Hey, here’s a news flash. “Writing a book is hard.” Who would’ve thought? “Marketing it can be even harder.” Gee, really? Talk to me like I’m four years old. Okay? Yeah. That’s not how you’re going to sell me that book.
Yeah, there’s a book here on how to market a book, like there aren’t like a million others. “How to change your mindset and sell more books with less effort.” Really? Okay. “How to write books that guarantee a lasting, profitable career. How to get Amazon’s Kindle store to market your book for you.” Ah. Now therein lies the key because as I suspected, this book is not available on Kobo.
However, when I checked on how to market a book on Kobo, I did come up with Joanna Penn, of course, because Joanna Penn was talking about print books (and going wide) back in 2012 or 2011, sometime around then on YouTube, and I remember seeing those videos and being very impressed and happy that somebody cared enough to release print books and was an indie author, and it was tough as it was to manage.
Yeah. Here we go. More sales talk. “Do you want to sell more books and reach more readers?” Yes, of course. “If you don’t know much about marketing, don’t worry. We all start with nothing”. Ah, yes, I know. I didn’t actually start with absolute zero in a sense, because I knew a lot of authors at that point, but that was really where I started with conferences, people I met at conferences and some other things.
Anyway, where am I? “How to market books for authors who want to sell more books.” Yeah, that would be nice. Every author wants to sell more books. “Third edition, marketing principles, book fundamentals, no platform needed, short-term marketing, your author platform, long-term marketing, launching your book.” Okay. Yeah. All of this is really nice and worth the price of 9.99, 10 bucks. So yeah. Then I saw another book under that called How to Grow Your Personal Brand: Stand Out in a Crowded Market. Hmm.
“Do you want to rise above the noise? How to grow your personal brand, stand out in a crowded market, develop a clear and magnetic brand identity, craft a compelling message, master the art of storytelling to connect with your audience on an emotional level.” That’s called writing a book. (Or a screenplay.) I could write a book about that. Okay. “Navigate crisis situations with grace and protect your reputation.” Hoo boy. Let’s not go there for a second, for a hot minute.
“Set smart goals and develop a winning action plan to achieve them.” All of this in 53 pages. Wow. I mean, I think you could write a book about each one of these things.
So once again, I’m sitting here looking on my computer. It’s Sunday and this is stupid, and yeah, it’s like I’m just lost for words at this point.
I’m actually thinking about really starting a short series of tutorials on some of the legal implications of what you’re doing when you publish, and things like what a contract is and what a contract isn’t. A contract … well, I’ll get into that later.
I don’t even know why I’m making this video because I’m probably not going to air it. Well, we’ll see. Maybe I will. Who knows, maybe I’ll just convert it into a blog post and leave it at that.
Okay. Anyway, be seeing you. Thanks for watching. If you’re watching. Take care.
PS: Did you know there’s a baroness named Joanna Penn? 🙂 That’s awesome, innit? 🙂
PPS: Oh, what the hell … 🙂