The Magic Formula for Marketing Your Books

The most popular posts here at Someday Box are my deep dive into story structure called Your Story in 12 Sentences.

We love lists. We love step-by-step instructions. We love knowing exactly the right moment to do precisely the right thing so it all comes out right.

2 + 2 = 4, every single time.

Mix the right amounts of flour, sugar, egg, milk, and whatnot and put it in the oven at this temperature for that long, and it’s a cake, every single time. (Okay, maybe not every single time, but almost.)

Authors are people, and as people, we want checklists and step-by-step instructions, too.

Especially for marketing.

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Marketing, Promotion, and Publicity (Guest Post by Ed Teja)

A conversation with Ed Teja often turns educational. I wrote something about “marketing” and Ed responded very much like this:

There are numerous discussions, blogs, courses and (of course) books on things writers can do to sell their work—both better and at all. They are comprehensive, exhausting and often contradictory. Partly the problem is that we confuse the activities that make writers more visible and their books desirable purchases. So, after hearing various comments from writers online, I thought it appropriate to help clarify what are becoming muddy waters.

Writers are supposed to be wordsmiths, so let’s start with some definitions.

• Marketing activities are things we do to sell books.
• Promotional activities are things to help with discovery of a product (yes, even a book.)
• Publicity is work done to gain mind share…to ensure readers are aware of and think about the writer—the person.

We tend to blur these together, resulting in a great deal of confusion. They are quite different. Note that you can squish a bit of this or that from one category to another. I won’t quibble over specifics. The important thing is that an effective business plan must address all three aspects. Although they overlap, they do different things.

Knowing the difference

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6 Tools to Help You Find and Develop Your Blogging Voice

Replying to my newsletter signup welcome email, Rory asked about finding his blogging voice. My writing voice came so naturally to me that I had been writing for years before I met an aspiring writer who needed help finding their own.

To be sure we’re all talking about the same thing: “voice” is the unique way each of us makes word choices, uses syntax and punctuation and pacing, and blends and balances dialog and exposition.

While few of us will ever have the instantly identifiable voice of Raymond Chandler or Dr. Seuss, our fans should find something unique to recognize in our writing just as our loved ones recognize our voice, even through the heavily compressed medium of telephone voice services.

A few points about finding your voice:

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