It is one thing to write a book, and I’ll be talking about that at length in this series, but it is quite
another to market it.
With Granny’s Got a Boyfriend in the technical production stage, the publisher is now raising the
topic of the book’s marketing. Selling myself to readers isn’t something I enjoy. I’d much rather
create ideas, capture them in words, and set them to musical phrases. But marketing is an
essential aspect of publishing.
Last week, I attended a two-day seminar on how AI is impacting the publishing business and
how it has already changed Amazon’s promotional patterns. This morning, I spent nearly an
hour talking with the co-founder of my publishing company, who happens to be located in Israel,
about book fairs, book signings, Zoom lectures, podcasts, blogs, trailers, elevator pitches – and
the list goes on.
In addition to having a website and a Facebook page, I now have a presence on Instagram. All
this is because an author is supposed to enlarge his/her social media platform.
Of course, the bottom line is “Is this book any good?” Will people want to read it? Who’s your
target audience? Will Australian widows respond differently than those who read the Spanish
edition, here in the US, or those in Argentina?
It’s an entirely new world in which the residents speak an almost totally new language to me.
And I am just learning to understand and speak the lingo.