Marketing! What is it? How do you do it for writing?
And why should you listen to this podcast instead of the million other podcasts/blog posts that are already out there about marketing?
Because many of those narratives go like this:
“I tried this and this and this and this, and thing X worked! DO THING X!”
…and they focus on the wrong thing.
They focus on Thing X, “the next big thing,” the latest platform/trend/silver bullet.
Instead, we should focus on the first part–how the person tried a bunch of different things.
This doesn’t mean try everything–but it does mean that marketing takes time and lots of tries. Listen in to hear what I have done to market my ebooks (DIY Writing Retreat and DIY Chick Lit) and my full-length fiction and nonfiction manuscripts.
Newsletter readers, click through here or on the image below to listen.
Show notes:
Writing update: Still working on my new novel; Finding Lucy is still out on submission.
Reading update: Really into Rhys Bowen’s Her Royal Spyness series, despite/because of the punny titles.
Links to all the things I have done to market myself:
- I am on Twitter
- Also Instagram
- Two things I have tried to market: DIY Writing Retreat and DIY Chick Lit, available on Amazon as ebooks and Etsy as PDFs.
- Built this website (originally called craftbookproject.com)
- I took a survey of craft bloggers and blogged about it
- I tweeted about it – I lied on the podcast and said that I had kept the same account from back then, but the Internet tells me that I’m wrong
- I made awesome business cards, and tragically, I can’t find the link to the original tutorial! I thought the Internet saved everything.
- I made Instant Gift for Writers, a zine that I put in little free libraries around Seattle
- I made a video with Tara Swiger (actually, I made a lot of videos! Here’s one about how to get inspiration to write a story. I made these with Kelly of KMR Publishing to promote DIY Chick Lit–then called “The Chick Lit Cookbook”)
- I sent out my ebook for review to a lot of book bloggers, who blogged about it (collected here)
- I have a newsletter; you can sign up for it here
- I’ve written for The Write Life and We Heart Writing
- I’ve been to AWP
- I’ve participated in #PitMad (that’s how I found my agent)
- I’ve kept in touch with my writing friends
- I’ve entered my novel in contests, and sent out my stories
- I wrote for Alt Magazine (and other places)
- I wrote for the Patheos Network on a blog called “Surprising Faith”
- I redesigned the covers for my ebook (well, I had someone else do it)
- I started this podcast (and put it on Stitcher)
- I started selling my ebooks on Etsy
- I’ve also thought about trying Periscope, but I just couldn’t do it.
Apologies for the sniffles on this episode; a pox upon Seattle “spring.”
And in case you missed it, my ebooks are now PDFs. That means you don’t have to take the Internet with you when you go on a writing retreat! Use coupon code STPAT17 to get two for the price of one.
Thanks for listening! Tune in next week…where I dive deeper into marketing.
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