Kickstart your writing career this June

Here’s a question: what’s the single most important thing you should be doing for a great, highly paid writing career? (Aside from writing, of course. )

The answer is marketing.

Writers’ eyes tend to glaze over whenever I talk about marketing; I know that some writers are scared to promote their work.

I sympathize. For a couple of decades, I felt the same way: my job was to write, someone else could handle the marketing. That kind of attitude was de rigueur in the 1980s, and 1990s. Self-promotion was not something serious writers did… it was tacky at best, and immoral at worst.

Well, times change, and we change with them. Nowadays if you’re not a expert marketer, you can forget about a great writing career. Won’t happen. No one has the time, interest or energy in helping you to promote your writing and writing services if you can’t or won’t do it.

You must know how to market.

The best way to learn is to do a marketing course. Wherever you are in the world, I’m sure that your local college offers marketing and PR courses. Take a course: you won’t regret it. It’s the best thing you can do for your writing career.

In the meantime, this site will help.

DIY Marketing » Blog Archive » NEW e-Book: 30 Marketing Ideas in 30 Days – for Entrepreneurs “Do It Yourself” Marketing Month offers a great ebook you can download, and makes the vital point:

“The key to making marketing work for you, whether it’s an idea you read in this book, come up with on your own or pick up from another resource is to maintain focus and consistency. Don’t go overboard and dilute your efforts by trying all of these ideas at once. It won’t work, your efforts will be too diluted and it will be nearly impossible to track what worked and what didn’t.”

Marketing should be fun

I had a phobia about marketing my writing for years. (That did me no good at all, and ensured that I fell into the hands of people who were happy to make more money off my writing than I did, but I digress.)

Looking back, that mindset was intriguing: I could market others — I was writing copy for many businesses, and loved doing marketing work.

So I had to change. It was difficult.

I hope you’re not as phobic as I once was. If you are, here’s what will help: no matter how you hate marketing, just do it. Get therapy — it can help. Self-hypnosis helps too.

What will help most, is doing it anyway, even when you hate it. Sooner or later, you’ll wake up one day bubbling with ideas for marketing your writing business, and you’ll wonder why it took you so long to realize that marketing is fun.

Get the ebook. Market!

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