Michael Potts's Blog: Bits and Pieces: Book Reviews and Articles on Writing, Horror Fiction, and Some Philosophy - Posts Tagged "time"

Every author has to publicize his or her book. Even the major publishers are spending less on publicity and require authors to help with marketing. Those published via small presses have more responsibility for marketing, and Indies most of all. The issue is how to balance the time spent marketing with writing time. I have found that marketing takes far more time than I first realized. Getting an online presence, keeping one's website updated, posting to groups and blogs, and posting to Facebook pages as well as setting up book signings can drain precious writing time. It is essential, however, even if there are few sales. If your books thus far have sold poorly but your next book sells well, that success can slide over to your other works, and the work that you did earlier in marketing them will pay off. People wanting to discover more about your work will easily be able to do so.

Yet you cannot spend all your time on publicity. You can fall into a trap like a gambler--"this strategy didn't work, so now I have to find another and I can't write until I do so." Your number one priority as a writer should be writing. I am reminding myself of that as much as I am reminding my readers. Lives are busy enough, so finding a balance between the various aspects of "authoring" is a must. Perhaps set aside a half hour a day to work on marketing, and then use the rest of your available time for writing.

For someone with Asperger's Syndrome like me, an overemphasis on marketing is parallel to the immense amount of time I spend on what interests me at the time. Now it's not only marketing my books, but research on my family tree. Someone with Asperger's must often use the strength of the will to start writing--I know I do. Once the person with Asperger's gets into the flow of writing, than writing becomes the "special interest," and the person will write a great deal quickly. I wrote the first draft of my first novel in ten days and the first draft my second novel in eight days. During that writing time I did not care about any other interest but writing. Other people may find other ways to motivate them to write. Do whatever works for you, but for goodness sakes, do what a writer does--write!