HOW TO TAKE THE MISERY OUT OF BOOK MARKETING

 And you thought WRITING the book was hard!

BOOK MARKETING sucks the joy right out of the air you breathe in the sigh of relief after finally having a book in print.

We study hard to write the best prose we can.  Most of us research how best to market our books.

DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! 

 Most of what you will find on the internet is already out of date:

the guaranteed methods have become more over-done worse than a Flying J road-stop steak. 

Some of my sales struggles in the past have come from a poorly titled book 

or a marketing plan that didn’t effectively target my core audience, 

but regardless, I’ve always been tempted to take my sales numbers personally.

Sales are just numbers.  

Low numbers tell you more about what you need to do than high.  Face it, you learn more from mistakes --

They shout at you louder.

Poor sales do not tell you about the quality of your prose.  

They merely tell you that you have not yet found the road out of the author blog ghetto.

A preacher who feels his sermons are poor because he has won no souls in the choir has learned the wrong lesson.

An imitation will always pale in comparison to the original.

Do not imitate another author's or blogger's path to writing success. 

It worked for them because they were on fire for it ...

besides you also do not know all the other factors in their situation that led to lightning striking their sales.

Be yourself.  Have fun. 

 Grow as writer.  

Enjoy the journey.  Look at the world around you: do not be blind to those who need your presence in their lives.

A snubbed child will not care if her mother is a success at writing if she is frozen out of the mother's life.

 Most strikingly in our comments to the blogs of others, 

connecting with readers in a personally authentic way ensures that the reader who is impacted with your book will return for the next.

Remember: 

You Are Never Done Promoting your book

Keep an eye on news headlines, current events, or internet movements to leap upon them should they tie in to a past book of yours.

Your two year old book will be new to someone who is just then discovering it because of you tying it with a recent headline.

 You can’t always control the effectiveness of your book marketing plan, 

 but you can control the way that book marketing impacts your relationships, mental health, and spirituality.

 If you hope to make a career out of writing, 

it’s especially important that your publicity practices leave something of yourself for the next book.

Enjoy the journey and slow down to take in the world around you.