Marketing for Fiction Writers

All writers need good marketing and there are plenty of contenders on the net offering help or tools towards marketing for fiction writers.

You know the usual approach, an email with video offer: a video that begins with 20 minutes of insistent voice outlining typical author problems, another 10 minutes of the entrepeneur’s success – usually via setbacks and problems (to show you he’s been where you are and COME THROUGH) and there you are waiting and waiting for the promised help, tip or tool. Near the end of the video it comes in miniature, followed by the plug to buy the book, video, or course that really holds this apparently magic solution to marketing for fiction writers.

The thing is, if you show people gold, there’s a chance they’ll buy it. If you yap on and on about people’s need for gold, the misery of not having it, the desirability of buying it and how you own gold, silver, diamonds etc., but you never show anything, you produce frustration, envy, and – in the case of sales – probable disappointment.

So I will mention two entrepeneurs who do not disappoint and are not full of bull. No, I have NO affiliations and gain nothing but this post from talking about them. I’ve tried them and benefited from them.

Firstly, Bryan Cohen. Recently, he offered a free video about writing a book description, his Best Page Forward service. Bryan’s delivery is to the point. He speaks clearly and unhesitatingly about the process. It’s obvious this is from confident practice of his technique which he then demonstrates live. Using an actual example of someone’s fiction title and synopsis, he analyses key selling points, divides into sentences, strategically ordered. This effective copy writing process is shown in full, suggestions from the video audience invited and used and by the end, produces a really good book description that any author would be thrilled to have. Yes, there are services to be bought advertised at the end but viewers will have clearly seen their worth and, importantly, if they can’t afford to buy, they have learned, or at least seen, valuable techniques. This gives confidence in buying Bryan’s other services and tools, on the basis of “This was so convincing, I bet his other stuff is good, too.”

Secondly, there’s the talented Dave Chesson of Kindlepreneur. He gives away quite a lot online, such as his neat conversion from written book description to an html output so that it looks good on Amazon or elsewhere. I have his PublisherRocket: once bought, all updates (and they are frequent) are free. Rocket helps with keywords and categories and considerably slims down the process of discovering these. It’s best for US markets, but a great and quite comprehensive tool. Moreover, Dave answers emails himself, and promptly. So any hiccups in using this or his other tools are quickly ironed out.

Many groan about having to engage in marketing techniques for fiction writers. There’s a whole deluge of offered supports and solutions out there. Some may be great, a lot really are NOT. At least I can write a post about two entrepeneurs who deliver.