This is the final post based on some of Adam Singola's tips for marketers, re-interpreted (by me) for writers. His third tip is:
Don’t solve a new game with old tools.
OK, so he’s mixing metaphors, but the point is that now new marketing tools and channels are coming up every few months instead of every few years. Writers used to be able to be relatively uninvolved with the business side of publishing, other than attending a few signings. No longer.
Today the tools you have available to build your platform as an author and to promote specific books include Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In,podcasts, online press releases, web sites and blogs, videos, guest blogging, and many more.
You don’t have to use all of them—in fact, trying to do that is counter-productive because you’ll be overwhelmed in no time. But you do have to know enough about all of them to decide which ones you can turn to your advantage.
It also helps to look ahead to the new developments coming up in our field that. A few of the ones I see looming at the moment are:
- micro payments--these have been discussed for a long time but now they’re on the way for real—so you will easily be able to pay a small amount, say 20 cents or pence, for reading an extended article or one chapter of a book;
- enhanced ebooks (these exist already but they’re not very good yet);
- new ways of finding your way through the ever-increasing amount of social information (and information in general) so that you get what you really want.
Is it exhausting keeping up?
If you’re over 30, probably yes, but it gets easier when you learn to treat every new tool as disposable: something to use while it serves you and then discard in favor of the new, improved (or just different) one.
That goes against the grain for many of us, but change is not going to put on the brakes for people in the slow lane.
(With more pressure on your time, it really helps to have up to date approaches to managing your time. You'll find those in my book, "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done." It's published by Pearson and available from Amazon and other book sellers.)
