Writing Versus Marketing
If you want people to buy your work, you need to let them know about it.
And you have to balance that with how successful marketing can seem a
bit vulgar sometimes.
Like the ads on Cable or YouTube or TV - we don't like them but we know that deep down, entertainment
wouldn't exist without ads. It couldn't. Nor could magazines or
newspapers - or, more especially, the Internet.
(Sorry to burst your bubble on this but if you think the Net is in any
way free, you're kidding yourself. For a start, how much do you pay your IP
for access per month? And how exactly do Facebook, Google and Microsoft
survive as the big three - it ain't charity, Bub, I can tell you that
much.)
We'd like to think, as writers, we can be quiet, reserved, indeed
anonymous - and people will somehow hear about us and buy our books - by
word of mouth perhaps. By luck or by other people's promotional skills.
Alas those days are over - if they ever existed in the first place!
Publishers are just as concerned about marketing as they are with
publishing nowadays - (often the marketing department is bigger than the
acquisitions department) - and they need to know that writers have the
capacity and the willingness to go out there and promote their own work.
To understand that success is a competition of sorts - you just can't
hide your light under a bushel any more if you want to be taken
seriously by the public - or the writing industry.
Something to bear in mind when promoting yourself, perhaps.
Besides which, I've never understood why it's okay for Coca Cola and
Nike to get in your face and come across as big corporate bullies - but
somehow it's unseemly for writers to be anything less than demure.
Unless you're Jack Canfield or Bryce Courtney of course - both writers
that everyone loves now because they, like an increasing number of
successful writers, refuse to compromise over the need for self
publicity.
And anyway - the way I see it is that I'm not really promoting me - just
my writing - which is not really me, the person, but me, the writer -
two close but not entirely the same individuals - does that make sense?
I'm shy as a person, afraid of criticism and easily hurt but when I put
writing proposals together or movie treatments or anything I use to
'sell' my writing - I know I can seem super confident to the point of
being almost 'brash'. But that's not really me - it just helps my
career. A lot.
I try to teach this aspect of writing to others - because I know it can
help writers get around this problem of having to seem self confident,
worldly and wise in the ever more competitive marketplace that writing
has become - when all you really want to do is sit at home and write.
I think Robyn and I show that this can work. You can be both.
Like all those (apparently) insecure Hollywood actors who look good in
the media but secretly crave solitude and only do all the media stuff
because it's what enables them to do what they love.
It goes with the territory. Even as a writer.
To ignore the need to publicize yourself is to cut off your nose to
spite your face I think. In order to make money, you need to get
yourself - or at least your writing - out there, or you simply won't be
able to afford to keep doing it!
It's a very modern dilemma.
Anyway, again I apologize for my apparent brashness sometimes - I'm
perhaps really only trying to set a good example for you, my writer
friend.
Thanks for letting me speak to you.
Keep Writing!
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