Book Marketing for the Introverted, Hesitant, Overwhelmed and Confused

 

When an artist or writer publishes a book, even a small chapbook like My Women, My Monsters, the work does not end there. In this age of self help, self promotion and self advocacy, the author is obliged to help find homes for her book children. These fledglings do not fly out of the nest and onto the bookshelves on their own. To this end I have been reading books on the marketing of books. I find the subject fascinating - if only in that this is something that I am not naturally good at, being inherently introverted, hesitant, and technologically somewhat confused.   I am reading these books with the same curiosity and admiration that I had reserved for that massive economics text I had mentioned in a previous blog - Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century. I did not understand the equations, but admired people who could apparently keep such equations in their heads while simultaneously discussing the social issues that the math impacts upon.

Similarly, in reading about marketing, I can admire the ability that some artists and writers have to acquire and sustain an audience of followers, even though I don’t do that terribly effectively myself. I will address this and other questions from time to time because artists and writers are so very much on their own and need to learn from a variety of experiences as to what works and what doesn’t.

Today I found what might be called a niche market.  Finding one's audience is something that is not always immediately apparent to an artist or writer. But it is essential to figure out who one’s audience is and then make your work known to them. Once again, I make a disclaimer here because even doing this does not guarantee that a niche audience will also be willing to open their wallets for you. Ironically, so far, the niche audiences that have been recommended to me by the advice in the books I have been reading have not panned out ( over 55, women, etc) yet. What I did find was a place that specifically works with poets who write about visual art: The Ekphrastic Review.  For a very reasonable fee, I have posted my work there. I will post later when or if more comes from this.  As for now, I see that I am in good company with a book about the Canadian Group of Seven, that I might have to buy.