The M Word - Marketing

Throughout lockdown I have been keeping busy working on aspects of writing that are not in my comfort zone. Marketing. The very word sends shivers up my spine. I am not a natural at promoting myself and I decided I really needed to understand how prepare to market my book when it is published.

Fortunately, I am a member of Jericho Writers, an online writer platform which aims to help writers get published. It is the brainchild of Harry Bingham, a crime writer whose books feature an amazing protagonist called Fiona Griffiths who has a psychological condition which makes her believe she is dead. Apparently this is a real condition – life is strange.

It is a great resource, filled with lots of information, podcasts, courses and a writers’ community in its Townhouse where you can get to chat to other aspiring authors, review excerpts from their books and get feedback on yours – all really helpful.

Their summer festival in York was cancelled due to Covid and instead they have produced an online festival – I signed up for it and have had a brilliant summer of learning, Almost every day there is a webinar on different aspects of writing; marketing, PR, publishing, submissions, editing, plotting – you name it, they have a webinar on it and all really good quality.

One webinar was Philippa East talking about how she wrote Little White Lies. She wrote short stories for a number of years and then wrote the book, it went through 23 edits before she got an agent and then they requested a rewrite going from one point of view to two alternating points of view - massive amount of work but she did it and sent it back. The agent requested more work and she did it and the agent signed her.

A story about dedication, hard work, not being precious but open to critique and a focus on making the story the best that it can be. I found this inspiring.

If you are traditionally published as Philippa was, and I hope to be, you will still need to help market your book. If you are a debut author you will usually have a small budget allocated for marketing and a publicist allocated to you. I have found out from the webinars that a publicist has a huge workload so anything you can do to support them will help your book sell – and we all want sales.

So, understanding marketing and putting in a basis for an author platform is my goal. The webinars that really resonated were from;

Joanna Penn www.thecreativepenn.com

David Gaughran www.davidgaughran.com

Nick Stephenson www.blog.yourfirst10kreaders.com/

Look on their sites and you will find free ebooks, resources and courses – all valuable stuff if somewhat of a time sucker, but time well spent.