The Writer’s Predicament

I’ve spent the last several months searching for someone who can help me effectively market the books I write. There are hundreds of men and women out there who will gladly take my money. They promise the moon. I’ve checked dozens of them out very closely. Not interested.

There are books written by people who want to tell me “How to Sell a Gazillion Books” or “How I Made Fifty Thousand Dollars in a Month.”  I’ve read several of them, and for the most part, they’re a regurgitation of old marketing principles that generally don’t work in the business of selling fiction. Some of them are just fluff. They offer such drivel as ”Don’t give up your dream.” “You can do it.” “Keep writing.” “If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.”

Duh.

While I was scrapping with the mighty Penguin trying to get the rights to my first three novels back, I was also spending a lot of time trying to figure out how I’d go about selling them once I got them back. The amount of information out there is mind-boggling. The number of books that are being published these days is mind-boggling. The number of suggestions on how to sell your books is mind-boggling. The competition is mind-boggling. My mind, understandably, is boggled.

Should I Tweet? Should I Facebook? Should I YouTube? Should I Goodreads? LibraryThing? Shelfari? Google-doodle-doo? Should I give ebooks away? Should I give paper books away? Should I even have paper books in this day of digital? Should I blog? Should I pitch to bloggers? Offer to be a guest on their blogs? Do virtual book blog tours? Should I do press releases? Should I hound television and radio talk-show hosts and try to get them to let me appear on their shows? Should I do the same with newspaper reporters and try to get them to write about me? Should I do book signings? Should I do a book trailer? Should I ask everybody and their brother to write five-star reviews for me and post them on Amazon and everywhere else? Should I try to figure out a way to pay for reviews? (You’d be surprised how many writers are doing that now. John Locke, Mr. “I sold a million e-books on Kindle,” paid thousands for reviews according to the New York Times.) Should I advertise by doing pay-for-click campaigns on Google or Facebook or Goodreads? Should I kiss babies and press the flesh?

Shucks, Wilbur, I don’t know. All I really want to do is write good stories and sell them for a reasonable price and make a decent living and be happy. If I do all the stuff I listed in the paragraph above, I’ll never have time to write another word of fiction. I’ll spend all my time selling. I’m a lousy salesman.

But guess what? I think — maybe — I’ve found someone to help me figure all this stuff out. Her name is Laura Pepper Wu. She lives in Seattle, Washington. She’s young and energetic. She writes a blog called “30DayBooks” and she’s written a few books of her own. She seems to get it.

I’ve emailed her a few times. She seems on the up-and-up and seems to know what she’s doing. Her fee is reasonable. I filled out a long questionairre and sent it back to her earlier this week. I’m going to talk to her for an hour on Monday. She’s going to school me on how to sell these books.

I can’t wait to talk to her. I’ll let you know what she said next week.