I’ve mentioned it before, but in case you missed it, until about 18 months ago, I worked in marketing. To be honest, I fell into the career: there was an Internet marketing company hiring writers locally, and I applied. I did it well, but I always thought it was something I did mostly for the paycheck.
At my first writer’s conference, I had one book almost ready to submit. Nothing with a publisher, no queries out—no “real” professional interest in selling books yet. And yet the classes that interested me the most? Marketing.
This was when I realized I actually like marketing.
And, like I said, I wasn’t bad at it. In fact, I was considered an expert (admittedly low-level). I spoke at a conference. I even got recognized once.
What’s the point? I hope that I learned something in all those years and efforts. And those things? They seem basic to me, but really, the general author population doesn’t know this stuff. And I’m very happy to share!
So, this year, I’m devoting Mondays to Marketing! I have a lot of ideas: we’ll start off with Marketing 101, then look at various online marketing tactics for authors including Facebook, SEO and blogging. We’ll also look at offline marketing a bit. We’ll do some of the ever-popular website reviews. I have lots of ideas and I’m very excited to share.
And (I hope) it won’t be just me: I have some really great friends who know a lot about marketing because they’ve been in the trenches for their books. They’ve tried a lot of different things and we’ll have them there to tell us what worked for them.
What marketing topics do you want to see on Marketing Mondays?
Photo courtesy of Top Rank Online Marketing Blog
That’s a wonderful idea to have Marketing Mondays! A lot of the topics you mentioned are ones I would’ve mentioned being good to have on Marketing Mondays. 🙂
Oh, I need this series! Desperately. I hate marketing, probably because I’m so bad at it.
I’m looking forward to your posts, Jordan!
These sounds right down my alley, since I know nothing about merketing really. I can’t wait!
Yay! I’m looking at the possibility of self-publishing this year, so this is fabulous. Even if I were successful about getting accepted at a small press I’d be looking at doing some or all of the marketing myself anyway.
Can’t wait.
An excellent idea. :> I read constantly on this topic and I still feel woefully unprepared.
For example, should I bother with marketing, etc, when I’m still in the process of producing my first novel? Or should I get the first one out there, and start marketing while I’m working on the second novel?
Great questions! I’ll probably be starting there.