Authors, You’re Approaching Marketing Your Book All Wrong
Recently, I got clickbaited into reading an article recommending 10 ways for authors to market their books. Great! I thought, I have a book and I want people to read it!
With a sinking heart, I realised that this article was filled with well-intentioned advice built on a foundation of sand. It was glaringly obvious: the article’s author didn’t get it.
By “it”, I mean: how do you publicise something (in this case, a book) without irritating the everloving shit out of people?
Marketing, the way the uninitiated do it, is extremely annoying. It’s the equivalent of grabbing a megaphone, standing on a street corner, and bellowing, “I’VE GOT A BOOK OUT, WANNA BUY IT?”
Does bellowing work on you? Nah, it doesn’t work on me, either.
Here is the key thing to understand about marketing in today’s world: people are savvy, they’re cynical, they have a tough shell. They know when they’re being marketed to and they hate it.
This means that posting on social media 20 times in a row saying “here’s my book, here’s my book, here’s my book” is at best going to solicit a glazed expression and at worst going to solicit an unfollow.
Marketing people know this. I know this, because I’ve worked in marketing for 20 years.
Maybe “megaphone” marketing worked 30 years ago. Maybe. But the tides have changed and no one (smart) in the marketing industry is doing that anymore. They’re doing content marketing, which is basically the exact opposite of megaphone marketing.
What is content marketing?
Forgive the “I’ve just had a head injury” definition, but content marketing is using content to market your product or services – in this case, a book.
What is content, in this context? It could be a piece of writing (an article, a blog post, an ebook). It could be a video, podcast or webinar. It could be an array of gorgeous photos or graphics. It’s anything you’ve created and put out into the world with a view to informing, entertaining and delighting prospective readers.
“Inform, entertain, delight”? Hey, wait, you may be wondering, where’s the verb “sell” in that list?
Content marketing is selling without selling.
It’s you, an author-entrepreneur, virtuously giving away a piece of wonderful content for free. Maybe that little content-bird flies away and never returns. Or maybe that content-bird returns with a potential reader in tow.
Content marketing establishes you, the creator of the content, as someone with expertise. It establishes you as a likeable and interesting person. At the very least, it helps people to know you exist.
Yes, it’s true that content marketing does not always lead to an instant sell.
“Why bother, then?” you may ask. Because content marketing is a huge needle capable of piercing the shell of every tough, cynical, anti-marketing person in the world. It’s marketing that’s not marketing.
That’s the reason content marketing is now the dominant philosophy in marketing circles. It’s the reason it’s used by every company from Coca-Cola to your local café.
It’s the reason authors should be doing content marketing.
The best thing about content marketing, apart from the fact that it works, is that it’s much less annoying than megaphone marketing. You’ll be less annoyed. Your followers will be less annoyed.
You get to create something you’re proud of and, in the process, say, “hey, I’ve got a book out.”
