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    Stop Worrying; Start Selling: Worried Writer, #2
    Stop Worrying; Start Selling: Worried Writer, #2
    Stop Worrying; Start Selling: Worried Writer, #2
    Ebook174 pages2 hours

    Stop Worrying; Start Selling: Worried Writer, #2

    By Sarah R Painter

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    About this ebook

    Do you want to sell more books? Terrified at the prospect of marketing and 'self promo'? Confused by author branding? Are you wondering whether it's worth all the time and money?

    Bestselling novelist and host of the Worried Writer podcast, Sarah Painter, felt exactly the same way… Until she changed her mindset around marketing, money and selling her work.

     

    From worried debut novelist with a traditional publisher to happy and empowered hybrid author, earning a healthy income and connecting with her readers, Sarah shares the tips, strategies, and attitude changes which have helped her to succeed.

     

    Sarah will show you how to:

    ·  Treat your writing career as a business

    ·  Value your creative work and earn more money from it

    ·  Find the type of marketing which suits you and learn to embrace it

    ·  Understand author branding to super-charge your platform


    Plus much more!

    Packed with Sarah's trademark honesty, this is your practical and supportive guide to taking control of your success as an author and building your readership.


    Don't give into the starving artist myth: Stop Worrying and Start Selling today!
     

    'Sarah Painter is the writer's best friend.' Annie Lyons bestselling author ofThe Choir on Hope Street.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSiskin Press
    Release dateJun 9, 2020
    ISBN9781393714064
    Stop Worrying; Start Selling: Worried Writer, #2

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      Book preview

      Stop Worrying; Start Selling - Sarah R Painter

      Introduction

      Most of us get into the author business because we love writing. We dream of being published, of having our work read by passionate readers, and, perhaps, of becoming as successful as our own favourite authors. The dream includes being wined and dined by a supportive publisher and agent, of seeing our books on the shelves at Waterstones and our local independent bookshop, of giving talks at literary festivals and being interviewed for the cultural pages of newspapers and magazines.

      Of course, those dreams are specific to me. They are the myth of author-hood I grew up with. If you are younger than me, you might have different associations to the image of ‘successful author’, but I’m willing to bet they don’t centre around learning how digital marketing works or how to design a website with good SEO. 

      Writing books is a romantic, creative, pastime. It’s also a craft and a job, but not one which automatically qualifies you for the bit that comes next... The bit after you’ve written ‘The End’. 

      If you are anything like me, you went into the publishing world with the expectation that the ‘selling’ part of the equation was going to be handled by the sales and marketing team at the publishing company. The professionals. While I have been very lucky with my publishing experiences and have been assigned a PR person and been given plenty of promotion by my publishers, the fact remains that the lion’s share of this work falls to the author. 

      This means whether you are looking to publish traditionally, independently or a mixture of the two, you will need to get a handle on how to find readers and entice them to buy your books. Unless, of course, you don’t care about making money from your writing and are happy to remain a ‘hobby writer’. Which is, to be clear, perfectly fine. You just shouldn’t bother reading this book. 

      So, what will you learn in this book?

      If the idea of reading a marketing book makes you come out in a rash, this book will ease you into the subject in an accessible way, giving you an overview of marketing methods and strategy, along with an understanding of how authors can use branding to help them develop a readership. While specific tactics will be mentioned, it won’t go into the nuts and bolts of each technique, as apps, advertising platforms, and social media sites all change over time. What doesn’t change is the overarching strategy, the game plan, if you like. And that’s what I’m going to focus on. 

      This book’s main focus is on giving you an understanding of the underlying principles, empowering you to make your own decisions about the ever-increasing range of possibilities which you will encounter. 

      Instead of giving you another set of ‘must do’ items on your never-ending list of ‘marketing stuff’, I will give you the tools that will enable you to cut out the noise and to focus on the one or two strategies that will deliver results. 

      Finally, I want to change the way you feel about marketing and selling your books. I will delve into your attitude to money (and making money), and the notion of promoting your work, and, hopefully, make you feel a great deal more positive about it. 

      I genuinely hope this book helps you, but let’s be super-honest here. I wrote this book, because I needed to learn this stuff. I needed to change my attitude, I needed to learn the fundamentals which underpin marketing frippery, and the best way I know of really understanding and learning something, is to write about it. 

      I am still very much a work-in-progress. I am not a marketing guru or advertising genius. I’m an author, just like you. I have been published both traditionally and independently for the last seven years and, having built a successful author business, I thought it would be worth sharing what I’ve learned along the way.

      I have also managed to change my own attitude to marketing. I have succeeded in working through a few of my own issues around marketing, selling and making money from my books.

      Side note: I thought I wanted to make money but, five years ago, I still conflated this desire with something a little bit grubby. Deep down, I still harboured the notion that ‘real artists starve’ or that in order to be a ‘real writer’ or to produce books of artistic merit I had to suffer (and should not expect nor desire payment for the work involved). I have, thankfully, overcome these notions for the most part, although they still pop up occasionally in the form of resistance to promotional activities or guilt over wanting to make more money.

      When it comes to marketing, I have researched and read and tried a fair few things. I have also had some success. I am not claiming to be the best at it all, but I can certainly act as an achievable marker and proof that a little bit of marketing works... I am a multiple Amazon bestselling author and, since going independent and releasing my Crow Investigations series, I have hit my financial goals - consistently making a six-figure income and earning enough to support my family and for my husband to leave his job. Huzzah! 

      DISCLAIMER

      Since this is a book about selling books and making money, I need to make something very clear. I am making no claims that I have this all figured out or that I can teach you a ‘system’ to make a fortune. I have managed to achieve a measure of financial success which goes far beyond anything I thought was possible, but there are plenty of independent authors who earn far more than I do, and who excel in areas such as advertising. I include plenty of resources at the end of this book for further reading. 

      Also, make no mistake; publishing is a tricky business. If it was easy to predict what would be a bestseller, publishers would only ever release super-successful books. It’s also not a get rich quick scheme.

      While I believe it’s a great business to be in (with a low cost to entry and the prospect of making passive income over the long term), it’s not one to get into just for the money. 

      If money is your primary motivator, there are easier and more reliable ways to make it. 

      This is not a book about scamming the system, using underhand practices, or allowing marketing or selling or business anywhere near your writing process. 

      This is not a book about writing craft. Your writer self needs to be shut quietly in another room, this book is about what happens after you have written the book. To that end, it’s also not a book about writing to market. I do include a chapter on this technique - what it is and how you can use it, if you wish, but it isn’t my preference and I don’t have direct experience, so it isn’t something I can personally recommend.

      Finally, this book assumes a few basics. That you have spent time learning writing craft (and are still practicing and learning), and that you are only ever putting out the best work you are capable of at the time.

      If you are going the indie route, I am assuming that you are aware of the importance of creating a professional book. Yes, you can do this cheaply (there are many affordable options for cover designs and editing) but you must invest time, money and effort. It is bad business to knowingly ask people for money in exchange for a sub-standard product. 

      Yes, people can simply choose not to buy it (and they will make that choice!) but it just looks shoddy and disrespectful.

      Ask yourself this - what other business would you expect to start with no training or skills and no investment in the basics? 

      Next ask yourself how many businesses with global reach and massive scalability potential could you start with an investment of £500? 

      There’s another reason I’m going hard line with this... If you put money into your book (your product) you are more likely to make the vital switch from hobby-writer to business-person. You have skin in the game and that will help to motivate you during the inevitable tricky times. 

      TOUGH LOVE

      If you can’t write a book that people enjoy reading, all the marketing in the world will not help. 

      You can probably sell one bad (and by bad, I simply mean not generally enjoyed by readers) book, if you are brilliant at marketing, you have a wonderful cover and sales description and the first couple of pages are written well. 

      You won’t sell a second or third book (using that author name), though. And, eventually, the poor reviews will begin to affect the successful marketing of that first one, too. 

      However, the wonderful thing about the subjective world of publishing is that you can keep on writing books and releasing them and you have every chance of finding your readers. Not only are your first efforts not likely to be your best work - we all improve with practice - but tastes change and you never know when your genre or style is going to come into fashion.

      And the same goes for marketing, selling and branding. It’s never too late to up your game and turn things around. And the longer you work at it, the better you will get.

      Maybe you’ve released a few books already, but aren’t seeing the sales you hoped for, or are feeling stressed and overwhelmed by the marketing side of publishing. This book aims to bring you clarity, as well as to make you feel more hopeful and, dare I say it, even enthusiastic, about selling your work.

      You’ve written a wonderful book, now it’s time to find your readers.

      Part I

      Mindset

      1

      Nobody Cares

      In my position as wise old podcast host (stop sniggering at the back), I am privileged to receive regular messages from lots of writers at different stages of their career. Something which comes up time and time again is fear of failure. Whether this is when a writer is considering launching their book independently, or participating in a blog tour or cover reveal, or running a giveaway on social media, they say something like this:

      ‘What if I put it out there and it nobody buys it/enters the competition/responds to my post? What if it just disappears without trace?’

      And my very first thought is this: Nobody cares.

      Now, hang on. I know that you care. And your friends and family are (hopefully) at least a little bit interested in your career. But, honestly, probably not hugely… I mean, how fascinated/invested/emotional are you about what they do at work?

      But, really, in the wide scheme of things – people are busy, people are focused on their own lives and concerns, and many, many people are not even readers at all.

      I am saying this not to be discouraging, but because it ought to be truly liberating. The fear that comes through, loud and clear, in the quote reproduced above (not a real comment, but an aggregate of many such messages I have seen and received), is based on the fear of failure. But if nobody will witness such a ‘failure’ then would we care as much? Would we be as worried? I would argue we would not.

      If you remove the fear of embarrassment from the fear of failure, it diminishes. It’s the difference between playing the violin poorly in the safety of your living room and playing it poorly on stage in front of a crowd.

      So, if you internalise the reality of book publishing - that nobody is watching the fortunes of your book with the same hawk eye as you, then you free yourself from part of the fear of failure.

      Don’t think fear of failure is holding you back? One way to check if it is a factor is to imagine its absence. What would you do with your day, your week, your life, if you were certain of success? What would you write today if you had a cast-iron guarantee that it would be ‘good’ or ‘well received’ or going to garner a huge advance or sales numbers?

      What marketing would you do if it were guaranteed to work? And, more importantly, how much more positive would you feel about it?

      Before we move on, I want you to imagine something… Imagine you could not fail. Imagine that I could guarantee that your book would make sales, gather some readers, get some good reviews. Would that give you a sense of relief? Would that ease your fears?

      Be honest.

      Despite what I said above, there is a chance it would not. At least not for more than a fleeting few seconds of peace and happiness. This is because your brain has already moved the goalposts on what ‘failure’ and therefore ‘success’ means. Your

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