“Once you stop learning, you start dying.”
Albert Einstein
I recently got another heaping dose of humble pie about my writer’s education. After all the years I’ve spent learning to write and publish entertaining stories, I thought I would be further along the learning curve. But, as I’ve shifted some of my effort to marketing my books, I realized I have so much more to learn.
My latest ‘aha’ moment came from a promise to myself that I would start marketing my series after I had four books out (due to the reality of our streaming/I-don’t-want-to-wait culture). I believe I made the right choice not to start any earlier as I rewrote and republished the first three books in the series after making a breakthrough in my writing skills last year.
After republishing my books, I turned my thoughts to marketing. And that caused me to:
- Come to grips with my cover art (I’ll write more about that in my next post).
- I figured I need to get my books in libraries since my target audience is young adult readers (although I’ve written my books for a wide audience). So, I’ve started donating books to libraries. But after the first few visits, I realized I needed something to explain my books – so I developed a ‘sell sheet.’
- But, developing the sell sheet required me to create new artwork capabilities. So, I had to learn about some of Canva’s capabilities.
- In talking to the local librarian, they invited me to an author signing event, which meant I needed to 1) start ordering books to sell, 2) figure out how to do the accounting for in-person book sales, and 3) figure out how to accept credit card payments (apps like Venmo and Zelle don’t work because of data and tax issues).
- I also realized my website needs major revamping (update the look, add all my books, add ‘buy now’ buttons, and add my glossaries). All of this means I need to find someone to help me update my website because I don’t have the skills, and I have to choose what I should work on (especially writing, editing, and publishing).
- And these are just the first things I’ve started working on for marketing. I intend to expand my library donations, add advertising, and add the right type of book signing events.
- And….
Below is a picture of me at Machu Pichu – on my first book discovery trip. Although I don’t plan on including Machu Pichu in any of my books, the trip pushed me to broaden my horizons and incorporate my learnings into my books, and my journey through the Sacred Valley of Peru was one of the most eye-opening experiences of all my trips.
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