Promotion Is A Necessary Evil

In today's publishing world, promotion is more important than ever. There are two major reasons for this one. First, the market is beyond flooded with authors, and unfortunately, it is flooded by a lot of "wanna be" authors who have just dumped their books out there to "be published." The result of this is the simple fact that finding your book online, among all of the other authors is really difficult. To add to this, with the lack of bookstores out there, authors are simply not going to be "discovered" like they did in the past.

The second reason is that the current reader out there is pretty darn lazy. Unless it shows up when they log into Amazon or a similar site and are told, "Others who bought this book also bought" they will not go out in search of the new projects. This is also seen when you see what people are reading. If Oprah posted the book on her list, everyone went out and read it. In other words, unless you are a major seller, the readers will not find you.

So, it is up to you to find ways to get your book and your name out there.

Let me say first, you need to expect that your writing time will be cut into with this promotion work. This is not something you can just slap together and hope for the best. It does take time.

Let me also say there is no one perfect way to get the word out about your book. Some will say social media, some will say book talks, some will say signings. Guess what? These are all correct approaches.

One of the biggest ways is to simply tell everyone you know that you are a writer and to pay attention for your next book. It is amazing how that simple word of mouth thing works. Let me give you a great example of this one.

Just this last week, I was featured as an agent looking for women's fiction. My inbox was immediately flooded with new projects. One carefully placed mention and BAM! We have promotion. Of course, on a side note, many of these projects are for things other than women's fiction, or for that matter, anything I represent, but we still have promotion.

The point is, promotion is being proactive on your part as an author. You cannot expect readers to come running to you. It is up to you to make them aware of you!

Now get out there and start promoting!