Writing/Blogging/Videos – It’s All Marketing?

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about book marketing in general as I market Paranormal Protection Society, grow my Whiskey Outpost YouTube Channel and expand Blog Well Done. I’ve been marketing adjacent for a lot of my professional career, especially on the analytics and data side, but I never applied any of that to my creative side.

Examples of Starting with Marketing for Everything

I’ve heard from a lot of authors that before they started writing, they researched their target audience to make sure one existed. Before picking a series title, they did SEO (search engine optimization) research to see if their title contained keywords they could win. Even before picking a book title, some authors are checking to see if the title will rank well.

This is similar to how in YouTube land, creators are told to find topics with low competition, then create a title and thumbnail that will attract clicks before ever shooting a video. Check out Whiskey Outpost to see someone not doing that…

If I were starting a business, I would absolutely do marketing research, test keywords, etc. etc. In acts of creation, that feels so (pick the right word?) … cold? Limiting? Stifling? Why we’re making a 200th Jurassic World movie instead of trying something new? (Sorry Scarlett…I’m sure I’ll see it in theatres even as I complain.)

Did I Ignore the Book Marketing Step?

Yes! I did no pre-research for PPS before I started writing. I wanted to tell a story, so I told the story.

Do I regret not doing any marketing research before writing? Maybe.

Had all the numbers in the world told me not to write PPS, I am pretty sure I would have anyway. It was a story I wanted to tell and I self-published, so the barriers to entry were almost non-existent. Fortunately, books about wise-cracking POV characters tackling a world of magic, werewolves and vampires aren’t exactly rare so it’s not like I’m trying to invent a new category.

The contrast of the no-research approach would be the only-research approach. As authors, we could always go to my local bookstore and see which genres are dominating the shelves or we could go to Amazon and check out what’s selling and just do that. In that case, the challenge is getting noticed amongst a sea of people doing exactly what I’m doing. Also, for me, I want to tell stories that I want to tell and I don’t (currently) want to tell those stories…

My Book Marketing Advice

Ultimately, I need to find the marketing middle ground. I’m should pay a little more attention to my blurbs to make sure they pop to Google and humans. My subtitles should avoid keywords I cannot possibly win. I should make sure that I am true to the tropes of my genre (I’m low urban fantasy, but even within that, there’s a lot of room to wiggle.) In other words, I can be more marketing savvy without losing myself.

When you write, if you can find where what’s popular and what you want to write intersect, go for it. If not, write what you love. It may be harder for you to market, but I would rather struggle to market than struggle to write.

Struggling to write is far less fun and often leads to quitting. Then you have nothing to market anyway!

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay