Market YOU Before Your Book: A Lesson in Passive Marketing

Savvy Writer Article #1201 by DENISE MILLER HOLMES

BAD NEWS. You’ve been told  publishing houses don’t market books anymore, they expect the author to do it.  A feeling of being overwhelmed envelops you as you ponder the new career you must add on to your writing–marketing. Typically, you handle this by learning how to market your books and your books alone. But a new wisdom is here. Writers need to market themselves before they ever market their books.

This is problematic for you. As a typical writer, you have a terrible time getting out there and letting people see you. What you want is to push your book in front of your face and say, “Don’t look at me. See this fabulous book and buy it. It wrote itself.”

But, the biggest authors get their names out there FIRST, before they ever have a book.

Passive Marketing is about doing things that get your name (and later, your products) out there in the public eye without overtly asking for the sale. It includes things such as distributing business cards (yes, a writer should have a business card); speaking to organizations; filling out profiles for Yahoo, Google, Blogger, and any place that asks; a professional head shot to put on your blog, your business cards, and your profiles; writing a blog; and actively presenting yourself on Facebook and Twitter, and, if you ghostwrite or speak–LinkedIn.

Please don’t think these things are a waste of time. They are very powerful. But, they are only the first step. You HAVE to get your name and presence out there in the public eye, or any active marketing you do later will fall flat. Of all the things listed above, I think speaking is the most powerful.

Overcoming your resistance to being SEEN is probably the hardest obstacle for you the writer to conquer. You may go through tough denial. You may think that you will be the one who writes the book that becomes the bestseller the minute it hits the shelves. It won’t happen!

But, you can choose to conquer your fear of being out there. When you do, the world will open to you.

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If you like this article, you may also like The Power of the Verbal Business Card, Part I because a VBC is a vital part of Passive Marketing.

This article is similar to one published in Denise Miller Holmes author blog  Writing Adventures– Passive Marketing Lesson for January 17th Writers’ Guild.