I’ll be presenting a chat at the Savvy Authors website on Nov. 30 at 9 p.m. Eastern with information from the case studies I’ve done over at Learn to Write Fiction.

When, Where and How – Stealing the Process and Habits of Other Writers for Yourself

A writer’s method of producing an entertaining story is unique to herself. Each writer has to figure out what works best for her to get words down on the page. Two writers might have similar habits or processes, but no two writers will write a book in exactly the same way. But just as athletes and artists copy the moves, techniques and habits of the masters in their field, writers can do the same with bestselling authors to speed up figuring out their own process.

In this workshop, Cheryl Corbin will share some of the habits and processes of well-known writers from her case studies on over 100 bestselling authors. Learn the tricks that these authors use and put them to work for you.

The chat is free to attend, so stop by for some fun discussion on how you write.

I love my Kindle. I use it all the time. I’m particularly fond of downloading free stories, novellas and books to try out new authors. Found some great ones that way and I’m buying up everything else they write.

But here’s the downside of the Kindle.

When I’m browsing the list of books I have to read on my Kindle, I can see the title and the author name.

That’s it.

No cover art. No book description. Nothing but the title to remind me what the book is about or even what genre it’s in.

Think that doesn’t sound so bad? Try out these examples and tell me what genre they’re in:

Making Waves – would you guess that this is a turn-of-the-century light-hearted romance? Yeah, me neither.

Marry Me – definitely a romance, but historical? regency? contemporary? futuristic?

Paid in Blood – fantasy? paranormal romance? thriller? murder mystery?

A Chance in Time – probably a time-travel story, but straight scifi or romance?

I never realized how much I rely on the cover art for clues as to the story until I got my Kindle. Without that visual clue from the cover art, I have to rely on just the title to help me pick something to read.

When I guess wrong – selecting a historical romance when I was wanting to read a contemporary, it’s jarring. It makes me not want to read the historical, even if it is a great story.

How descriptive is your title?

Does it tell me the genre?

Does it give me a hint of the conflict in the story?

Is it memorable enough that I’ll remember it when I’m scanning a list of 100 books?

If not, pick a different title. Don’t settle for the generic or boring title that could apply to a story in numerous genres. Make sure I’ll remember it when I’m looking for something to read.

In November 2010 I quit my day job and officially joined the ranks of the full-time writers.

Along with writing for my websites, I’m focusing on my fiction writing too. I’m working on a scifi romance novel right now and plan to release it as an ebook as soon as it’s done. As mentioned in The Writer’s Roadmap (get your copy in the sidebar), the time to start your marketing efforts is before you are published.

That means I need to re-activate my personal website as it will be my “writing” home. When I set up the site I thought I’d just use it for sharing personal insights into the world, not as a home base for my writing career, so it needs a lot of work.

The first thing needed? A thorough evaluation of the existing site.

Positives about the site:

I have one. It’s my own domain and it’s self-hosted, so I control the look, feel and content.

The site is clean-no ads or extraneous busyness to distract visitors.

Does my site highlight that I’m a writer?

Frankly, no, it didn’t. The “Hello, I’m Cheryl” paragraph on the front page talked about me as a person, but didn’t mention writing.

There were no posts about writing.

My tagline didn’t mention that I’m a writer.

How I fixed:

I modified my “Hello, I’m Cheryl” paragraph and took out all the cutesy but vague description and stated plainly that I’m a reader and a writer.

I started posting about being a writer. I plan to post a couple of times a week (maybe more) on how my writing is going.

I updated my tagline to specifically say that I’m a writer. I’m still playing with it, trying to get the right tag for me.

Does my site look professional (for me and my genre)?

Again, nope.

I write scifi, fantasy, and romance. My site didn’t reflect any of these in the colors or the design.

There was no picture of me anywhere on the site.

There was no About Me page that gives a longer bio.

How I fixed:

I updated the colors to a deep purple and a silvery gray. It feels suitably science fiction/fantasy now.

I added a small pic of me into the “Hello, I’m Cheryl” box.

I haven’t added the About Me page yet, but that’s next on my list.

Is the site current and relevant?

Once again, fail.

I hadn’t posted anything since October 2009. Two whole posts on the site!

There were no links to my social media profiles around the web.

How I fixed:

I’ve added a couple more posts and plan to update it a couple times a week.

I added a link to my Twitter account in the sidebar. I’ll add more as I re-activate my other social media profiles. (Don’t link to profiles that are dead. If you don’t use it, keep it off your site.)

This is a start, but of course, that’s not all that needs to be done.

Next steps on my marketing plan

Create an About Me page with an actual bio and a picture.

Add contact info to the site.

Post some writing examples or short stories on my site to give visitors an idea of my writing style.

Re-activate my other social media profiles and list them on the website.

Stay tuned for future updates!

Need help starting your own marketing plan? Get your copy of The Writer’s Roadmap over there in the sidebar.

As humans, we love social proof. Rarely do we want to be the first person to try something. We’d rather wait for someone else to take the plunge first and give us their opinion.

Do you go to the restaurant that has an empty parking lot at 6 p.m. or do you head next door to the one that has a lot of cars parked in front? Human logic says the restaurant with more customers must be the better one. This is social proof in action.

Social proof can affect smaller purchases like books. A book for sale on Amazon with no reviews is either brand new or awful, we think. Otherwise, wouldn’t somebody have posted a review already?

But a book with 5 or 10 reviews feels more legitimate. People have bought it and taken the time to post some comments about it. For the author’s sake, we hope the reviews are more positive than negative.

But how do you get reviews? Begging isn’t a pretty option. But bribery… now that’s a time-honored way to get something you want.

Big corporations use bribery all the time. They run big contests with fabulous prizes to get you in the door or to buy their product or to tell all your friends about their service. And we jump on board to participate because we might win that fabulous prize. Who doesn’t like winning free stuff?

As writers we can follow the example of the big companies and use a little bribery to get reviews for our book. Running a giveaway on your website is a great way to encourage readers to post a review for the chance to win a fabulous prize.

I’ve released a step-by-step guide to show you exactly how to do that – How to Get Reviews With a Giveaway.

And in honor of Cyber Monday, it’s nearly half price, but only until Wednesday afternoon.

If this sounds like something you could use, pick up a copy before the special ends and start bribing your readers today.

This is the most important element, because it’s the hardest to do. Once you’ve developed your marketing plan (goal, activities, and measurement) and begun to implement it, you need to continue working toward your goal until you reach your deadline.

It can be easy to give up on a marketing plan.

When Things Go Wrong

• You get busy and let the activities slide for a few days.
• You check your measurements and don’t see any progress toward your goal.
• You hear about a sexy new method of marketing and decide to try that instead.

Carrying on with your plan can seem downright boring and useless. Even a waste of your time.

Don’t give up on it.

You need to see it through to the end of your deadline and then evaluate how effective your efforts were in meeting your goal.

If you didn’t see the progress you were expecting, why not?

• Did you get bored and slack off on the plan?
• Did you follow the plan faithfully, but the numbers just didn’t materialize?
• Was your timing off? (You planned a huge giveaway on your blog for Thanksgiving, but all of the readers in the world were comatose from eating turkey and weren’t on the Internet.)
• Did real life get in the way of your efforts?

Figure out what went wrong and set a new goal to work toward.

When Things Go Right

Sometimes you faithfully do all of your marketing activities and are rewarded with phenomenal results. You aimed for 100 newsletter subscribers and got 257. Yay, you!

You need to evaluate your results the same as if things didn’t go well.

• What went well?
• What didn’t go so well?
• What activity got the best response?

Figure out what caused your success and do it again. Set a new, higher goal and continue the same activities.

Don’t get seduced by sexy new marketing ideas. If you’ve found something that works, repeat it. Over and over again.

If it stops working for you, you can pick something new to try. After your current goal deadline, of course.

The Most Important Rule in Marketing

Don’t give up.

Sometimes marketing is like planting magic beans.

You put them in the ground and overnight, a giant beanstalk appears with treasure at the top, just waiting for you to climb up and get it.

These are the stories of overnight success you hear in the publishing world. JK Rowling striking gold with the Harry Potter stories. Stephenie Meyer becoming wildly successful with the Twilight books.

Sometimes all it takes is for a book to be published and it finds an instant, raving readership.

More often marketing is like planting ordinary seeds. You plant them and tend them and in time, flowers start to bloom. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it does happen. It just takes more time.

Keep tending your seeds and planting new ones. In time, you’ll see the results you’re looking for.

And that’s the end of our marketing plan tutorial. Just four steps. Simple, right?

1. Set a goal.
2. Determine activities to meet the goal.
3. Decide how to measure your progress.
4. Execute your plan and don’t give up.

The third element in your easy book marketing plan is to measure your progress and evaluate how your efforts are doing.

Doing your marketing activities from the previous post (Element #2) is essential for meeting your goal. Tracking your progress is just as important. If a particular activity is not showing any results, you need to know about it, so that you can stop doing that activity and try something else. Why waste your time on something that isn’t working?

And if an activity is showing phenomenal results, you want to make sure you continue doing it and maybe do more of it.

Either way, you need to know how you’re doing.

Select a Measuring Stick

You start by asking yourself “How will I know”.

If your goal is to get more newsletter subscribers, how will you know if you have subscribers? You will know by noting the number of subscribers you have when you start your marketing activity and then noting how many you have when you’re done with the activity.

Most measurements will involve a starting number and an ending number. You record the starting number before you start implementing your plan. Then check it again when you’ve reached your deadline.

Most of the time the measurement you’ll use will be obvious.

Goal - Get more book reviews on Amazon
Measurement - Monitor # of reviews on Amazon before vs. after

Goal - Get more website visitors
Measurement - # of people who visited my website before vs. after

In these examples, the “how” of your marketing plan, the specific steps you’ll do, aren’t important. You can do a number of different marketing activities to meet this goal and you’ll track them all in the same way, by checking the numbers before and after.

Refining Your Goal

Sometimes you’ll find that your goal is a bit too fuzzy to measure.

If your goal is to get more readers, how will you know if you have more readers? We don’t currently have a way to know what every person in the world is reading or has read. (Though if anyone would know, it’s probably Amazon.) So how will you know if you’re succeeding at your goal or not?

If your goal turns out to be fuzzy and hard to measure, make it more specific by combining it with your planned activity.

Get more readers (goal) by releasing a free ebook on my website (specific activity) and tracking the number of downloads (measurement).

Get more readers (goal) by posting the first chapter of my novel on my website (specific activity) and tracking the number of visitors that page gets and the length of time they stay on the page (measurement).

By getting specific, you’ve come up with a way to measure the results you’ll get.

When Will You Measure?

This ties into the overall deadline you set for yourself when you picked your goal. If the deadline for your goal is a few months away, you probably want to check your progress each month.

If the deadline is sooner, say within one month, you may want to check weekly or even daily.

“Gain 500 new newsletter subscribers in three months.”

For this goal, I’d check the number of newsletter subscribers at the end of each month.

“Get 250 downloads of my Kindle book in one month.”

Since this goal is only a month long, I’d check my Kindle download numbers each week. (Probably more often because I’m impatient that way.)

Sometimes your goal is more dependent on other people’s efforts than your own. If your goal is to get more book reviews and you’ve decided to submit your book to book review blogs, there’s little you can do to force a blogger to post a review of your book.

Instead, you’ll need to measure the activities that you can control.

In the case of this goal, you’d measure the number of blogs that you’d submitted to. If you set your goal at submitting to five blogs this month, then you’d review each week to see if you’re on track with submitting to five blogs.

If your goal is to increase awareness that you’re an author and you’re participating in a social media site as your specific activity, then you’ll need to measure how often you’re on the site (daily, weekly) and how much quality time you spend there (as opposed to time spent playing Farmville on Facebook, for example).

That’s it for Measurement. Figure out how you’ll know if your plan is working and then track the numbers involved.

Next up is the last element of our plan. Stay tuned.

Today we’re talking about the second element in your marketing plan. (There’s only four total, so remember not to panic.) In the last post we figured out what you wanted to achieve. Today is a simple extension of that.

Element #2 – How are you going to achieve it?

This is the fun part of the marketing plan–figuring out how you’re going to achieve your goal. Here’s your opportunity to be creative.

Brainstorm a List of Activities

Let’s say that your goal is to make more people aware that your book exists. How could you do that? Start brainstorming a list of things you could do to meet your goal.

Some possible activities:

1. Contact book review bloggers and send them a copy of your book to review.




2. Enlist friends to post reviews of your book on review sites.




3. Host a book giveaway on your blog and give out copies of your book in exchange for mentions of your book around the Internet (on Twitter, Facebook, reviews on Amazon, etc.).




4. Donate copies of your book as prizes to giveaway contests.




5. Do a blog tour on book review sites and other writer sites.




6. Make your book available as a free download PDF on your website.




7. Print up postcards with your cover image and the backcopy blurb-include one in every bill payment you send.




8. Add your book title and tagline to your email signature with a link to your website.

These are all standard promotional things you could do, but you could get even more creative.

9. Start a twitter account for your main character and have him tweet about his daily “life”.




10. Set up a Facebook Page for your book and post related short stories, character profiles, etc. from your book.

Select Activities to Complete

Once you have a list, you want to evaluate it and choose the things you want to do. Keep in mind that you may not WANT to do all of them or that it may not be a good idea to do all of them. Why wouldn’t you want to do all of them? Note that on our list above there are some contradictory items.

If you choose to do #3 – “Host a book giveaway on your blog” or #4 – “Donate copies of your book as prizes”, you don’t want to do #6 – “Make your book available as a free download”, as having the book available for free dilutes its attractiveness as a prize for a giveaway. Can you imagine a reader being ecstatic they won something that everyone else got for free too? Exactly.

Another consideration is how well the activity will reach your target market. Your target market is readers in your specific genre.

Sending a book cover postcard with your electric bill payment spreads awareness of your book, but it isn’t guaranteed to reach readers in your genre. The person who opens the mail at your electric company may not even like reading.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t print up book cover postcards and send them out. It just means you should be aware that sending them to random people probably won’t give you as many results as something else on the list.

Make the Activities Specific

When you select the activities you are going to do, remember to make them as specific as possible. (This helps with the element we’ll be covering next.)

For #1 – “Contact book review bloggers and send them a copy of your book to review”, how many book review bloggers are you going to contact? 1, 5, 15?

For #3 – “Host a book giveaway on your blog and give out copies of your book in exchange for mentions of your book around the Internet”, how many copies of your book will you giveaway? How often? A one-time giveaway? A monthly giveaway?

For #5 – “Do a blog tour on book review sites and other writer sites.”, how long will your blog tour last? One week? One month?

Set a Deadline for Each

You also want to add a deadline to the activities and break them down into individual tasks as needed.

For #1, your task list might look like this:

1. Research book review blogs on Internet. Locate 5 that review your genre. (Will complete by Thursday this week)




2. Create list of blogs with contact info and note each reviewer’s criteria for accepting books to review. (complete by Saturday)




3. Craft individual emails/submission packages for the blog reviewers. (complete by following Wednesday)

How to Make This Element Successful

1. Be specific in what you want to achieve. Include details and numbers.




2. Set a deadline for each task/activity and mark it on your calendar.




3. Don’t try to do every activity at the same time. Pick one and complete it. Then do another. Doing multiple at the same time will just overwhelm you.




4. When in doubt about which to try, pick the activity that requires the least effort or time to implement. Knock it out quickly and then try another.




5. Consider your available time now and in the future when selecting an activity. While #7 – “Start a Twitter account for your main character” sounds fun, it will require daily upkeep. Do you have the available time and inclination to keep that account active every day? If not, pick something else to try.

That’s it for the second element of your marketing plan. Two down and two to go.

I was reading a post on IttyBiz that challenged readers to answer a very scary question. What do you actually do? Since I am not a scaredy-cat, I thought I’d try and give it a shot. Here goes.

What’s your game? What do you do?

I help writers figure out how to market their books on the Internet. Book marketing doesn’t have to be hair-pulling frustrating or mind-numbingly confusing. It can be easy and painless, so that writers can get back to writing quickly.

Why do you do it? Do you love it, or do you just have one of those creepy knacks?

I love information and figuring out how to do things. I also love great stories. Putting the two together, I get to search out ways that writers can promote their books on the Internet without a lot of hassle, so that we end up with more great stories in the world.

Who are your customers? What kind of people would need or want what you offer?

My ideal customer is a writer who has finished or is working on finishing their first book and doesn’t have a clue how to promote it or themself. I can help a writer create a marketing plan that works for their personality and genre.

I can also help writers who have a published book or two and need help figuring out how to get more readers and more sales.

If a writer’s published a bunch of books and is making sales, he or she probably doesn’t need me. Though I’m happy to talk to anyone that wants ideas for book promo.

What’s your marketing USP? Why should I buy from you instead of the other losers?

One of the writers in my writing group recently asked me how to change the theme on her website. She was ready for something less flowery. I sent her an email with instructions on how to find a new theme and install it. She replied back, “Thank you, Cheryl. I knew you’d make it easy.”

That’s what I do. I make it easy.

What’s next for you? What’s the big plan?

Next up is series of short reports, the Sprint series, that show writers how to do specific things to get a certain result. The first one is How to Get Reviews with a Giveaway. Stay tuned.

The last post covered why you need to market your own books. Today we’re going to start building your marketing plan.

A marketing plan doesn’t have to be scary. It needs just four elements to be successful. Yep, only four.

Element #1 – What do you want to achieve?

To start your marketing plan, you need to know what you want the outcome of your marketing to be. You need to know where you’re trying to get to. (Remember Albuquerque vs. Poughkeepsie).

When you know your destination you can select the best method for getting there. You don’t want to spend the money and time to fly from Des Moines to Iowa City when you can drive there in three hours. A car is a better choice for that journey. (Unless you like standing in security checkpoint lines and waiting in cramped seats for your plane to be given takeoff clearance. In that case, the sky is yours.)

From Des Moines to Seattle though… now you probably do want a plane unless you want to spend several long days driving (and let me tell you, western Nebraska is really flat and not that interesting to drive through).

So the marketing methods you choose will depend on what outcome you want for your marketing.

You’re probably thinking, “Duh, I want to sell more books, obviously.”

Yes, that is a worthy outcome for a writer. BUT (you knew there was one coming, right) if you’re a new writer, newly published or soon-to-be-published, you probably don’t want to start with this goal.

Why not?

Well, if you’re a new writer or newly published, you probably don’t have a lot of fans yet. So the pool of people that are predisposed to buy your book (current fans, good friends and your family) is not very large. That means you’re going to be approaching strangers with your marketing efforts.

How often do you buy something from a stranger that knocks on your door and launches into their sales pitch?

Yep, not often.

People don’t like to be “sold”.

They don’t like to be cold-called by strangers. They don’t like pushy sales messages.

What DO people like? Recommendations from friends, free samples, the soft sell, offers that fit their interests.

When you’re starting out in your marketing efforts, you want to build up a list of people who are interested in hearing from you first. Why? As a customer, I’m a lot more likely to listen to a sales message from someone I know and like than from a stranger.

I’m a lot more likely to respond to a sales message from a writer when I voluntarily visited their website or signed up for their mailing list, because I initiated the contacts and I decided how much access I want to allow the writer in my life. They didn’t push the message on me. I invited it. I allowed them to send it to me.

See where the control is? It’s in the reader’s hand. The best (and most) sales come from allowing the reader to set the level of engagement.

What does that mean for your marketing plan?

That means you need to focus less on sales and more on interactions and gaining permission from readers to talk to them about your books. Yeah, seems like a lot of work. Doesn’t have to be, though.

Try these sample marketing goals:

Get more readers

Note that this isn’t “get more sales”. More readers can mean that you’re giving out free copies of your novel. It could mean that you’re posting short stories on your website. It could mean you’re posting the first chapter of your novel online.

It does mean that you’re doing things with the intent of getting more people to read your work. That doesn’t have to involve an exchange of money for the reader.

Why would you give away your books or stories for free? To get fans. To hook readers into liking your stuff and then buying it in the future.

Increase awareness of your book

This one might seem like a funny goal, but remember last week’s discussion. If I don’t know that a product exists, I won’t go looking for it and I won’t buy it. Especially since the world is flooded with books to buy, both in print and electronically. I’d rather have a reader go looking specifically for my book, rather than just browsing through everything that’s available and hope they stumble across mine.

You need lots of readers to know that your book is out there. Not everyone is going to love your book. But if a lot of people know that it exists there’s a much better chance that some of those people will like it. If 1% of a given group of people will like your book, how large do you want the entire group to be? 5% of 100 people means 5 people. 5% of 10,000 people means 500 people. I’d rather have 500 people liking my book, so I’d shoot for the 10,000 to be aware of it first.

The more people who know your book exists, the better.

Get more website visitors

People visit websites for information. They want to know something. When readers visit a writer’s website, they usually want to know something about the writer or about his/her books. Maybe they want to what kind of books the writer writers. Maybe they want to read some writing samples. Maybe they want a complete book list. Maybe they want to know where to purchase the books.

Visitors to your website are potential readers and book buyers. Just like the “Awareness” goal, the more visitors to your website, the better chance you have that some of those people will be interested in your book.

Get more friends/followers

This is a social media marketing goal. “Friends” is a Facebook term. “Followers” is a Twitter term. If someone chooses to interact with you on a social media site, i.e. Friend you on Facebook, they’re interested in you on some level.

Essentially, this goal is very similar to the “increase awareness” and “increase website visitors” goals. You’re trying to increase the number of people that are aware of your book.

Not every reader is on every social media site. Some prefer Twitter, some prefer Facebook, some MySpace or other sites. You’ll want to spend time on several sites working to increase the size of your friends/followers on each one.

Get more newsletter subscribers

If a reader gives you their email address in exchange for your monthly newsletter, they’ve given you a deeper level of permission to “sell” to them. Your newsletter subscribers expect you to talk about your book, your upcoming releases, and your book signings or other events. It doesn’t guarantee they’ll buy your book, but it’s a step closer on the cold sell-warm sell continuum.

Make the goal specific and realistic

When you’ve picked a goal to start with, you need to make it as specific as possible by putting numbers and a deadline to it.

Let’s say you’ve decided on a marketing goal of increasing website visitors. How many visitors do you want? (Okay, yes, we all want millions, but you have to start somewhere and a million isn’t the place to start.)

How many website visitors do you have now? Figure out the current amount of traffic that your website gets. 500 visitors a month? 5?

When you know your current numbers, pick a target to shoot for. If you currently get 5 visitors a month, maybe you want to pick a target of 1000 visitors in a month.

So your goal is now “Increase website visitors to 1000 each month.”

Next you need a deadline. If you’re starting with 5 visitors a month in August, you probably aren’t going to hit 1000 visitors in September. Pick a deadline that seems reasonable.

“Increase website visitors to 1000 a month by the end of November.”
“Gain 500 new newsletter subscribers in three months.”
“Get 250 downloads of my Kindle book in one month.”

The more specific and realistic your goal is, the better chance you have of achieving it.

One thing to note: Your marketing goal doesn’t have to be grandiose and all-encompassing, like “Increase website visitors to 10,000 per month, gain 1000 newsletter subscribers and increase Facebook Friends to 2000 this month.”

Really big marketing plans are scary and intimidating. This is Book Marketing Made Easy, not Book Marketing to Intimidate You and Make You Fail. If your goal is big and scary, you’re setting yourself up to fail.

Start small with one simple, short-term goal. Something that you can achieve in the next month. Like putting a short story on your website in PDF form and then trying to get 25 people to download it this month. Or increasing your website visitors by 100. Something easy to achieve.

Then next month, after you’ve had one success, set a new goal, a little bigger than the last one.

That’s the first element – Figure out what you want to achieve and make it specific.

Next up: Step #2 – Figuring out how to make your goal happen

The Great Widget Marketing Story

Once upon a time (I love stories that start this way), John Doe invented the greatest widget in the world. He called it The Great Widget. (John was an inventor, but not that creative.)

He worked with a distributor and got some widget chain stores to carry The Great Widget along with all of the other widgets they had for sale. Because there were so many other widgets for sale, The Great Widget didn’t really stand out, but that was okay for John. It was available for sale in many places and that was enough.

John mentioned The Great Widget to his family and a few friends of course, as he was justifiably proud of his accomplishment. But he didn’t concern himself with any other promotions like TV ads, YouTube videos, magazine ads, blog reviews or mentions on the social networks. After all, this was The Great Widget and it was available for sale in many stores. Because it was so great, people would find it on their own.

Enter the Customer Looking for a Widget

Customer Bob Smith was in need of a good widget. He went to his nearest widget store to browse for a widget. They carried so many different sizes and shapes of widgets that he had a hard time deciding what to get. None of the widgets that he looked at seemed to be exactly what he was looking for.

The Great Widget was the widget that Bob really needed, but amid the sea of other widgets, he never found it. He hadn’t seen any ads for it, or heard about it from any of his friends (as they weren’t friends and family of John, The Great Widget inventor). He hadn’t seen it mentioned on any blogs or any social networks. So even though Bob really needed The Great Widget and was ready to buy it, he couldn’t because he didn’t even know it existed.

Exit the Customer Without The Great Widget

After a time of lackluster sales, the widget chain stores stopped carrying The Great Widget. John was outraged. This was The Great Widget. It should have sold millions. Instead, it fell off the shelves and drifted into obscurity. John railed about the unfairness of the widget system and went back to designing gadgets instead.

Don’t Be John, The Ex-Widget Inventor

Sadly, many writers act just like John with their books. They write it, sell it to a publisher or self-publish it, and then sit back waiting for the sales to roll in, figuring that readers will find the book on their own once it’s available in stores and on the Kindle.

A few readers might stumble across the book and buy it. But the greater reality is that the book will sell very few copies unless someone advertises it to the reading public. That someone can be either the publisher or the writer or both.

If you’re lucky, the publisher will put a large marketing push behind your book. If you’re like most writers, you’ll be lucky to get any marketing budget at all from the publisher.

That means it is up to you to promote your book. I know, I know… you just want to write them. You need to determine why you write. If your main desire is to just write books, not sell them or make a paying career as a writer, then stop reading. You don’t need to worry about marketing.

Enter The Career Writer

If you want a career as a writer though, you’ll need to do your own promotion of your books.

People can’t buy a product that they don’t know exists. Your job is to let readers know that your book exists.

A marketing plan is your map that guides you through the activities that will tell readers that your book exists.

Can you promote your book without a marketing plan? Sure you can. You can also drive from New York to Los Angeles without a map, but you’ll probably take quite a few wrong turns and waste a lot of time, money and gas along the way.

You’re a writer. You don’t have time or money to waste on random promotional activities. You need to focus on only the best-targeted promotional activities for your book, so you can spend the rest of your time writing your next book.

Your marketing plan coordinates your activities toward your desired outcome and keeps you moving toward your goal–more awareness of your book, more sales, and more fans.

Coming up next – Deciding what you want out of your marketing plan or how not to end up in Poughkeepsie when you wanted to drive to Albuquerque.

Making a career out of writing? Great! Subscribe to my feed, so I can help you with the pesky marketing aspects of your writing career.