How marketing a book is like raising a child

Something I encounter a lot in coaching and working with writers is a dual frenzy of excitement and despair.

A lot of authors who think their book should be selling better than it is, don’t realize that it’s still in the toddler phase, and as such unrealistic expectations can cause unnecessary angst and anguish. It’s a step-by-step process and once you know what the steps are and where your book is on that continuum, it makes the whole journey a lot more relaxing.

Newborn: Published (this can be newly published or some time ago. Some books never get out of the newborn phase because they don’t build their platform).

Toddler: Creating your website, social media presence, media kit and building your e-mail list, including sign up forms on your website and doing your own giveaways. This phase is focused on building a solid platform.

Middle school years: Formulating your story idea letter to send to media outlets and journalists, building your e-mail and other contact info list of journalists, editors, magazines, podcasts, blog tours, etc., that have featured books similar to yours.
E-mailing and contacting via other means magazines, editors and journalists on your list, sending them your story idea content and media kit.
Indie book stores: forming personal relationships with indie bookstore owners in your area, going in personally, taking your media kit, a copy of your book (e-book or hard copy). For further afield, email them the e-book and media kit.

Rambunctious teenager: You’re starting to get nibbles and responses from magazines, podcasts, newspapers and journalists to your story idea requests. Your social media presence and e-mail list are increasing and your Google Author Authority is rising because of consistency across channels.

Adult: You’re in indie book stores, you’ve got a thriving social media presence, you’ve got an engaged and building e-mail list, you’ve established relationships with journalists and have been written about a couple of times.

Soaring adult: Your media presence takes off, driven by networking and the law of increasing returns. You get noticed by your high profile in the media and get picked up by a publishing company and your book becomes a bestseller, or your organic audience increases exponentially, making your book an indie bestseller.

Very few books make it to the final stage, not because they don’t belong on the bestseller list or deserve to be there, but because they don’t go through the stages to get there, they don’t do the work or don’t know how. How many times have we seen an actor who appears to “suddenly make it big,” yet when you hear the real story, they’ve been slaving away on bit parts for a decade?

One thing I want to emphasize is find your market.
For example, an analogy: some movies are a flop in the US, but absolutely take the market by storm in Japan, Australia or another country. Widen your reach, cast your net far, because you never know who is going to resonate with your book. Maybe that little radio station in the Outback of Australia desperately wants to do an interview with you, take them up on it!

Also, Google and understand the term
“Activation Energy Barrier”

“There is an energy barrier that separates the energy levels of the reactants and products. Energy must be added to the reactants to overcome the energy barrier.”

What this means is you can have all the right ingredients, but you’re still going to need to invest an enormous amount of energy to activate them and make things happen. This is a universal scientific principle and it helps to understand that everything is affected by this and that if nothing visible is happening despite enormous amounts of effort on your part, it doesn’t mean that you’re doing something wrong or that nothing is happening. You are overcoming this energy barrier. If you know you have all the right ingredients and a sound plan and strategy, keep going!

Avoid having unrealistic expectations or impatience with the process and channel all that energy into making your platform more robust and getting your book out there even more! You wouldn’t expect your newborn baby to get up and run, so why would you expect your newly published book to suddenly be doing the equivalent of entering the Olympics?

Above all, give it time. Give yourself time, be kind to yourself and remind yourself of all you’ve overcome to be a published author. Many don’t get that far.

I can help you at any stage of the process you find yourself. Book a free consultation below.