Photo courtesy of www.flickr.com and Tetsumo.

In February, I attended a writer’s retreat.  We ate chocolate.  Talked a lot, laughed, and even cried.  And yes, we did write.  But one of the best things we did was learn about the mysterious realm of marketing.  Sounds strange, huh?  I mean, writers are supposed to write, and the marketing is what publishers do, right?

Nope.  Hate to disappoint.  In today’s climate where traditional publishers are hard pressed to manage a large company with less revenue, they’ve had to trim where they can.  One place where they do so is the marketing budget.  And if you’re an indie writer like me, marketing is all up to you.

Does that sound like a daunting mission?  It is.  After all, authors have their realm where they are most comfortable, and that realm is writing.  For many of us, just the thought of marketing ourselves can give us a case of the hives.

I realized that, while I excel and enjoy the creative process of writing, I was weakest in the arena of marketing.  I needed some help, something like a cookbook set of instructions to get me going.  Problem is, there’s no such thing out there.

What may fit one person in terms of marketing may not fit another.  And the kicker?  Readers want to do more than buy the book.  They want to get to know the writer behind it.  In other words, the whole issue of marketing goes way deeper than just the current book at hand.  It goes all the way to the writer herself.  Does that mean that we reveal every single detail of our lives?  Not at all.

Okay.  So I got that when our teacher shared about it.  And I got the fact that social media needs to be one way of sharing.  But how on earth would I use something like Pinterest for marketing?  That’s when I learned the secret.  It’s more than just a book cover.  It’s everything about the book.  Pictures of the setting.  Characters.  Blog posts.  Videos I used or made.  Gradually, I’m filling in my Pinterest site with items related to my three previous indie books.  Items about The Athena File will come out closer to its release date in June.

The “scarier” thing?  I now have my own YouTube channel.  Not that you’ll see me in front of a camera.  Nope, instead, I’ve posted book trailers there.  I had a blast putting them together, and I found it to be another creative outlet for me.

I hope that you take a look at each of these and stay tuned as I bring The Athena File online in a few weeks.

I have not received any compensation for writing this post.  The work mentioned in this post is of my own writing.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR Part 255:
Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”