Hang around enough writers and you’ll hear a dozen versions of this gripe: I wrote the book, now I have to market it too?
The answer has been YES for a good long while, so this responsibility should not surprise debut authors – yet many authors still complain about it.
I’ve complained about it too.
But every time I griped, I knew that one day I’d have to market my books. I knew I’d have to find a way to make book marketing work for me, so whichever of my books made it out there in the world first could find an audience.
While I complain about marketing, I know a fair bit about it.
I’ve written for B2B, tech, and hospitality clients about marketing. I’ve spoken to pros with proven strategies and strapped-for-time business owners doing their best to muddle through.
I had an idea what worked, what didn’t, and the stumbling blocks that trip people up.
I’d been building a resource guide for myself for YEARS – I queried my first book in 2018 – so information was there when I needed it.
So when I got the pub date for my queer chapbook, I sat down with myself to figure it out.
I had a plan for how to market my LGBTQ travel book. I had no plan for this because it caught me off-guard.
I sat down with a notebook and stared at the blank page. It was all overwhelming. I didn’t know where to start.
What did I want to do?
What would work in the time frame I had?
What would feel manageable, not something I’d resent for taking time away from editing my manuscript or writing something new? What had I already built that I could use?
What could I do now that I’d be glad I’d done later?
To move out of overwhelm, I asked myself a simple question. One that unlocked everything for me.
That question: Can marketing my books be a creative channel? Can I find a way to make this fun and interesting for me?
What if marketing my books was a creative channel?
Just asking the question shifted some of my internal resistance.
It dialed down the pressure, which allowed my brain to sift through the possible things I could do and make order.
I didn’t need to copy someone else’s marketing campaign, or build a massive Booktok audience, I just needed to find the intersection of my audience (the people who would buy the book) and what I could do for the long haul.
I got to run experiments, then see what worked and didn’t work.
Best of all, I’d have the data back before it was time to market my queer travel book, so I could iterate and adjust for the bigger-stakes project.
Once I gave myself permission to see author marketing as a creative practice, things loosened. Emails like this one became tiny stories, not formulaic sales pitches.
I brainstormed events and preorder rewards the way I’d build characters: put down what I knew, identify what I didn’t know, and make a big list of possibilities. Winnow it down until I felt that zing of rightness that I was moving in the right directionn.
Even the ideas I discarded gave me buzz. They shook me out of thinking small and got me excited to talk about my book.
In the end, I settled on five distinct marketing techniques I’m using to build buzz and drive preorders.
Want to know how I’m marketing my first book – and be the first to know when I debrief lessons learned for the follow-up? Get on my email list.
If there’s something you’re resisting—writing your query letter, making a website, submitting that draft—try asking: how could this be a creative act? What would make it feel more like play, more like you? You don’t have to love every part of the process.
But reframing the hard parts can make them less soul-sucking. Sometimes even a little fun.
