book marketing overwhelmUnfortunate Truth #1: We all have to market our own books, whether we publish independently or with a traditional publisher.

Unfortunate Truth #2: Most of us don’t.

Why? Book marketing today (translate: internet marketing) can involve a steep learning curve. What to do? Where to start? How to build a brand on social media? How to create, manage, and optimize a website? Not to mention interpreting algorithms, mastering Search Engine Optimization, and finding where in the world your target audience hangs out–especially if you write non-genre fiction.

THE PROBLEM: TOO MANY CHOICES
There’s no shortage of information. You can find out anything you want to know via Google, usually with a snappy YouTube video or 17 to demonstrate how it’s done. White papers, free webinars (translate: video sales pages), and websites hold the answers to whatever questions you might have.

Sure, you usually have to subscribe to somebody’s email list, but so what? You just keep getting free information in these emails. There is often an “offer” attached, tempting you to buy the one essential piece of information that is not free, but nobody holds a gun to your head or reaching into your wallet for your credit card. Truly, you can learn almost everything you need to know without much cost, if you’re willing to invest some time and energy.

After I published Chasing Grace: A Novel of Odd Redemption, I signed up for all of these author marketing newsletters, blogs, webinars, etc. I learned a vast amount of techie and marketing stuff in a short period of time, built my own website, and started blogging.

But the emails kept coming! Each day, I got 30-40 emails warning of the dire consequences of not clicking through to the latest offer, mastering another algorithm, creating an “irresistible” sales page, getting hundreds of new people to “like” me building a platform, selling hundreds of thousands of books in 24 hours, or earning “six figures” within two weeks. (Early on, I started deleting anything with the words “six figures” in the title.)

My initial enthusiasm began to wane. Each email suggested about 30 minutes of work that day—so there went 15 hours out of each 24 hours. I couldn’t do it. But I knew I should. So every morning as I watched all those emails drop into my Outlook, I felt more guilty. What kind of a miserable author was I, not to do everything I could to promote Chasing Grace?

Ultimately, I got so overwhelmed not only by the emails, but also by the guilt, stress, and anxiety that I became PROMO-PARALYZED. I just stopped opening the emails, and stopped promoting. I did not, however, stop beating myself up.

Obviously, I had to find a solution to AMO: Author Marking Overwhelm.

THE SOLUTIONS
For me, there were two solutions, and I switch back and forth between them depending on how I feel and what I’m working on.

1.Give yourself permission to stop marketing the book(s). Set a time limit for your hiatus—a week, a month, six months—so that you don’t just drift off into the edge of the cyber-universe. Tell people you’re “working on your craft” or “totally consumed by writing the new book.” Then resist the temptation to beat yourself up—and return to some minor marketing at the end of the hiatus. Re-enter gradually, as you would if you were returning to the gym after a rest.
2.Choose 30 “to dos” from among the thousands of suggestions you’ll encounter each week in your emails and put them on a “Chosen Marketing Activities” list. (The title of this list is an affirmation.) Make some of them fun, like (for me) learning to edit images for your site and blog posts, or learning to build a website the easy way. Also include some “must do’s” that you may or may not yet realize are fun, things like (for me) understanding SEO and trying to see the world as Google and Facebook do.

The point is not to go crazy, and to give yourself some space so that you can keep writing—not to mention remain a happy person. Marketing is important, but not at the expense of your writing, your sanity, or your enjoyment of life.

How to Survive Book Marketing Overwhelm

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