Making It Big In 6 Easy Steps

How did the Romance Writers of America’s magazine know that I needed some marketing tips? Well, maybe because all authors always need marketing tips? In today’s publishing industry, marketing is left to every author, whether they’re traditionally published or indie-published. But the Romance Writer’s Report, this month (November, 2013) had a great article on marketing that I think applies to everyone who publishes, not only romance authors.

Writing a book is hard. Editing it is harder. Getting all the pieces together, if you’re going to self-publish—not easy. But marketing is something that nearly everyone agrees is harder than any of these.

Now, I don’t usually read articles about people who’ve “made it”. Frankly, it depresses me. However, in this month’s RWR, there was an article written by Valerie Bowman on thirteen authors who’ve recently made the top lists (NYTimes, USA Today). They talked about how long it took them to get there, and how they did it. Really useful stuff!

The first thing that made me feel good about this article was that only two of the thirteen had their first book make it to the top lists. Two were on their fifth book, two their ninth, and it went up from there. One author had 40 books – 40!! – before she made the top lists. That’s incredible staying power. Kudos to her!

But the best thing about the article was what these authors said they did to get their books on to these lists – and many are something any author can do. Here are the ones the really resonated with me:

One author said that she posted excerpts of their book for months leading up to the sale of the book to get and keep readers excited about her upcoming release.
Some had bloggers—as many as 300 in one day!—blogging about her book on the day it was released.
Another dropped the price of her book to .99 a week after it was released and kept it there for ten days.
One said that for her, it was all in the timing of her release. Many authors release books in November and December to hit the Christmas buying season, this author released her book in April when there wasn’t as much competition. Smart!
Some advertised on Facebook and Goodreads.
And, finally, almost all agreed that having a fantastic cover was key to selling their book.

These are all things that are pretty easy for your average author to do—yes, that means you and me. Well, ok, having 300 bloggers talking about your book on one particular day is probably a little out of reach, but you could probably have ten or twenty. Probably, if you go with a company that organizes such things, many more. What a great way to create buzz. And that’s what we want to do. Create buzz. Get people talking about our book. The more people talk about it, the more people will buy it.

Sounds good to me! Thank you Valerie Bowman for writing such a useful article. And thank you to all the authors who were so open and honest about how you achieved your (clearly) well deserved success.

Now, what are you going to do to ensure that your book is as successful as it can possibly be?

Next week, Nina will be back with part two of her blog on commas! Look out for it next weekend!