5 Things I Learned About Marketing from Writing a Novel, Part 4

Three weeks ago, on May 22, 2018, I officially published my debut novel. Writing and publishing The Reluctant Coroner was a frenetic, messy, wonderful process, and I learned a whole lot—especially the way writing and publishing a book correlates to B2B marketing. This is the fourth of five lessons about what I learned during the writing of The Reluctant Coroner.

Lesson 4: Products and marketing require a team effort.

The publishing world has changed; traditional publishers are spending less on marketing, and many experts believe the “mid-list”—writers who make a living, but aren’t millionaires—is being abandoned. As a result, more authors than ever are flocking to “indie authorship” for the opportunity to have more control over all aspects of their books, instead of leaving it to the publishers to edit, proofread, market, and distribute their works.

Many indie authors focus only on their writing, however, and once a draft is done and they’re happy with it, they throw it over the wall to Amazon. Beyond the first draft, they do everything themselves: they edit and proofread on their own, they design the cover, they write the blurb, they upload their document to Amazon. And a few months later, they’re amazed that they haven’t cracked the New York Times bestseller list.

The truth is, you can write the best novel in the world and have it sell absolutely nothing. There are so many aspects that go into making a book successful: professional edits, professional cover design, professional layout for the inside of the book, professional marketing, professional ad campaigns. And no one person can do it by themselves. Sure, if they’re lucky, they might have one or two of those skills. I started my career as a graphic layout artist, so I felt comfortable enough to do the layout for the interior pages of my paperback, for example. But I’m not a good...Read More