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| That's me, breaking away from marketing. I wish. |
After taking a little break over the Christmas holidays, I recently reopened my blog to guest bloggers. I very quickly received many requests. I love blogging and I love my guest bloggers, but I felt overwhelmed very quickly. I’ve been feeling a whole lot of overwhelmed lately.
With such a crowded book marketplace, a writer has to do everything short of standing on her head and shouting “Buy my book!” to be heard and seen. Except, of course, shouting “Buy my book!” doesn’t work. You have to engage with people on social media. Geez. I have a hard enough time engaging with people in real life. If Twitter is the cocktail party of social media, I’m the wallflower sitting on the sidelines nursing my drink.
But I try. I’ve done Facebook parties, blog tours, newsletters, blog hops, paid advertising and too many other ideas to mention. All of them take time and effort and I have no idea if they have any effect. And I’m tired. When do I get a chance to just write? Lately it seems I spend as much time on marketing efforts as I do on writing.
Maybe I don’t, but it feels that way. Marketing doesn’t come naturally to me.
I’ve been thinking about taking a break, or at least a semi-break, from putting myself out there. Except for blogging here on Word Wranglers and on my own blog, which is my favorite form of communication, maybe I’ll retreat for a while and concentrate on writing. But if I take a step back, will readers forget I exist, assuming they ever knew I existed in the first place?
Or do I just suck it up and slog forward?
That’s the end of my rant. Just needed to get that off my chest. Am I the only one who wonders if marketing is a waste of time?
Yes. What you said. And very well, too.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way! Thanks Liz.
DeleteI feel your pain! It's such a quandry... we need to promote our books, and are told the best way to do that is to engage with readers. But then, a recent email loop I'm in declared the mist effective marketing is to "write another book." Ugh...
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've heard that too - write the next book. Because that's going so well for me right now.
DeleteI know I have to do some marketing of some kind or no one will ever hear of me. But no one can tell me what I should be doing, so it's a crap shoot. So "write the next book" is as good advice as any.
You are most definitely not alone. Every writer I talk to has the same complaint. We're expected to do ALL the things without ever knowing if ANY of the things actually work!
ReplyDeleteThanks Luanna. Sometimes I get the feeling that everyone knows what they're doing except for me, so it definitely helps to know I'm not alone.
ReplyDelete