Despite all the hype around marketing your books, ultimately what determines whether you will make it as an author is the book you write. These are the sentiments of writer and columnist Russell Smith who has shared six pieces of advice to help writers get a book written and published, in an article for The Globe and Mail.
Below are some of Russell’s words from his article:
“The question of how to market your book is not the tricky part. That is the part lots of people will be eager to help you with. The one thing they are not eager to help you with is the set of words that make up each sentence and the set of sentences that make up each paragraph and the complete set of paragraphs that make up each page. So focus on that – the hard part. A marketing plan is useless without a book, and a book is useless until it is written to the very end, because endings are notoriously hard to write. The ending is not a detail to be wrapped up later. Concentrate on completing an excellent book – the kind of book you yourself would love to read – before thinking of what to do with it.”
Read the whole article here.
Sound advice in Russell’s piece, overall. The points he makes about books being of a certain type of genre (e.g. romance and mystery) being more successful at the self-publishing game makes sense. However, niche genres have in turn helped to stimulate this small part of the publishing industry, as it has enabled indie publishing companies to form (proper companies mind you, and not vanity presses who are crooks in disguise, although not for long), which in turn give authors another option to get published in the traditional way.
Back to Russell’s point about book marketing not being a barrier step and advising writers to devote energies to writing the best book possible. Indeed, this is true. An outstanding book that we read stays in our minds for years. Our memories of it may fade over time, yet at the core, that great read will evoke pleasant feelings deep within. A mediocre book on the other hand, will result in either a reader not finishing it, or a reader who finishes it and never wants to pick up another book by the same author again. Most of us have probably had this experience too. Does it conjure up fond memories? Probably not, and that’s if one can remember such a book anyway.
Image credit: francois schnell on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/hv1.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Hiten Vyas is the Founder and Managing Editor of eBooks India. He is also a prolific eBook writer with over 25 titles to his name.[/author_info] [/author]