Once your - first or second or thirds...- book is ready, the next step is...to start writing your next one. With a little break in-between, wisely spent on marketing. Beth Revis, whose advice on writing I highly appreciated in a previous review, continues her journey with a book fully dedicated to marketing.
I've read a good bunch of book dedicated to book promotion strategies lately, but this one stand out for its honest perspective. First, it encourage the writers to get out of their well-deserved intellectual clouds and consider promotion as a necessary chore. 'The artist has a worth' and you may be keen to show it to the world. With such a high incidence of writers without a bit of effort, you may risk to stay happily unknown for the rest of your writing life. Which is nothing wrong either, but seriously, why not give yourself a bigger life chance. The choice is yours. 'If you have the choice between writing and marketing, write'.
Second, it doesn't promise you that from tomorrow on, based on this advice, and in general, any kind of advice, your sales will sky rocketing and you can already start checking the real estate market for buying your castle where to be more creative. Being successful at marketing it's a matter of hard work - what isn't nowadays, although the easiness of social media might lure us into a some different, yet unrealistic, view on life. For instance, the high number of followers doesn't mean too many sales anyway, exactly as the big number of negative reviews doesn't discourage people to read your book. I particularly loved the final section of the book, helping the writer to deal with various negative reviews. After all, it is a free world and everyone is free to express his or her opinions, more or less fair about your work. What you should do is to go on and keep writing. 'Aside from writing a brilliant book, you can't control who sees it'.
The advices are tailored both for traditional and self-published author, with many useful tips about how to set up a book tour and create awareness, particularly as a YA and MG author, including fees and how to pack for a tour.
A book strongly recommended to new - another advice is to never brand yourself as a 'wannabe' - or older authors, curious to find what social media channel works better and why, oh why, having your own website is so important. Particularly if you have so many time constraints and you want a stronger focus on writing, this book brings you the ready made package of useful tips. Take three hours of your time to learn about it, consider the right strategy and go back to writing. You can see clearly now and this is a big merit of the book.
Rating: 4 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
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