Marketing Archives | cooks & books

Introverted? Here’s how to promote your book

November 8, 2018 by Maria

Book promotion for introverts: a literary agent on how to sell your book even if you hate self-promotion!

How was your Halloween? We had the cutest little X-Men characters (Storm and Magneto) and their parents come by for trick-or-treating in our new neighborhood, and I finally got to realize my dream of being called “That Hot Dog Family.”

(Yes, Jarrett, Pepper, and I are all dressed up like hot dogs. Yes, I forgot to get a picture. Yes, that gives us a great excuse to rock the same costumes next year.)

Anyway, one of the questions I get all the time around here is about book promotion for introverts; namely, how can writers who are shy build a following and sell books?

So this week I’m sharing the 5 real-life tricks of book promotion for introverts: how even the most introverted authors can learn to love promoting their books.

4 unexpected ways to make your book a perennial bestseller

November 1, 2017 by Maria

The 4 best takeaways and a book review of Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work That Lasts by Ryan Holiday–plus a free downloadable PDF art print to inspire you to become a perennial seller!

“That book has taken on a life of its own.”

I blinked at this—what did that mean? It was 2009, and I was working at a Big 5 publisher in New York. I had asked one of the senior editors about a backlist book that was still selling and selling, even after 10 years.

The book was a perennial seller for the publishing house. It had built momentous word-of-mouth and now needed almost no help from the author or publisher to keep it selling steadily. You can recognize these books because they wave you down with numbers: “2 million copies sold,” “now published in 15 countries!”

What I wanted to know was exactly how that book had become a perennial bestseller. Was it the author’s platform? Was it the idea? Had they marketed the heck out of it?

The one word that should guide all your marketing

May 4, 2017 by Maria

We’re having rain after rain after rain here, and that’s led to a lot of staying in and cooking and gin rummy playing. We recently got addicted to gin rummy after finally figuring out that we could play just the two of us, and now the competition has become fierce. Pepper has had to referee a few “disagreements” about the rules. I think that makes her the level-headed adult in the house.

(In unrelated news, here’s Pepper ready to hit the pavement for some job interviews. We had to stage an intervention last week and tell her that her free ride is up, and it’s time to start paying rent. Let’s hope someone else finds her more employable than we do!)

We also spent a few days in Michigan this past weekend, and all the rain there brought up a crop of morels on the farm. We picked nearly 7 pounds of them, and now we’re going to cook them every which way we can think of.

Speaking of windfalls, I wanted to chat today about a word we don’t hear too often in the world of blogging and publishing:

Generosity.

Generosity doesn’t get talked about much, but it’s really the business we’re in as book people.

It’s the train car that’s pushed along by the engine of purpose—it’s essentially the outward expression of inward compassion for readers.

Generosity in writing means keeping a single-minded focus on bringing joy to others and feeling deeply, monumentally grateful that they’ve given a few precious minutes of their lives to your words. As Elizabeth Gilbert puts it in Big Magic:

“Learn to share things with an open heart and no expectations. Live out the existence that best suits your nature.”

There’s a magic that happens when you push all your cells in the direction of serving others, even if you haven’t had nearly enough coffee yet, even if you can only eke out a few moments of big-heartedness each day, even if nobody will notice or appreciate it.

That, I think, is one of the most important traits all successful bloggers and writers have: they start with giving and they end with giving, and in between they give a little more.

I am so, so lucky that my authors start there. They’re already at the top of their fields, running successful businesses, and well-known for the quality of their work. They have it all, and they want to share it all. That’s the kind of heart I look for when signing an author.

Which brings me to a related and important point that few people talk about:

The Hidden Advantage Novelists Have in the Online World

November 2, 2016 by Maria

We’re gearing up for a move in two weeks (just to nearby Alexandria, VA) and so I’m savoring these last few days in our apartment before it becomes a wasteland of boxes and messiness.

Whenever Jarrett rolls his eyes at me for being finicky about keeping the house neat, I have to remind him that it’s my authors that are to blame. (Rule #1 of Marriage: Outsource Blame.) I’ve learned so much from the home design and organizing books I’ve worked on over the years that it just tears me to pieces to have the house in disarray for weeks at a time during a move. I like everything in its place, okay? Order is good. Very, very good. And it keeps me from spending all day mentally editing what’s out of place and how I would revise it. (Occupational hazard…)

How I wished the house always looked:

And I’ll spare you the shot of how it looks mid-move…just imagine boxes to the ceiling and me whimpering under them.

Anyway, as most of you know, I’ve always specialized in nonfiction (except for an early foray into novels at the start of my career!), and so it’s been fascinating to see how rapidly the publishing landscape has evolved.

Early on, having a platform and a direct connection to readers mattered only in the nonfiction world. So us nonfiction folks got an early start on figuring out what the heck an online platform is, how it grows, and how it actually converts into book sales. We’ve been tapping our little hammers at this platform mine for years, and we’ve seen where the gold lies and where it’s just coal.

But now that platform and audience-building is also becoming so important to novelists, I wanted to let you guys know one important thing:

As a novelist, you have a hidden advantage in the online world.

It’s an advantage I try to teach my nonfiction authors, but it’s one that’s already so deeply ingrained in novelists that it’s almost silly how easy it would be to capitalize on it and how much you would benefit from it.

That’s why I wrote a whole post about it at Writer Unboxed, who so generously hosted me in front of their wonderful community of fiction writers.

But nonfiction writers (and anyone looking to build a platform!), this applies to you, too! It’s easily the most common weakness I see in nonfiction authors, yet it’s not hard at all to train yourself to have this same advantage.

And chances are, if we were having a one-on-one coaching call, it’s one of the main things I would tell you to focus on!

Click here to read the full article at Writer Unboxed!

What I’m Reading

The Gone Girl With The Dragon Tattoo On The Train (Emily St. John Mandel for FiveThirtyEight): Why on earth does every book these days seem to have “girl” in the title? Answers lie on the other side of this door. Um, link.

Is “Best” Now the Worst Way to Describe a Recipe? (Sarah Jampel for Food52): It’s 2 p.m. on a Saturday, and you decide to make banana bread. So you Google “best banana bread” (because, of course, you don’t want to make mediocre banana bread, right?). Over 2 million results pop up. Why are there so many results, and which one is really the best? Sarah Jampel investigates (with a great cameo from Stonesong client, Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen!).

How to Automate Your Book Marketing (Tim Grahl): Because the point of all these online tools is to help you sell books, even while you sleep, right? Here’s a fantastic step-by-step method for setting up a hands-off system for getting more email subscribers and selling more books.

Simon & Schuster Latches onto Podcast Trend With Launch of “Paper Donkey” (Ellen Harvey for Book Business Magazine): “The podcast launch is part of a larger movement among book publishers to develop original content about the books they create and the authors who write them. This original content can help publishers build a captive audience that they can then market and sell books to directly.”

New bookstore-cafe from Spike Gjerde, Ivy Bookshop owners to open Nov. 7 in Charles Village (Sarah Meehan for The Baltimore Sun): I’m always thrilled to see chef and bookstore collaborations, especially from one of my favorite Mid-Atlantic chefs. Congrats, Spike!

Thinking about NaNoWriMo? Read these two pieces first:

Have Trouble Getting That Book Done? Try Doing Less. (Ginger Moran on JaneFriedman.com): I know that it’s only week 1 of NaNoWriMo and everyone’s gearing up to do MUCH MORE, rather than less. But it’s worth reflecting on whether pressure and panic really lead to your most productive hours.

How NaNoWriMo Can Backfire (Kristen Kieffer of She’s Novel): Kristen–who chatted with us about why fiction writers should build platforms–shared in her email newsletter this week how she’d run herself so ragged preparing for NaNoWriMo that she’d fully burned out by the time November 1 rolled around. NaNo can be so much fun and a fantastic way to write alongside millions of people, but let’s not forget that we’re still aiming for quality output, and that that can only come from a rested and relaxed mind! (This post is only available to her email list, but I highly recommend signing up here–her newsletters are always a lot of fun!)

What We’re Eating

I’m off to NYC for a few days of meetings this week, so pickin’s are slim:

Monday: My favorite weekday pasta recipe with sausage, white wine, and kale. I’ll share the recipe with you all soon!

Tuesday: The Stonesong crew and I are off to see one of our authors, Doug the Pug, signing books at The Strand. Here’s his adorable Good Morning America appearance, or become one of his 5,000,000 (!) friends on Facebook.

Wednesday: Dinner at my grandma’s house usually means tortilla de patata. Happy sigh.

Thursday: Maybe Peruvian chicken from El Pollo Rico? It’s absolutely the most delicious roast chicken I’ve ever had. No ifs, ands, or buts. But here’s a great recipe for making your own peruvian chicken at home, from my lovely author Jenn of Once Upon a Chef.

Friday: Dinner at Virtue Feed & Grain with friends–happy Friday!

Saturday: I’m thinking of rolling up some fresh pasta dough this weekend and tossing it with a simple pesto. What are you thinking of cooking this weekend?

Category: Marketing