I recently read an article for authors by Skye Warren, about Marketing…and the latest, newest ways of finding readers. I liked her approach to the subject, but I LOVED her attitude about writers. To sum it up, it’s all about the negative voids that author forums and writers can fall in to… It’s easy to allow yourself to wallow in life’s’ injustices. It’s even easier to lose focus, of your purpose as an author, and to waste precious time chatting or arguing on FB forums on the lack of reviews, scammers, woes of ‘running the business side of publishing.’
What many forget is being a self-published author is running your own business. All aspects of your business require focus, organization, support staff, excellent product, a marketplace and most important of all, a great attitude! All the motivational gurus that one listens to while working in sales or management of any kind, apply to authors and their business as well. We cannot afford to be mediocre in product or production. We need to learn it all and work to build to build our business–find our readers.
Ms. Warren put it very well:
The Point of it All:
It’s remembering that marketing, finding new readers for your books, is the reason why you hit publish in the first place. You don’t need to publish to write books. You can do that in a room by yourself, never reaching a single reader. There is a reader out there who needs your book. The hope of it, the distraction of it, the sexual awakening of it. Whatever you make readers feel this person needs it, and the only way they can is if you put it in front of them.
That’s the point of marketing.
If you are an author or entrepreneur, there will always be things about your business that you’d rather have done by someone else. Yes, I would prefer to spend all my time writing. But in any small business, you must do it all while you are building your reader base, your audience. Then one day, you will be able to share those aspects of your business with assistants. Until that day, we learn from the pros, those who have made it and love to freely share their experience. Authors like Skye Warren–thank you!
http://mailchi.mp/skyewarren/the-point-of-it-all?e=369b2d7bad
Lynda Filler 