I have several clients who are writers, all of whom operate different business models. Thank you to all of your for your inspiration to me as a writer too.
One of them is published by Hay House with whom he has multiple books, and audios and even an online course. His royalty cheques are the envy of my life. Another is published by an orthodox mainstream publisher, and others self-publish. Between them, their genres are self-help, fiction and memoir.
The Hay House author is part of their fabulous and efficient marketing machine, the other two are reluctant marketers. How can I encourage them to pay more mind to marketing their work so that they are in the 7% not in the 93%?
When I was first a coach I met many coaches who wished they could just coach without having to pay any mind to marketing. My author and writer clients sometimes act the same way. And yet marketing is just using the written word in another way, to tell stories differently, to engage with your audience and to grow their number and excite them about your next book. I LOVE marketing and I feel pretty sure I can infect any writing client with the same bug.
In today's episode #133 of Own It! the Podcast I describe these different business models for authors and writers and point to people who I think do book marketing well and why and how. And how I wish marketing was called something else and not put in a weird box called MARKETING to be largely feared and/or ignored.
I describe the way Amazon now remunerate their kindle authors by the pages read (!), how even celebrity writers are obliged to dirty their hands with marketing, and how Hay House pay their stars to go on the tours in a business model which appears to be very successful at shifting product. I know I've loved being part of the back-of-the-room book buying frenzy many times in my life when seeing my favourite HH people like Wayne Dyer and Doreen Virtue. On those occasions, I've even bought product by other Hay house authors. Genius marketing.
We point at several successful book marketing strategies operated by writers we know and love, and Nicola shares three resources which will be useful to those wanting to successfully publish and market a business book.
In other news, sadly we open with a brief discussion about the terrorist attack in Manchester as we try and fail to get our heads around it. Nicola tells the listeners about her first visit to the Stoupa Cribbage and Moussaka Club and about the other leisure activity groups available to her in Greece, and about her hairdresser's new goth look (black hair, purple lipstick).
I talk about reading a lot of fiction and memoir writing in the first half of 2017, and thinking about writing and how and where and what I want to write myself. This prompted my choice of today's challenge of the week.
Our words of the week are Beauty and Autonomous.