Forget everything you’ve been told about publishing and concentrate on common sense business practices
Years ago I was a promoter for a handful of local sporting events and I found my experience with book marketing was extremely helpful in selling race entries.
If you’ve never tried to sell anything but your own books, you might not realize how good a salesperson you’ve become. Books are the hardest thing in the world to sell, and when you spend a decade banging your head against the wall trying to come up with ways to create a demand, you pick up skills even if you don’t make sales.
When I moved from selling books to selling race entries, it was like eating cake. These were products that people already knew they wanted!
I became so busy that there wasn’t any time for impostor syndrome. I also found that my experience as an event promoter opened my eyes to a lot of issues many writers never even consider. When I moved back from race events to books, I was able to apply those lessons and achieve a much higher success rate.
Like every writer, I’ve dabbled in social media marketing. The only thing that’s taught me is to never type my credit card number into any online portal… ever.
My personal experience is that paying for social media marketing does not work. However, it is possible to leverage social media as a marketing tool for free.
This came up during a conversation with my race director during my days as a promoter. During a meeting, I said, “Everybody walks around with their noses in their phones, but they don’t actually read anything.”
He looked up from his phone and said, “Huh?”
Now that I had his attention, I pounced.
“I want to go old school. I want to create a physical mailer. I want to send people something that they can touch! The advantage is that when people pick up their mail, they have to put down their phones!”