The Importance of Consistent Promotion

The Importance of Consistent Promotion
By Darrel Nelson and Rebeca Seitz

I was lamenting to my publicist, Rebeca Seitz of Glass Road Media and Management, the other day about the challenges of getting myself as an author known. I live in a small town in Alberta, Canada, and I still have friends and neighbors come up to me and say, “You’ve had a novel published? I didn’t know.” And that’s in my small hometown! What about people in my county, province/state, country, and continent? What about people in the world in general?
How do we as authors get the word out there about our books? Are the majority of us condemned to labor in relative obscurity?
Rebeca wrote this encouraging response that I would like to pass along. I hope it helps. She said:

Wailing raises the hair at the nape of your neck. Long, low moans produce gooseflesh along your arms. Gnashing of teeth. Pounding of keyboards. Breaking of pencils.
    Yep, it’s tough to be a writer these days.
    It’s also glorious to be a writer these days!
    As the owner of an all-service firm catering to writers of story-driven products, I hear a lot of worrying and fretting from authors. How will they break out from obscurity? With millions of books on the shelves – and more being added all the time – how will anyone know any one, specific book exists?
    Some have tried an initiative here or there. A blog tour. A media campaign. A snazzy new website. Something with Facebook. A radio blitz. They see a blip up in sales for a few days, then back to flatline. Did anything make a difference? Is there a way to truly catch the attention of the market and hold it?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    There is a magic bullet. A mystery known by many but practiced only by a select few authors. A piece of wisdom that, when applied, breeds contentment and – more often than not – increased sales.
    No, you do not have to call an 800 number or send me four easy payments of $19.99 to learn it. I’ll share it right now, right here, on Darrel’s blog. Ready?
    Consistent production and promotion.
    Seems too simple, doesn’t it? Way, way too easy. Just keep doing the same thing? Keep plugging away? Where’s the gusto in that? The glory? The triumph of achieving the summit?
    I’ve been in the publishing and entertainment industries a long time. Launched more authors than you can shake a stick at (it’s a Southernism, stay with me). The majority of those are now bestsellers and/or award winners.
    Please go back and read the last three words of the first sentence in the paragraph above.
    Write them down.
    Tape them to your keyboard/desk/screen.
    Those three words are why the majority of them are bestsellers and/or award winners. They stuck with it for a long time. With each book’s release, they did a bit more promotion, a tad more research for the story, a little better writing. The work of each previous title built upon itself.
    I tell authors often, “Do not determine success or failure after book one. Do not assess whether you should keep doing this when book one hits the shelf. Don’t decide if you really can secure a fan base a year after book one has been on the shelf. Don’t use book two for assessment, either. By book three’s release, you might, possibly, maybe, perhaps have enough information to decide what works and what doesn’t with regard to promoting your specific genre and writing style. Do those things for the next two books, while remaining open to new initiatives as well. By book five, you know if you should keep doing this.”
    Consistent production.
    It’s not sexy.
    Not flashy.
    Won’t make you feel all famous and special.
    But it will get the job done.
    Each book’s promotion builds on the last one. With the release of Title One, you begin to make a name for yourself by visiting book clubs, calling/visiting libraries, and posting on Facebook about the process of being published (and pestering your friends and family to death so they know you’re serious about this). With the release of Title Two, you have a bigger audience to whom you can speak. Friends of those pestered friends and family members have responded to Title One, so you let them know – along with the audience from Title One’s promo campaign – about the release of Title Two. Title Three benefits from the larger audience built by Title Two. And so on.
    By Title Five, you have a basic, solid fan base that no longer needs persuaded to buy your titles. They simply need to be informed when a new title releases. They’ll buy it if they know it exists. Now, they need to be persuaded to tell others.
    The thing a bestselling author has that a first-time author does not: a large audience who likes his/her stories and does not need to be persuaded to buy new ones or tell other people about the stories.  
    So, dear early authors reading this post, take heart. You can do this. Don’t hang everything on book one or year one. Let the pressure roll off your back. Being a successful author requires long-term approach, commitment, and perspective.
    Keep producing and promoting consistently.
    You’ll see results in the end.

Rebeca Seitz is President of Glass Road Media and Management, which provides promotion, production, and management services to storytellers. Learn more at http://GlassRoadMM.com.

The Question of "Why . . ."

Thirteen years ago when I set my sights on becoming a published author I had a vision in my head of what it might be like. Without going into the painful details, I was wrong on almost every account.

Now, five books later I find myself still working my day job, juggling writing and work around family, and trying in vain to keep up with all the social media outlets. I'm writing one book while editing another while gearing up to promote and market yet another. My time management skills are being put to the test and at times I fail miserably. I fret and worry about each book, whether it will be well-received or not. I lose sleep. I second-guess myself. I struggle with writer's block and lack of inspiration.

This isn't the way it was supposed to be. This writing life has turned out to be too much like work.

So I think about why I keep doing it, why I keep writing. My reasons have to go further than just wanting to honor the rest of my contract. There must be a deeper purpose. To find it I really don't have to look far within myself and the answer is more complicated than you may think.

There are several reasons:
1) I continue because it gives me something to do. I'm not a hobby kind of guy. I can't see myself spending Saturday afternoons on a golf course. And I'm not so much into watching sports on TV. Writing gives me a worthwhile activity to channel my energy into.
2) I continue because the opportunity is there. Not everyone gets this chance to be published so there must be a reason God allowed me to be. I don't want to waste it.
3) I continue because I still have stories to tell. Not my stories, though they come from within me, but the stories of others, so many just like the people I meet on a daily basis.
4) I continue because I believe God wants me to. Whether I grow tired of it at times or not, whether I question my ability or not, whether I want to or not, doesn't really matter. God has put this task before me and I want to complete it. I don't want to let Him down. And, for me, that's enough motivation to press on.

So what keeps you going? Not just with writing but with anything. Where do find your motivation? Why do you press on in the face of discouragement or failure or hardship? Why do you feel a burning need to do more than zone out in front of a TV?

Pushing Through

Do you ever get tired of writing?

Yes, I've been asked that, and it's actually a very thoughtful question. Most people think writers write because they can't not write. That's what we writers like to say. It's part of who we are, what makes us tick. It's our passion, our glory, our holy calling. We can't imagine not pouring our souls out onto paper. We can't accept a life without creating, without storytelling. We write because it's what we know, what we feel, what makes us complete.

Okay, some of that's true, yes, the rest, honestly, is a bit dramatic.

Writing is an art and like any art it comes from somewhere deep inside the artist--from the soul or heart or maybe just the right side of the brain. It's what we are, not just what we do. But that being said, it is work as well and like any work it can get tiresome. When the juices are moving and words are flowing, there's nothing I'd rather be doing than writing. But when things jam up and the gears grind to a clunky halt, man, it's tough to get motivated.

True confession time: Sometimes I loathe writing. Sometimes I hit the alarm at 4:40 a.m. and all I want to do is roll over and go back to sleep. I don't want to think about writing, don't want to wrestle with the story, don't want to look at the computer monitor. In fact, at those times I'd be perfectly happy if I never wrote another word in my life.

But I push through. I sit my butt in the chair and turn the computer on. I force myself to write, to form sentences, to create characters and settings and conflict. Like one of those old hand-crank engines, I manually get those gears turning.

And you know what? Once I get going it happens. The right side of my noodle wakes up and starts doing what it does best. The characters find life again.

And that's where life and writing intersect, isn't it? Sometimes we don't feel like going to work, we don't feel like staying married to our spouse or spending time with our kids or talking to the neighbor. Our will rebels against what our soul demands. But if we persevere, if we force those gears to move and connect and push us forward, then eventually we find our inspiration again and the spark ignites a flame which burns into an inferno.

And we are alive again.

So how about you? Have you ever felt like giving up on something only to push through and find new inspiration, new motivation, new life?