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“Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.” ― Seth Godin, Poke the Box

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What I Won’t Do to Market My Work

07/14/2020 by Debbi

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Hi. Yeah. I’m going to talk about marketing today a little bit. I’m going to reposition this thing, so I’m not looking at myself all the time. There, that’s better. Right. Okay. So yeah, I was going to talk about marketing, and I don’t think anybody really has all the answers when it comes to this stuff.

And when you come down to it, most of what I hear is pretty much the same sort of thing, over and over. Be authentic, be yourself, talk to your ideal reader, or something along those lines. I have no idea if I’m doing that or not.

I mean, I’m just being me and sharing what I know. And so I’m going to try to share that a little bit more here and while I’ve been off social media, which—that period’s going to be coming to an end for me soon—that has helped me focus on my work a bit more.

I think that one of the things that I’ve really thought about is what I need to do, what I need to change to make things better. And rather than telling you what I intend to do, I’m going to start off by telling you what I will not do. Because I’m very certain about the things that I will not do. I’m more certain about that than I am about the things that I will do.

So I will not be Amazon exclusive, ever. The reason being that there’s really no point anymore. Ebook sales have flattened in Amazon’s major market, which is the U.S. The algorithms—you can’t count on the algorithms. They don’t have loyalty. My expression for this is that algorithms have no loyalty. They don’t. They’re algorithms. And I don’t know how to mess with them.

I don’t know if anybody really understands them. I mean, there are people who claim they do. I don’t know, maybe they do. I don’t care. I’m just fed up with that whole thing. And by the way if you’ve kept track of the industry at all, it turns out that the overseas market in regional ebook retailers is exploding right now. Now, it’s exploding right now, which means that at some point it will flatten out just like ebook sales did in the U.S., but whatever. Anyway, so I mean, there’s that, and okay, so I’m not going to be Amazon exclusive. Sorry, there are just too many outlets out there, ways to sell your work, and so forth.

I also refuse to give advertising money to monopoly companies. Now we know who those monopolies are: Facebook, Amazon. Those are the two that spring right to my mind. And those are the two that keep coming up. And there are all sorts of courses out there to teach you how to use those things. And people will willingly take your money for those courses. Yeah. So, anyway, no, I’m not gonna pay somebody to tell me how to make a monopoly company even richer.

Let’s see, what else? Oh, I’m focusing more on email. Email is very important from a marketing perspective and not just any kind of email, but email that provides interesting content for your intended audience, your reader, or whoever you’re trying to reach. Something that is a bit more personal than “Here are a bunch of free books.”

Because I gotta tell ya, I get some author emails and they’re awful. Now, in fairness, that makes the good ones stand way out. But most of the time I just, I take a quick look and I delete, I don’t think those emails are engaging anybody.

So, anyway, one thing I won’t do is keep sending out emails where I’m just saying, “Here! Here’s free shit! Here. Here’s more free stuff!” Or whatever. I mean, I hope to provide something of value to people, not just, “Hey, I got a book out. Buy it.”

Okay, anyway what else was there? Oh, I’m exploring using Substack. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. Did I do something on Substack before? I’m not sure. It’s, it’s really quite interesting, and it has all sorts of potential for writers of every stripe. So I think that will do for now. I think I’ve gone on a bit longer than I intended. In any event, that’s my latest update and consider this the things I just won’t do in marketing. Thanks. And I’ll talk to you later.

If you’d like to learn more about Substack, just click here! 🙂

PS: I’ll be interested to see what (if anything, real or substantial) happens after July 27! 🙂

And here’s a really interesting part of that article: But the question remains of how to regulate the industry and whether antitrust is the appropriate tool to do so.

Um … I wonder what possible alternative tools they had in mind. And if the antitrust laws don’t apply here, where on earth do they apply?

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Filed Under: Food for Thought, For Writers, Marketing, Writing Advice Tagged With: Author Marketing, Book Marketing, Building a Readership, Email Marketing, Indie Authors, Online Marketing, Social Media, Video, Vlog

Meet Debbi

Welcome to my writers' corner of the Internet. I'm a novelist, who also writes short stories and screenplays. I hope to share the benefit of my experiences as an indie author with dystonia since 2009. I also post a lot of book reviews, because I love to read and learn new things. I hope to share that knowledge with you.

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