Today, as I head into a new week, I am trying to finalize the new edit of my novelette, Regret. When I first released this little book, my first actual published (self-published) work of fiction after 30 years of writing fiction, I published it without fanfare. In some ways, I wanted zero attention on it. For one, I was suffering from severe imposter syndrome. For two, I was not satisfied with how quickly I wrote it, and I kind of hid behind the excuse that I did this out of a promise to myself and to the readers of my nonfiction book about how to write story, since I used it for illustrative examples.
I certainly did not announce its release on any social media, and only a handful of the family members in my house even knew about it. Obviously, I kept my name on the book and allowed people to accidentally stumble upon it if they decided to Google my name, though apparently I have not inspired enough curiosity in the people in my community to gain haphazard attention either. That was all fine with me. For a while, I considered delisting it, completely rewriting it, or burying it in a larger volume of stories.
As I explained to my last blog post, I decided to give the little book another shot at literary life, and rewrote most of it, barely leaving a single word of it untouched. Presently, I now feel like I am close to having a product that stands on its own as a work of fiction independent of the writing exercises that it originated from (soon available on Amazon on other platforms). It is the best version of itself and is only limited by my current growth as a writer. So I'm ready to put it out there and use some actual marketing strategies.
But one thing my co-publisher and I have agreed on from the very start is that we are artists, not marketers. That is perhaps, no, it is definitely our biggest weakness as authors. It does not take much research to discover on the Internet that even if you score a traditional publishing deal, a publisher is going to kind of hang you out to dry after the initial release. Most of your sales, in terms of longevity, are going to be the result of your own marketing efforts, or of your already built-in audience based on your current social media footprint. So I would be lying if I said this very blog post wasn't part of that marketing strategy to create awareness for my book and of myself as an author—though it feels both unnatural and manipulative, like a violation of the story's authenticity.
But I do know it's something I need to get over in order to actually make progress as a writer by profession. And I suppose blogging is at least a more natural and authentic aspect of marketing that has its own integrity.
My co-publisher and I have spent a lot of time both researching the marketing of self-published books and discussing it on podcasts, so it's not like I don't have any idea what I'm doing. But for every marketing strategy, there are more failures than successes, and I don't have the budget to spend a lot of money on Facebook or Amazon ads, though I think ads are an important part of marketing, because every one of us can say that we own or have purchased digital products or books simply based on ads we've seen on our phones, computers, or TV.
In short, despite my inhibitions, anxieties, fear, and perhaps even pride, I am going to be marketing this little self-published book in a very direct way to see exactly what comes of it and what works. What’s the worst that can happen?
