Promotion the Weak Link

For authors, there are so many tasks to undertake, and most of them, I think, are relatively easy. You can come up with an idea or premise for a story, you can create characters, devise a plot, fill it with events as the plot unfolds, you take care of the prose, you improve it, you make sure all of the punctuation is correct, the meanings of your words, you make sure you use your verbs properly, you don't confuse transitive verbs with intransitive verbs, and you make sure you don't misuse your dialogue tags. Then you find a publisher, and then you get an editor and you get your cover design.

But the one thing that mostly seems to be beyond the author's control is promotion. And that's because promotion/marketing just isn't in the equation for most authors. At least not authors who have a limited budget. Big publishers can advertise on TV, in magazines, in newspapers, etc. I've heard of books that are already on the NY Times bestseller's list BEFORE they've even been published!

Just how that works is beyond me. Do people buy books or order them before they are published? How do they even know about them? That must be some awfully good marketing then. To have sold enough  copies of your book to make the bestseller's list before it's even been released!

I have heard of hiring a publicist, and I suppose a lot of authors do that. But there's that budget thing again. I've heard of making reader's lists, email lists, and blogs, and all of that sounds nice, but does any of that work? I know of one thing that works. TV commercials. Because I think most people do watch TV at least sometimes. Others a lot of the time. And those pesky commercials are always there. You can't help but to see them, even if, like me, you hate them. But there's that budget problem again.

The best way for someone like me to promote a book is to get that book into a bookstore. But that brings up another problem. Small publishers don't do that. So it would behoove an author to be published by a big publisher. How? Keep writing books. Small publishers are a great way to begin your publishing career. But you don't just stop there. You keep writing new books, and you keep finding new publishers. Then, and only then will you get a big publisher, who will then get your book into a bookstore.

So the journey continues. Forever forward!