The Journal: Me Again, on Marketing

In today’s Journal

* Topic: Me Again, on Marketing
* Of Interest

Topic: Me Again, on Marketing

Matt wrote to ask whether I thought marketing was important or whether I agree with Dean Wesley Smith that marketing doesn’t make a best seller.

That might have been Dean reacting to my position that James Patterson is a bestselling author primariy due to his genius at marketing, and ncertainly not as a result of his storytelling ability. Dean and I went back and forth on that one for awhile.

I very rarely disagree with Dean, but at one point he and a few others kept trying to convince me the only reason I don’t like Patterson’s books is my personal taste. I say that’s BS. Personal taste goes only as far as one’s personal and professional biases, including genre.

Once you’re writing in a reader’s preferred genre or sub-genre, and if you haven’t given the reader a glaring, blatant reason to not like your book, whether a reader will read all the way through depends strictly on your skill as a writer and how well and thoroughly you are able to ground the reader in the story, describe scenes, conduct dialogue and so on.

Otherwise — if a book becoming a bestseller is only a matter of reader taste — then it really is all just a crapshoot. And in that case, why not just write a series of 100-word chapters to keep the action moving (the “action” being the reader turning pages) and be done with it? Why [expletive deleted] bother spending all that time and money learning all that craft stuff? None of that matters. It’s all down to reader taste.

Resources

I DO believe the best marketing one can do is to write the next book. As Mickey Spillane once wrote, “The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.”

But beyond that, I recommend The Indie Author Mindset by Adam L. Croft. I also recommend David Gaughran’s Amazon Decoded: A Marketing Guide to the Kindle Store. And almost any nonfiction title by Joanna Penn.

I should add that I have not personally read any of those books, although I own most of them. As soon as I get to the part about building a list of email addresses I fall asleep.

And to be completely honest, I just don’t care all that much. I’m fine with what I’m doing (or not doing) for two reasons:

First, by always moving forward and “writing the next book” (instead of hovering in place and going over and over and over each book) I’ve turned out several times more novels and stories in less than a decade than many fiction writers will turn out in a lifetime.

And having studied and learned the craft and based on reader reactions, I know they’re good stories. Also in doing that, I’ve fully stocked the shelves of the store for my descendants. In other words, I’ve done the majority of the “work” by writing the things in the first place.

As an aside, I’ve also accomplished all this by worrying only about the most common story component: words. When I was a child, my grandfather taught me about the gas tank: keep the top half full and the bottom half will take care of itself.

That works for writing fiction too, at least if you’re writing into the dark. If you focus on writing a set minimum number of  publishable words of fiction per day, the stories and novels will take care of themselves.

Second, my wife, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will make tons of money off those books if they want to. All they have to do is market them. If they delve into licensing and get creative, so much the better. It isn’t that difficult. It just takes time, and that’s one thing all of them have in much more ample supply than I do.

If you’d like more resources, type Marketing into the search box on the Journal website (https://hestanbrough.com) and you’ll find other resources.

Finally, if you visit the “Marketing, Publishing, Distribution” category over at HarveyStanbrough.com, you’ll find a long list of active links.

Enjoy the process of writing, publishing, marketing or whatever, and I’ll talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

See “What Writers Can Learn from Animal Communication” at https://killzoneblog.com/2022/06/what-writers-can-learn-from-animal-communication.html.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………………… 720 words

Writing of Blackwell Ops 8 (tentative title, novel)

Day 10… 2303 words. Total words to date…… 20106
Day 11… 3134 words. Total words to date…… 23240
Day 12… 1257 words. Total words to date…… 24497
Day 13… 3078 words. Total words to date…… 27575
Day 14… 1597 words. Total words to date…… 29172

Total fiction words for June……… 23188
Total fiction words for the year………… 34965
Total nonfiction words for June… 8170
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 88780
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 123745

Calendar Year 2022 Novels to Date…………………… 0
Calendar Year 2021 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2021 Short Stories to Date… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 66
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31

Disclaimer: I advocate a technique called Writing Into the Dark. I’ve never said WITD is “the only way” to write, nor will I ever. However, as I am the only writer who advocates WITD both publicly and regularly, I will continue to do so, among other topics.