Book marketing is an arcane, occult, complicated endeavor the defies my understanding. I “get” some parts of it: blogging, tweets, blog swaps, book/author events, etc. I do some of it. I need help with all of it. Therefore, I’m in the market to hire a new book marketer.

First, let’s get this out of the way: I like the publicist I worked with for 4-1/2 years and have no complaints about her service. She did everything she promised and more. I understand that no publicist or marketing expert can guarantee sales. She did grow my Twitter following from nonexistent to a few thousand. She did grow my Facebook outreach. Her efforts increased visits to my website. She helped with placement on blogs and other author-shared promotional services. Between COVID-19 and dismal book sales, I discontinued her service; however, I have and continue to refer her to other authors whom she might benefit.

So, what am I looking for? Here’s a quick list:

• Marketing strategy. I need someone to help me analyze the market and audience and figure out the best venues for reaching them and how to reach them. Show me what needs to be done and when and probably how.
• Social media outreach. Put simply, I am not particularly versant with social media, nor do I want to be. I need someone who will take this over for me.
• Advertising expertise. I need someone who understands and and knows how to create and execute effective advertisement campaigns on Amazon, Facebook, and elsewhere. This will include helping with determining the best keywords for searches, how to get the “extra” categories on Amazon, and so forth.
• Connections. This requires a marketing expert who knows the right people in publishing and in the media, someone who can help place my book with bloggers–and maybe even celebrities–and persuade them to promote my book. Simply blasting a tweet or other message to a disinterested distribution list doesn’t do any good and may do harm, as such tactics come across as “spammy.” People who don’t read the genre in which I write don’t want to receive book promotions for my books. A good marketer knows this and has the right connections.
• Website expertise. This effort needs someone who will review my website, analyze it, and help me with revamping it to be more effective. That may or may not require someone who can get into the back-end programming and manipulate the code.
• Long-term. I need someone who isn’t thinking of a finite book marketing promotion to last a few weeks or just a few months. I’m looking to establish an ongoing, long-term relationship, because I realize that marketing is not a quick or one-time effort: it’s a long haul that requires sustained effort.
• Affordable rates. Yes, that’s where the rubber meets the road. The definition of “affordable” varies for everyone and I’m certainly not looking for the lowest-bid provider. I don’t want a low-bid provider, but a professional who knows his or her stuff and doesn’t charge A-list movie star rates that exceed the value of the service provided … and this is a valuable service crucial for any author. After all, if the goal is to generate book sales for which royalties will at least help me break even on marketing fees, then any marketer who succeeds in that will have my continued business.

I’ll continue to supplement the marketer’s work as I’ve always done. I’ll seek out podcast interviews and schedule them. I’ll seek out in-person author/book events, register, and participate in them. I’ll seek out blog tours that work with my genre. I’ll continue posting in this blog.

If you’re a book marketer or know of one who can help with the above tasks, please contact me at henhousepublishing@gmail.com. 

Marketing is not my forte. That’s an understatement.

Like every author, I want my books to sell. Every single one of us dreams of hitting bestseller lists. Repeatedly. The reality is that most won’t and I certainly haven’t.

The reality of indie publishing is that an author uploads his or her book along to compete with thousands of other books uploaded that same day, more than a million uploaded in the previous 12 months, and tens of millions available earlier than that. The ocean gets wider and deeper, so the indie author’s one book is but an insignificant drop.

That’s where marketing comes in. It makes a book and/or author stand out from the overwhelming competition. Marketing strategy analyzes the audience and the market and finds them, then employs tactics to get their attention and build demand for that product–the book. Demand then converts, one hopes, to sales.

My basic understanding of marketing doesn’t translate into skill or inclination. I salute those who find the challenge exciting and who excel at it. Me? I’d rather muck stalls than devote my time and energy to marketing.

Because I know my limits and understand the hard necessity of earning a living, I hired a social media marketing consultant in 2016. I have no complaints about the service I received. She did everything–and more–that she promised. Unfortunately, book sales did not increase. They plummeted. My goal of generating sufficient book sales to pay for her service was never realized. When business took a steep downturn in 2020 (thanks, Covid-19), I could no longer afford that service.

Since then, I have maintained some of the marketing effort, such as blogging. I generally post a blog once a week here on this website and on LinkedIn. I also post every weekday on LinkedIn. I’ve used virtual book tour services, blog swaps, Facebook advertising, Amazon sales promotions, Amazon advertising, and other venues to build awareness and, I hoped, demand for my books.

Nothing seems to work.

Is it the sub-genre? Perhaps my writing stinks. Or maybe we’ve not done a good enough job at targeting the right audience and engaging in the right marketing tactics.

I truly believe that my work is good. After all, I’ve built a freelance career on it. People hire me to write (and edit) for them. The few reviews that my books have acquired are generally positive. To add insult to injury, I’ve read bestselling books by bestselling authors that were rife with copy editing errors and poorly written. These books have dozens, if not hundreds, of reviews, most of the glowing.

What am I doing wrong?

I need a marketing guru to take me on, to handle the marketing for me. I not only want to be a published author, I want to be a bestselling author. I want to actually make money from book sales. Yes, when it comes to authorial dreams, I want it all.

Who’s game for that challenge?

Every so often I expound upon the expectations, reasonable and unreasonable, the clients impose upon the writers and editors they hire. So, here we go again.

1. Ghostwriters are not photocopiers. Clients often require writers to adhere to style and content guidelines to ensure the content written for them meets certain minimum standards, fits the corporate message, and supports the corporate image. That’s entirely reasonable. Client who insists that a ghostwriter match and/or mimic his style is not. A ghostwriter may be able to replicate that client’s voice for a short length of content, but sustained replication is neither feasible nor practical.
2. Editors cannot guarantee 100% error-free work. Editors are human and humans make mistakes and miss things. Also–and not to mention–grammar rules in English are malleable: there are exceptions to every rule and sometimes those exceptions work best. What a competent editor does is improve the content.
3. Well-written, custom content is not cheap. Sure, you can use artificial intelligence to generate huge quantities of content, but that content will lack both style and nuance. It’s flat. Consider what’s entailed when you have someone write for you. If it’s nonfiction, the topic may require hours of research before the writing begins. The writer’s time spent in research is valuable. A professional writer who adheres to standard of professionalism will not deliver a rough draft, but drafts the content and self-edits it at least once, ensuring the work is polished before submitting it. A professional writer also revises at the client’s request, although limiting rounds of revision is entirely reasonable. When it comes to writing, you pretty much get what you pay for.
4. Editing is not a one-and-done process. Especially pertinent when authors submit what are essentially first drafts to editors, editors deliver their best value when they don’t spend their valuable time and effort on correcting egregious errors. An editor who focuses on correcting grammar, spelling, and punctuation cannot focus on plot holes, discrepancies, inconsistencies, redundancies, tautologies, and the like. An editor who focuses on what a writer should catch during the self-editing phase(s) cannot focus on tightening the prose and making it sing. This kind of multi-level editing requires multiple rounds of editing.
5. Writing takes time. So does editing. That 100,000-word manuscript will take more than a week to edit and certainly more than a week to write. Writing and editing speeds vary, but good average to use in calculating how long your project will take are: a) 3 hours and 20 minutes to write 1,000 words; b) 1 hour to edit 1,500 words. Variances depends upon the writer or editor’s natural speed, the detail necessary, the writer/editor’s familiarity with the topic, the state of the manuscript or level of detail in the background information guiding the ghostwriter. When seeking to hire a writer or editor, use the above averages to consider an hourly wage: what would you expect a professional to earn per hour? Would you accept that hourly wage?
6. Writers and editors are small business owners. Writers and editors deserve to be paid promptly and in full for the services they provide. Often working a sole proprietors, freelance writers and editors must operate their small businesses as businesses, which means they must ensure cash flow to pay their expenses. A client’s lack of cash does not relieve the client of any obligation to pay for services rendered.
7. Unpaid samples exploit writers and editors. There’s a strong market for stealing a writer’s hard work by demanding unpaid writing samples. Many professional writers understand this and the savvy ones refuse to accept such trials. That’s why they maintain portfolios of work that provide potential clients with access to past projects to showcase their capabilities. Editors may agree to provide sample edits of a limited quantity of words or pages to demonstrate the service they provide, as it’s more difficult to show “before” and “after” editing projects without client approval. Clients, for good reason, don’t want their potential customers reading their unpolished, unedited content.

Clients with unreasonable expectations will always be disappointed in the writers and editors they hire. For best results and a continued good working relationship, respect is necessary.