I’m delighted to be a stop on Deborah Riley-Magnus’ new blog tour. If you aren’t familiar with her then you are certainly costing yourself time, effort, and sales.
Her new book Write Brain/Left Brain: Bridging the Gap between Creative Writer and Marketing Author helps us with that inevitable short-circuit we get when it’s time to take off the writer cap put on the promotional one.
IS MARKETING REALLY EVIL?
Deborah Riley-Magnus
No matter what you write, genre fiction, nonfiction how-to books, cookbooks, or even serious literary works, you must market. As an Author Success Coach, many authors come to me feeling lost and confused, or simply determined to ignore this need. Marketing is different and a fearful venture. I know, I know. All authors see marketing as the bad guy. Many authors even call marketing evil.
I have heard this more times than I’d like to admit. Truthfully, marketing is not immoral or wicked, it isn’t harmful, doesn’t cause misfortune or suffering. Marketing doesn’t have a dreadful character, it isn’t angry or cruel, it has no bad intentions. Marketing doesn’t cause mischief. Marketing will not steal your car.
Marketing can however help you buy a new car, a really great car with all the bells and whistles. To say that marketing is evil is to unfortunately admit to having no clue what marketing actually is or how it works. It’s all right; most authors are in that same misguided boat. Marketing isn’t the nasty demon in an author’s life, it is the simplest tool to master and can guide you the heavens…if you let it.
Understanding what marketing actually is will help. Marketing is the act of creating awareness of your book. You’re already doing that a bit. You’ve told everyone you know about your book, again, and again, and again. However, there’s a difference between marketing and marketing well. You may be marketing with little results because you are repeatedly creating awareness to the same small audience. It’s time to go wide instead of just somewhat deep. Marketing is all about creating awareness to broad audiences loaded with people who will love and purchase your book. If you build a following of these huge audiences and connect with them, you will have marketed well and created wide awareness of your book…and great book sales.
Once you’ve marketed well and wide, really nice things happen. Awareness is the groundwork for promotions and publicity. If people aren’t aware of a book, they’re less likely to respond to your promotions and purchased the book. If they’re not aware of your book, they are also less likely to support your publicity. Marketing is extremely important because without that solid groundwork, you’re doing nothing but spinning your wheels, begging the same people, over and over, to buy your book. That’s just not fun.
It’s time to stop thinking of marketing as the enemy and learn about what you and marketing have in common.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Bridging the Gap between Creative Writer and Marketing Author
Marketing is a very scary prospect for authors. It seems like a foreign language meant to be spoken in a far off land without an embassy to help explain the culture. None of this is true. It isn’t marketing that’s the issue—it’s a fear and general misunderstanding of marketing in relation to an author’s talents and skill set.
It’s time to open the author’s mind to the purely creative aspects of marketing as it relates directly to their specific book and audience. WRITE BRAIN/LEFT BRAIN skillfully bridges the gap between creative writer and marketing author, and opens the wide road to sales success.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Deborah Riley-Magnus is an author and an Author Success Coach. She has a twenty-seven year professional background in marketing, advertising, and public relations as a writer for print, television, and radio. She writes fiction and non-fiction.
In 2013 her nonfiction, Finding Author Success (Second Edition), and Cross Marketing Magic for Authors were released. Her newest book, Write Brain/Left Brain, focuses on bridging the gap between the creative writer and the marketing author.
Deborah produces several pieces monthly for various websites and online publications. She writes an author industry blog and teaches online and live workshops as The Author Success Coach. She belongs to several writing and professional organizations.
Blog http://rileymagnus.wordpress.com/
Teach http://theauthorsuccesscoach.com/
Fiction http://drmagnusfantasy.com/
Tweet http://twitter.com/rileymagnus
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/deborah.rileymagnus
Terry Kroenung 