Fry (Allworth Press) are available at Amazon.com in print, Kindle and audio as well as at my website: http://www.matilijapress.com