Why you hate marketing your book

A few reasons book marketing is hard and what to do about it

Crushing It came out a bit over six months(!!) ago. During this time, I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with authors who published books around the same time, many of them also debuts. One thing you’ll learn quickly when dropped into author-who-just-published-a-book communities is that everyone HATES MARKETING.

This is funny to me because I am a marketer by trade. In my “day job” life, I have been working across marketing and creative teams for 10+ years. I run a content marketing studio where I help founders and internal teams develop and execute content strategies that grow their businesses.

So, it’s been fascinating and at times strange to have one foot in the “regular” marketing world and one foot in the book marketing world, where everything is a little…different.

Wait guys do we like, hate marketing our books or something?

With the caveat that I’m still pretty new to this—again, my debut came out just six months ago—I wanted to share some thoughts on book marketing, informed by my experience in this field.

Hopefully, these observations will 1) help other authors feel less alone or, even better, 2) provide some frameworks for more strategic decision-making about which marketing activities are worth authors’ time.

If this is helpful, let me know, and I can write more about this topic.

Four reasons marketing your book feels…not great

Issue #1: Lack of product differentiation

To market a product, you need, among other things, a value proposition. This is the quality that makes your product better than competitors in the same category, at least in the eyes of your key audience. It needs to be something your audience cares about. It should solve a problem for them in some way. Maybe the shoes you’re selling are like Nikes but less expensive, which will appeal to parents buying sneakers for their growing kids. Maybe the payroll software you’ve built is just as secure as legacy platforms but easier to use, so you’ll be able to convince buyers at medium-sized businesses to switch over because they’ll be happy to save time/headaches while still keeping their data safe.

In the book world, we don’t really do this. Instead, we actually try to sell our product based on its similarities to “competitor” products: “This is Pride and Prejudice meets Mean Girls but on the moon.”

On the one hand, this makes sense, because unlike in the case of enterprise payroll software, our buyers can purchase more than one book. Rising tides, all boats, etc etc. But this approach makes it hard to write compelling copy that grabs audience attention. How do you stand out? How do you move a potential reader from “huh that sounds alright” to “okay I’ll buy it”?

Until you’re a brand-name author (e.g., this is a Sally Rooney book and reading it will give you that Sally Rooney experience), or unless you’re getting a fancy sprayed edges collector item treatment, there’s nothing really meaningfully different from one book to another in a product sense. What makes one reading experience distinct from another is quite idiosyncratic: all the little interlacing connections between your life and the story, the way it surprises you, the way it makes you feel understood, the layers of references and themes and the way they lattice on to everything you’ve read and experienced before—or the way they don’t at all.

There’s nothing really meaningfully different from one book to another in a product sense, and what makes one reading experience different from another is quite idiosyncratic.

That’s not something you can sum up in a banner ad that’ll appear on the top of the Goodreads page. So if you feel like you’re just shouting BUY MY BOOK!!! into the void, in a way that feels self-centered and lacking any “okay but why?” for the audience, it’s because you probably are. And if it feels like you’re relying on a set of tropes and clichés to boil down your book into something incredibly unsatisfying and that doesn’t really describe it at all (“Vampires! Rivals to lovers! There’s just one bed!”) it’s because, if you’re writing in a category/genre that even remotely allows you to do that, you probably are.

It can be demoralizing, especially because we already did write something that is EXACTLY what we wanted to say, and that is…the book. Thus, we circle back to, just buy my book, please? 🤷🏼‍♀️

» What to do: This one’s tricky, so my ideas here are just for coping vs. actually solving it. You probably do need to talk about your book for a while, whether you’re particularly comfortable with that or not. So try to get more comfortable with it, if you can. If you’re active on social media or elsewhere online, try to be gentle with other authors—and yourself—with the understanding that lots of writers out there feel like they’re yelling into the void. Cue Feyre (referencing Nietzsche?) in A Court of Mist and Fury: “when you spend so long trapped in darkness, Lucien, you find that the darkness begins to stare back.”

Don’t let the abyss gaze back! Congratulate your fellow authors when something cool happens. Engage, be a good community member, and give more than you get, if you can. Creating non-“buy my book” content that is useful or entertaining (writing tips, funny memes, whatever fits your personality) will build up goodwill for when you DO need to shout about your book.

Who knows, maybe the real books we sold were the publishing friends we made along the way.

Issue #2: Poor measurement

A good marketing team will try to measure the impact of everything they do. You’re spending X dollars to create and run a paid advertising campaign. How much revenue did you generate with that campaign? Hopefully more than X, or you may need to take a good look at the ads you’re running, or your targeting strategy, or maybe even something larger, like whether this channel is right for you, whether you know your buyer well enough, or some other fundamental issue.

(There are exceptions to this, like awareness campaigns that may not have revenue metrics, but we’re keeping it simple here.)

If I have things set up correctly in my “day job” marketing life, I can see every action my target buyer takes that leads them to ultimately purchasing my product/service. Using tools like HubSpot and Hotjar and UTM links, I can observe how people browse a brand’s website, what they click on, and which other actions they take that increase their likelihood of purchasing or setting up a sales call. I can create attribution models to understand which channels and marketing assets are effective at driving sales and which aren’t.

(Or HOPEFULLY, to be totally transparent, I am working with a talented marketing operations person who does all that, because I am a 💅🏻 🎨 type marketer, not a 📊 type marketer. But even “creatives,” are, in an ideal world, making most of our decisions based on data.)

Unfortunately, traditionally published authors don’t typically have access to this data. We don’t usually control the point of sale for our books, so it’s difficult (if not impossible) to draw conclusions about which actions on our part led to moving more copies—theoretically, the ultimate goal of our marketing activities. We don’t see data around sales numbers until long after those sales actually happen, so it’s even difficult to get a sense of general trends.

In the absence of this, a few different things happen:

1. Over-indexing on vanity metrics. “Vanity” sounds like an insult, but these aren’t BAD metrics, they just don’t necessarily correlate with revenue. In the case of authors, since we don’t have solid data, we end up paying attention to numbers we can see, such as followers, likes, Goodreads shelving, numbers of Amazon reviews, and bits and pieces of warehouse data for those who really want to sleuth. These might have a directional relationship with sales. And having a following on a given platform can end up being a good thing for its own sake! But these metrics are are also really effective at driving authors down unproductive and frankly unhealthy Internet rabbit holes. This is where I show my anti-social-media cards a bit. There are certainly plenty of exceptions to this, but I would place a sizable wager on the fact that fewer than 10% of traditionally published authors are moving enough copies on social media to make it anywhere NEAR worth the time investment of creating even *one* Canva post. And when you add in the negative impacts to time management and quality of attention, maintaining a social presence starts to look like a poor tradeoff for many writers. But because we can get instant feedback on these activities (13 people shared my post to stories, vs. 6 people last week), we persuade ourselves that it’s an indication of how our marketing efforts are going.

2. Decision-making based on untested assumptions/lore. You hear a lot of conventional wisdom, like “YA authors should be on TikTok/Reels” or “bylines don’t move titles” or “if you get 50 reviews on Amazon, you’ll start selling more books.” Are these true? Who knows! But they’re certainly driving ring light purchases among YA authors.

3. A general feeling of hopelessness. If you don’t know the impact (or lack thereof) of anything you’re doing, you’ll never feel like you’re doing enough. And you’ll either burn yourself out or just give up on doing anything at all.

One interesting exception to this lack of visibility into sales data is in-person events. We can physically see the copies moving when we do signings, school visits, conferences, etc. It’s very satisfying, and actually measurable. Unfortunately, these also tend to be some of the more expensive and time-consuming marketing tactics, particularly if any travel is involved. So it’s still hard to get a read on actual ROI.

» What to do: My advice is to attempt not to pay too much attention to things like your Goodreads stats or how many people liked your last Instagram post about your book. Easier said than done, I know. If it’s impossible not to look, maybe give yourself a window. “I will obsess about this for one month post-pub and then let go.” A blocking app can help you wean off Goodreads or whatever site is taking up too much of your mental space. (Am I speaking from experience? Perhaps...)

Additionally, if you really do care about building a following on social media, or getting 100 reviews on a certain platform, or getting 20 new subscribers to your Substack—those things can be rewarding for their own sake! Just make sure you have a clear understanding of what you’re trying to do with a given platform. Then, check in regularly to ensure that the time and mental space you’re investing is worth it in the ways that matter to you.

Issue #3: Unclear goals

For many people, getting published is a years-long saga that potentially involves multiple trunked manuscripts, dozens if not hundreds of query letters to literary agents, and so many drafts of their debut that they can’t even really tell you how many times they’ve rewritten it. And it doesn’t stop there. Building a publishing career also requires navigating rejection and maintaining a kind of scrappiness and stubborn optimism long after that first manuscript is sold. Authors are used to putting high expectations on themselves and then doing anything in their power to meet those. Five a.m. writing sessions, plotting book two in the carpool line, canceling plans four weekends in a row when on deadline. WHATEVER it takes.

When something has been your dream for years, for a decade, for a lifetime, is anything going to feel like it’s enough? In the case of debuts, a lot of other first-time authors I talk to say, “I just want to give it all I’ve got on this first book.” It’s an understandable feeling. I’m pretty sure I said it on multiple occasions around the time Crushing It was coming out. But it’s really no way to build a marketing plan.

Typically, in Normal Marketing Land, you’d set a specific goal for marketing-generated revenue that quarter, which would be based off your company’s annual goals. In Book Marketing Land, on the author side of things, we may not even have an idea of how many copies our publisher expects our book to sell (although there are plenty of ways to calculate that benchmark if you search for them). Even if we do have that number, there’s not a clearly delineated “author-generated sales” portion of that overall number.

So in lieu of clear goals, authors have (somewhat self-imposed) pressure that manages to be both vague and unrealistic. This is heightened by the feeling that the success, or failure, of our life’s dream/work is riding on whether we do the right marketing stuff and “get the book out there.”

» What to do: To circumvent this “I have to do all the things” feeling, come up with some measurable and achievable goals. That way, you can actually accomplish them and check them off the list, tricking the bottomless void of writerly ambition inside of you into feeling satisfied.

For example, maybe “Sell X copies through in-person events.” (Notice that this is actually something measurable, and NOT using vanity metrics, but something that actually contributes to sales.)

With this goal in mind, you can set up launch events, signings, stock signings, book plates drop offs, and conference or school appearances, then tick off the number of copies until you achieve it.

You’ll know you’ve made an impact, and when you’re finished, you can move on emotionally/mentally to the next thing. Which is hopefully what we’re all actually here to do: write another book.

Issue #4: Little impact

I wasn’t sure how to title this one. “Lack of control?” “No efficacy?” “Nothing I do matters?” I don’t want to make it seem TOTALLY hopeless. There are situations where an author can have an impact. (Some examples: Once you’ve built a little fan base for yourself; if you happen to have a platform; if you’re a children’s author who can book a lot of school visits with contractually obligated sales.)

But most of us don’t have the power to really move the needle on sales in a meaningful way. Sadly, 1k followers on any platform doesn’t translate into 1k sales. Ask any marketer who’s spent the whole quarter trying to get a 1% bump in their conversion rates.

Even things that SEEM cool (and are!), like getting a positive review in a major outlet, or a TV appearance, or an award, may or may not translate into significantly increased sales. This is all very YMMV based on your category and genre.

Again, I am just a writer without access to data, so this section is all based on conversations with other writers and longtime lurking on publishing-related corners of the Internet. But in one example, what seems to actually make a difference for sales—at least in children’s/YA, my area of publishing—is getting your book into big-box stores. This makes sense to me: marketers will tell you that the best way to drive sales is to get in front of high-intent audiences who are actually ready to buy your product. Being in the books section of big-box stores means meeting your buyers, in physical space, where they actually make a purchase decision. People can pick your book up, and look at it, and decide to pop in into their cart because why not.

Unfortunately, as authors, we have zero control over whether our book is for sale in Target. This is just not a lever we can personally pull. The only thing we can do is write a book that the publisher’s internal sales reps want to pitch to Target. And even then it may not happen.

» What to do: In my opinion, the best thing to do is to write the book you want to write, and hopefully it ends up being the type of book the sales reps want to pitch to Target.

Because then, either way, regardless of what happens with Target, you’ve written the book you want to write.

Bonus “What to Do” Ideas

I’m still learning alongside all of you. But in addition to the suggestions already laid out (set goals etc), there are two other things that have helped me.

1. Figure out what’s intrinsically rewarding to you and focus on that.

Without data on actual ROI, the most strategic move authors can make is to simply lean in to what they ACTUALLY like and are good at.

For example, I like writing this very occasional newsletter. :) Journaling/blogging/newsletter writing is something I’ve done off and on literally since I learned to write. I am happy to get these thoughts down and send them out into the world even if it doesn’t lead to anyone buying a copy of Crushing It. But this channel also has the benefit of slowly building up a list of email addresses of people who like what I’m doing here. Which I can then reach out to when there’s a sale or when I announce a new project.

Or, ahem, when my paperback comes out in May.

Writing this newsletter has also provided an opportunity to have some conversations that have informed my understanding of the industry and my target buyer as a middle grade author (youth/school librarians). That was incredibly useful for me, and hopefully for some other folks who read it, whether or not it resulted in sales!

What's keeping librarians up at night

Maybe you love making videos or memes and are awesome at the voicey posts that work really well on social media, and you find the community building and conversation there inherently meaningful. Maybe you’re an amazing speaker and love connecting with readers face-to-face. Maybe you enjoy flexing your design skills on your website.

Whatever your thing is, your marketing efforts are going to be more sustainable, and likely more fruitful, if you’re doing what you actually enjoy.

2. Remember that the writing is the work.

If being an author were like other jobs, we’d have a job description with an outline of our responsibilities, what’s most important, where we should be spending the bulk of our time, and how our success will be measured. In the absence of this, it’s on us to figure out where we focus our attention and effort.

Most of us are here because we love writing and we want to spend most of our time writing. To the extent that we can, we should build our days around this fact.

If you want to be in this author thing for the long haul, I cannot emphasize enough that part of your job is to take care of yourself so that you stay in a creative enough headspace to write the next book.

However you tackle your book marketing, keep in mind that your strategy needs to involve preserving your creative life. Yes, you need to show up to your dreams, and part of doing that as an author in the current environment means playing ball with marketing. But not at the expense of why you’re here in the first place.

And if it’s difficult to persuade yourself of this—if you’re so in the marketing headspace that you can’t let go of that feeling that you must figure out how to sell more books—just remember that other piece of industry lore: frontlist sells backlist.

Perhaps your next book will be your best marketing asset of all.

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Happy writing (and happy marketing),

–Erin