I don’t know about you, fellow indie authors, but there are only so many hours in the day for us to write and promote our books. However, the game is always on, and you can’t afford to slack. For me, writing is the most pleasurable and most fun part of being an independent author, just because I love the creative process so much. The marketing is by far the most challenging, and so we rely on others to help us via word-of-mouth or shares on social media.
I’m knee deep into writing my third novel, and it’s going well so far. I hope to complete this book by the end of summer. While writing projects are so much fun, we can’t let up on continuing to promote the other works we’ve crafted. It’s a struggle to juggle the sea of promotion and production.
I’ve had to become adept at social media over the years, and truthfully, sometimes I feel as if I’m failing miserably. Nevertheless, we do what we can do. We trudge forth, balancing that time to write vs. that time to market.
My advice? Though it may feel overwhelming at times (it certainly does for me), I don’t regret a single minute of the time I’ve spent on my passion. When I released Beneath the Mimosa Tree, my husband asked me what would make me happy–how many books did I want to sell? My reply was that I didn’t really have a specific number in mind, but that my overall goal was for readers to enjoy it. The same was true for Baseball Girl, which received an honorable mention in last year’s Readers’ Favorite Contest for sports fiction.
That’s what makes me continue to write, to market, to promote, and to flounder a bit. I’ve taken to Instagram and have a lot of fun on that platform because I enjoy taking photographs; Steph’s Scribe and Paperblog provide bloggers with a broad audience; and the daily Facebook and Twitter posts must continue. In the end, being an independent author requires you to focus on one particular segment of the population: YOUR READERS. It’s all about those who actually read your work or intend to read your work, and who will, hopefully, enjoy it.
Marketing your books is a ton of work, but just as we become better writers, we also must strive to become better marketers.
I’m still learning.
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