A Blog Conversation about Book Promotion . . .

 Our last conversation here—about Genre—ended for lack of reader comments; but, it had a decent run, on May, 14th, May 16th, and May 21st…

I’ll get our next conversation going with this quote:

“As writers and artists, we feel the drive to do meaningful work, but we get overwhelmed by the process of connecting with an audience. We follow best practices in marketing that never seem to pan out, don’t produce results, and make us feel lost and frustrated. But creating doesn’t have to feel this way.”

That’s from the book Be the Gateway: A Practical Guide to Sharing Your Creative Work and Engaging an Audience, by Dan Blank.

Dan’s blog has this to say:

“Too often, writers and artists rush into marketing without first finding clarity on what they want to create and who they hope to reach. The result? They flounder, jumping from one marketing trend to the next, each one with results that leave them feeling disappointed.”

In my forays into book promotion, I’ve met many folks who had plenty of decent tips and tricks to snag a few folks’ attention; but, until I read Dan’s book, I hadn’t come across someone with a complete philosophy of how to engage others…

Over the seven years since I published my novel, from a sentence there and a treasured paragraph over there, I pieced together the plan I now pursue to promote my writing…

When I read Dan’s book, I met a kindred soul, since he was laying out everything I’d labored to learn over all those years…

Things like:

• Never stop looking for the kind of people who’re able to like what you create

• Find out how folks want you to talk to them

• Make your reaching out a display of how your work can help others

It is completely true that each person and each person’s creative work demands a unique method and practice of promotion; yet, the most effective basic principles that lead to all those tailor-made plans are actually few—they revolve around concepts of human communication and, there are other people who know and have written about them, besides Mr. Blank—he only seems to me to paint the most detailed picture…

So, to provide an aid to exploring the sources of creative promotion, I’ll share the word history of “Communication”:

early 15c., “act of communicating, act of imparting, discussing, debating, conferring,” from Old French comunicacion (14c., Modern French communication) and directly from Latin communicationem (nominative communicatio), noun of action from past participle stem of communicare “to share, divide out; communicate, impart, inform; join, unite, participate in,” literally “to make common,” related to communis “common, public, general” (see common (adj.)). Meaning “that which is communicated” is from late 15c.; meaning “means of communication” is from 1715.

I feel it’s somewhat obvious that a good method of book promotion would be capable of being adapted to the promotion of any work of art; but, I bet there are some folks who would disagree…

Anything in this post you agree with?

Anything you disagree with?

Something about promotion that’s important that I haven’t mentioned?

Care to share a comment?
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