CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS

Which of these five kinds of marketer are you? 1. The Non-Marketer You are a writer, so you write. You don’t plan to market your books - that’s someone else’s job. You haven’t even bothered to learn much about marketing because you want to go down the traditional route and have a publisher deal with all of that for you. To be frank, the idea of marketing a book is somewhat perplexing and a little frightening to you, and that’s not what you signed up for. What did you sign

As a writer, working of necessity alone, even when you manage to defeat your primary enemies of Lack of Time and Procrastination, there’s one enemy you will come up against again and again. This enemy will make you question yourself and doubt your every move. It’s as real as another person in the room with you; you can almost feel it breathing down your neck. This enemy is Doubt itself. Most writers suffer from doubt. In my case, doubt has taken on many disguises over the

Once a book is launched, there are some actions that will count in making it a success, and some that will be a waste of time. The ones that are usually a waste of time include: 1. Pasting a direct link to your book all over social media. This probably sounds like something that you should do, based on the conventional myth that the number of people you can get to look at your book determines how many people will buy it. But just ask yourself: How many such links from

I have argued that the central reason why you’re not being a writer right now is that you don’t place enough importance on it, and that’s true. But that alone, as a statement, doesn’t quite give you the whole picture. The reason why you’re not placing enough importance on writing - given that your heart burns to write - is that you are giving importance to other things. Those ‘other things’ fall into two categories: those things which you distract yourself with when you k

Writers trying to sell their books often fail at converting prospects to readers because of one simple aspect of the marketing process: they are going for numbers.When you’re at the mercy of numbers, it can seem as though marketing is impossible. Prospects, whoever they are and wherever they may be, seem to be in control. You are the hunter, pursuing your quarry, without a clue of where to look, except on the wide open plains of Amazon, perhaps.To get control back, you need t

Continuing on from yesterday's article, here are some more perhaps slightly unpalatable truths: 7. Don’t depend on inspiration. Work regular hours, whether that means writing new chapters or stories or doing the promotional work you need to do to sell your material, and accept that it’s all part of the experience of being a writer. ‘Waiting for inspiration’ would be like a doctor or fire rescue worker only turning up for work ‘when they feel like it’. Treat writing as a

Here are some of the things that I have learned about marketing which can be stated - in no particular order - without a great deal of background information. They are not necessarily palatable things. Some of them may come across as blunt or assertive. But they are observations that I have made after many years in the marketing business and I offer them for your use. 1. Good writing does not usually sell itself. Just because you have written something - even if it is act

One of the deepest lessons of being a successful writer is to do with where to place focus. I don’t mean the focus that the writer puts on his or her work, though of course that’s linked. I mean the unspoken, often unconscious focus behind or around that. Writing is a lonely affair. It has to be. To get those stories out onto the page or screen from wherever they dwell requires concentration, time and space. But surrounding that work is the invisible framework of thinking

A writer recently asked me this question as part of my coaching programme: I sent a promotion to a cold list offering a free e-copy of my latest book. I had half a dozen or so people click the link to check out the book but nobody went ahead and actually bought it. What did I do wrong? The solution is pretty straightforward. But keep in mind that there are four types of prospect for your book(s), which we’ll cover in a moment. If I’m talking to a cold list, an offer lik