{"id":1115,"date":"2010-03-31T09:39:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-31T16:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=1115"},"modified":"2025-11-04T10:58:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T17:58:11","slug":"self-publishing-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=1115","title":{"rendered":"Self Publishing & Marketing"},"content":{"rendered":"

The March eduction session of GLAWS (www.glaws.org), my writing society, was fabulous last weekend.\u00a0 It had 6 authors who’d been marketing themselves in different ways.\u00a0 Some had self published and some had not.\u00a0 Even some who had done both.\u00a0 And each was using marketing in a different way.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

They also had 3 professional marketing people who had also written books.\u00a0 One gentleman had sold thousands of his book in 11 days just thru Twitter.\u00a0\u00a0 So there were A LOT of really great ideas of how to get your book sold floating through the room.\u00a0 All we could do was sit in rapt attention soaking it in and trying to wrap our heads on just WHAT each one of us would be able to do.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

See writers think that all they have to do is WRITE the book.\u00a0 They believe the publisher will “fix it”, print it, market it and do all the “selling stuff” and the writer will collect a paycheck.\u00a0\u00a0 And in some cases that is true.\u00a0 But the writer these days is more and more expected to do the lion share of marketing the book.\u00a0 Because the publisher may market your book for 1 to 3 months and then you’re done!\u00a0 Unless your book takes off as a best seller, all marketing is done after a few short months.\u00a0\u00a0 And if you didn’t sell much… good luck on your NEXT book!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

So its really up to the writer to make sure his work gets to his market.\u00a0 And its in his own interest to do so.\u00a0\u00a0 Most writers have accepted this, but do they really do it?\u00a0 Do they truly maximize the potential of today’s world marketing techniques?\u00a0 Oh, some do a little but they don’t push it.\u00a0 Because at heart MOST writers are quiet and solitary people. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Looking about the room one of the marketers who also a writer, Marla Miller\u00a0Marketing the Muse<\/a> made the point that NOT every writer is a successful marketer.\u00a0 And they may need to just focus on their writing\u00a0 and not so much on the marketing.\u00a0\u00a0 I did my own survey of the room and realized she was soooo right.\u00a0\u00a0 There were barely a handful of people who could pull off a public appearance that wouldn’t “turn off” the general market.\u00a0\u00a0 Which was a little sad because I bet a lot of them were good writers who\u00a0 had good books inside them, but to really “make it” you have to get a large fan base to support you.\u00a0 Would these people be able to do that?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Then I looked at myself and just grinned.\u00a0\u00a0 I didn’t think I’d be able to sell CAT<\/em>, my first book, because I wasn’t sure there was an audience.\u00a0\u00a0 I KNEW I could sell Tales From the Sexual Front<\/em> because of the subject matter and the fact it was less fiction and more a mix of non-fiction and How To.\u00a0 But when I started looking at the concept of “fan base marketing” I realized I could sell it all.\u00a0 The first book and maybe her sequel and the second book and myself.. all in one PR package.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

And suddenly self publishing looks enticing.\u00a0 I might get 5% of sales from a publisher and be expected to do a lot of marketing myself.\u00a0 Whereas I could get 80% of sales (costs, people… costs!) and do the same amount of marketing.\u00a0 The initial sales may not be the big push of the big publisher but with the help of GLAWS and today’s techie world… there is no reason I couldn’t sell as much if not more in the long run.\u00a0 And at 80% of sales… that’s just good business planning.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Top it all off with the fact half my current job is shipping DVD’s and the idea of printing, processing and shipping book orders is nothing.\u00a0 I do that weekly already!\u00a0 And fate has brought me individuals to help guide me.\u00a0 Frank Zanca is both a self published author, a marketer and an independent businessman.\u00a0 And a friend.\u00a0 GLAWS has many, many connections there to guide and help an author pursue their career.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

And since these books are about Cougars I’ve got a waiting fan base and access to those fans.\u00a0 I realized the only thing stopping me at this point is time.\u00a0 Getting the time to finish the last edit of Cat<\/em>.\u00a0 Getting the time to write Tales from the Sexual Front<\/em>.\u00a0 These are the only things truly stopping me from stepping firmly onto the road of writer.\u00a0 And I’m done with the stalling. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

So boys (assuming any of my cubs are still reading the blogs) I may be a little less “chat-available” and may take a bit longer to answer texts in the next few months but it is all for a good cause.\u00a0\u00a0 Just imagine how much fun the PR is going to be for the Cougar who wrote a sex book on dating!
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The March eduction session of GLAWS (www.glaws.org), my writing society, was fabulous last weekend.\u00a0 It had 6 authors who’d been marketing themselves in different ways.\u00a0 Some had self published and some had not.\u00a0 Even some who had done both.\u00a0 And … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1115"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3323,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115\/revisions\/3323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}