Some Help for Fiction Writers

Because we need to know it’s possible to make a living.

Image by Sergey.

I say this without a bitter bone in my body, but I say it emphatically, nonetheless. After 10 years of writing publicly, I haven’t found any clear route for fiction writers to market themselves and build their brand.

With a statement like that, I think it’s easier to look at the opposite side of things. If I wrote non-fiction books, there are endless amounts of information, resources, courses, and people who could guide me through becoming a best selling author. While the method slightly differ, all non-fiction strategies go a little something like this:

Determine what you’d like to write about ie. “What it’s like to travel with pets.”Choose a blog platform and begin writing about travelling with pets.Giveaway free material that shows how expert you are about travelling with pets.In exchange for this free material, collect emails so you can build your mailing list.Once you complete your opus about travelling with pets, lean on this email list to sell your book.Now that you’re an influencer, you can charge to do workshops on how you’ve made it all happen.

Now I’m obviously generalizing here, but these are the basic steps involved in building your brand as a non-fiction writer and selling thousands of books, then leveraging your brand to conduct workshops and other income streams to make a living.

Problem is, it’s not that straightforward for fiction writers. We, as should be our nature, need to think and operate much more creatively if we hope to be successful. We aren’t writing about anything as tangible as travelling with pets. Our subject matter is far more nuanced and even dynamic, so this strategy doesn’t fit as neatly into our vision as it does for writers of non-fiction.

HOW DO FICTION WRITERS GET ATTENTION?

So what do we do? Well, stop complaining, first of all. We should’ve long accepted the reality that it takes us stepping out of our four walls and consistently inserting ourselves into public forums if we hope to achieve an inkling of the success of our non-fiction brethren.

Next, the blueprint for non-fiction writers isn’t too far off from what we fiction writers can do to better market and promote ourselves and our work. We’ll have to do away with some steps and reimagine others, but it’s possible.

For example, determining what we’d like to write about as a fiction writer changes with each book. What we should focus on, however, is finding a theme within the current book we are writing and use that as our launching pad.

My first novella, THOUGHTS OF A FRACTURED SOUL, had many themes. When first marketing the title, I decided to focus on the Millennial struggle of being overly ambitious and us wanting to disrupt every single system currently in place.

THEME

OK, so once I had my theme, I decided that LinkedIn would be the ideal platform to have those discussions. I started writing blogs with titles like “The Power of the Millennial Consumer,” “Working While Dreaming,” and “Why 9–5 Won’t Work for Millennials.” The latter piece ended up really striking a cord and getting tens of thousands of views (currently has 169,000 clicks).

That much attention got some people curious and I landed interviews on some decent sized platforms. Guess what I spoke about in these interviews? Not my article, but my novella. One platform even allowed me to run a campaign through their site which related directly to my novella. It’s a roundabout approach, but I must say it worked. I was able to sell thousands of copies of my novel, and this was the catapult.

PEOPLE NEED TO READ IT TO APPRECIATE IT

But it wasn’t the only thing I did. While giving away free material felt like treason, I saw how it could be effective. I did the Goodreads Giveaway campaign which lead to ten more people reading my book. That may not sound like a lot, but what became more important was that the majority of those readers left a positive review on Goodreads. This lead to other readers giving my story a chance.

I then pivoted and chose a different theme (single father struggles) and started blogging exclusively about that journey. I chose Medium for my platform and then went through the same process but this time I was more intentional about seeking out the platforms that fit my theme. I also went to high schools and spoke about the themes in THOUGHTS OF A FRACTURED SOUL. Instead of charging a fee to speak, I made it mandatory to purchase a specific amount of my novella. This lead to some schools even adopting my book for their curriculum.

I repeated much of what I did for my second book BEAUTY SCARS, along with finding new and inventive ways to articulate the themes in those different forms, all with the intention of getting attention back to the novel.

For example, beauty was a major theme of the novel, so I started a #LoveYourBeautyScars campaign. This was a collection of stories of people who had traumatic experiences either growing up or in their adulthood, but still managed to keep things together and excel in their personal and professional lives. I ran this campaign through my CRY blog right here on Medium before my book even came out.

Thinking of possible connections, I reached out to the Breast Cancer Society of Canada. They loved the idea and after approving the book, they were on board to be part of the campaign, as well.

The last thing I did was run an ad campaign. I put up a billboard in the downtown part of the city and paired that with subway ads. All of the ads included the breast cancer logo and it made a huge splash once the billboard actually went up.

All of this may sound like a lot of work, but it’s the effort necessary to remind people that I have a book out. The key is that you continually use the themes of your book as launching points to engage readers, to connect with other influencers and platforms, and to leverage opportunities to sell your book, or at least speak about it. And you must do this continuously. People need to constantly be reminded of who you are. You’re in a battle for attention and if you don’t keep up, you’ll be forgotten or not even heard from in the first place.

The one thing I’m not too sure about for fiction writers is our mailing list. Although I have ran small campaigns to build my own list, I haven’t seen (or been able to discover) a way to turn people on that mailing list into purchasers of my book. At least that’s what my analytics is telling me. If someone is willing to fill in this blank for me, I’m willing to listen.

Fiction books and fiction writers are a different beast. Creativity is our ally, not convenience. We don’t have the luxury of selling books that solve any concrete or material problems. We’re story tellers whose best selling point is our ability to communicate our imagination. How we find transferable uses for our imagination is what will set us apart.

C.R.Y

Some Help for Fiction Writers was originally published in C.R.Y on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.