I’ve been thinking about how I am possibly going to market myself as an author when I (hopefully) land a literary agent and a publisher. It’s something that fills me with great anxiety, as my entire career and future could depend on how good my marketing is.
Unfortunately, when you get a book deal the publisher doesn’t take care of all the marketing and advertising for you. As the author, you are expected to do a lot (if not most) of the marketing. I feel like I know a bit about marketing myself, but I’m not confident it will be enough to get me where I want to go. The bestseller list will be a challenging mountain to climb!
The other day someone suggested that a full service digital marketing agency could really help me, so I’ve been looking into it. Let’s say I get a ten-thousand-dollar advance for selling my novel to a publisher, which is pretty standard in the industry. Is the best move to find a marketing agency and invest all that money into my marketing? Is that enough money? It’s hard because I am just an individual rather than a whole business. I’m not making money from a product yet (and I would only make 10% profit from any book sales) so I can’t really afford long-term marketing.
Maybe that would be a better option if I went down the self-publishing route? I’d be getting 100% of the profit from my books being sold and could invest that into further marketing. I can’t really invest the 10% I get from a publisher because I need that to put food on the table.
It’s a tricky situation, and it is so hard to tell what the right choice is. I wish there was a digital marketing agency that would just fall out of the sky and help me, like a genie in a lamp. That doesn’t seem too likely, however.