Only two months ago, the whole notion of indie author book marketing was brand new to me. I really had no idea what I was getting into. From the beginning, I knew I had a lot to learn. I have some interest in digital marketing and my current 9-to-5 is in that world, but indie author book marketing was an entirely new beast.
My education began with podcasts. But—fair warning—while there are plenty of excellent podcasts out there, there are quite a good number of not-so-good podcasts, and a lot of these podcasters claim they are indie author book marketing experts. I’d recommend starting with the big guns like Joanna Penn and Mark Dawson. They provide excellent tips and best practices and will often interview reputable guests that may lead you to other great (and free) resources.
There are also a lot of good indie author book marketing audiobooks out there as well. I used my Audible credit to download another book on publishing. It’s called Write, Publish, Repeat and it’s by the guys that do the Self Publishing Podcast. I’m only through the intros at this point. They introduced the authors, then they’re sort of talking about who might benefit from reading/listening to this book. It basically comes down to one thing, which is treating writing like a business. I’m sure many have said this, but I wish I had that mindset ten years ago. The writing needs to be good and compelling, but once the writing is done, the work needs to be marketed and sold like a business would market and sell a product. If authors don’t have any interest in that, then they will fail. I believe the same applies to television writing. The work needs to be good, but it’s archaic thinking to believe that someone else, like a manager or an agent, is going to market and sell your work.
I was hoping to have my paperback files uploaded to IngramSpark and Amazon yesterday. Pintado said he would get me the high-resolution PDF as soon as possible. He was very responsive on Sunday, so I thought I’d have the files by mid-day. But he never got back to me after I messaged him saying that everything looked good. I even mentioned that I wanted to start the process of getting the dust jacket designed. I figure that would have motivated him. Hopefully, I will have all of the cover files today. Things can happen quickly. It’s having patience until the things happen that can be challenging.
The girls were driving back from Reno all day yesterday. As of this morning, B is congested and still feeling crumby and L started feeling bad, but there are no fevers. They’re heading to school today, but it wouldn’t surprise me to get a phone call around 9:30 or 10:00 saying that one of them took a turn for the worst. Hopefully, they can make it through the day. It’s an early out today. I am scheduled to be in Long Beach for a meeting. The meeting shouldn’t take that long because there is no existing website and the owner seems pretty chill, saying that he doesn’t want too much extra business in the web analysis. He restores classic cars. I’ve had a couple of clients like this, and they don’t like to spend too much time talking about the website. They just want us to go off and make them a website that works.
My meeting last night was excruciatingly long. I met with therapists. One was a relationship counselor and the other specialized in individualized anger management. They liked to talk but were tough to crack. There was a lot of nuance to what they do that I needed to boil down so the content writers can optimize those subpages. Some of it was interesting. The main guy treated couples with the philosophy that all relationships are worth saving unless there is abuse. The couple needs to share that mindset. I wondered about my situation. Would things have been different had we spent more money on a therapist? We didn’t have a lot, so it would have been difficult financially. He stated that some couples mortgaged their house to afford treatment. I wondered about our therapist. Was she any good? Should we have tried someone new? Ug, this is all past thinking. I got sucked in again. But clearly I am still dealing with these issues.
I spent some time working on The Swedish Fish yesterday morning. That’s the best time to work on that. I’m at my peak in the mornings. I’m going to try and do the same thing this morning. It doesn’t take that long to write 500 words in a peak writing state. That’s all I want to achieve at this point. 500 words a day. At that rate, it should take me around two months to complete the first draft of a Middle Grade novel.
