Marketing Woes

Marketing sucks. I'm just going to say it. It's a necessary thing if you have any product or brand that you want to sell, but going through the hoops of marketing is something that I hate doing. Being an author, I'd rather spend my time writing out my novels rather than spending time worrying about if this strategy is working or not, am I merely wasting money on this tactic.

Sure, I could spend an arm and a leg, and probably the ownership of my firstborn child, with some marketing service, but I'm not made of money. I have a budget for my books, and if I go beyond that, well, then I'm getting less groceries for a week or two. And if those services don't translate to selling books, then I'm even further in the red. With my limited financial resources, as many of us have these days, I need marketing tactics and strategies that work. But you only need to do a quick search on Google to see that there are thousands of marketing tactics that are out there that people recommend doing. I don't have time to try them all and see what works.

Some strategies require things that I just don't have a lot of. Like email subscribers creating a mailing list. Those tend to branch out further and further, plus those that enter it get sneak peeks that the regular person doesn't necessarily get to see from me, the author. (Which, if you want free insights to the new books that are being published, and missing scenes that won't appear anywhere else, then subscribing with your email is so worth it. It doesn't cost you a thing!)

The hard part is, it takes money to make money. So, that means that for Gerhardt's Secrets I will be doing a bit more marketing than I had been on the Return of Sinestra. This of course means more money being put toward marketing, and leaving my pocket in the short-term. Because of this, the key will be having reviews on the book be done by the readers. When it comes to marketing books, reviews sell copies. That's the cold hard truth, and I can't express that enough. That was a major thing I have learned with the Return of Sinestra.