I didn’t write this post, but it was such a GREAT one that I absolutely had to share. There was not a re-blog button on The Book Designer’s blog page, so I did the next best thing. I hope you get as much from this as I did.
We all struggle with this balancing act and Gila Green’s advice is golden! Please take time to visit her website and take a look around.
By Gila Green
We hear it all the time, “How can I possibly market my existing book while writing my next book?” or “I don’t like marketing. I just want to write.” But the reality is that to be successful as an author, most of us need to continually do both–marketing AND writing new books. The good news is that it is possible to do both. In today’s guest post, Gila Green offers suggestions for how to manage our time, develop a strategy and succeed—on both fronts! I think you will find what she has to say helpful.
Time is like the sweet table at a bar mitzvah; depending on your gender, age, and weight, there’s either way too much of it or never enough of it. The kids can’t believe how quickly it has been devoured and at least half the adults can’t figure out why the chocolatey temptations haven’t disappeared already.
Books are Written Between the Margins
If you’re an average writer you have a day job and writing is your second job. (I’m not even going to get into family responsibilities, that’s another post.) Balancing your time while you try to succeed in two jobs is hard enough, but what happens when your second job splits in two?
For writers who have published a novel and have to deal with the momentous task of marketing it, coupled with producing a second novel, time management becomes an enormous challenge.
It doesn’t matter if you’re setting up a Facebook account, diving into chapter two, or pitching to reviewers, part of your brain screams: you should be working on something else!
It seems equally critical to market your novel, especially in its first twelve months of release, as it is to write a new one (because everyone knows the best way to market your novel is to produce another one—more on that below–and some writers may have signed on to write a sequel or a series.)
For writers suffering from marketing-writer split, you either have three jobs or two second jobs. Either way you slice it, it’s tough to chew on without breaking your teeth or worse, losing your mind.
The situation can seem even tougher if the novel you have just released is in a different genre and/or aimed at a different age category from the novel you’re writing or vice versa. I know plenty of authors with young or middle-grade books out who working away at an adult novel. The worry over wearing two hats just turns up the heat on the writing-marketing split.
So what’s a writer to do?
Here are four ways you can succeed…
TO CONTINUE: https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2018/10/the-writing-marketing-balance/
Canadian Gila Green is an Israel-based author, editor, and EFL teacher. Passport Control and King of the Class are among her published novels. Gila’s White Zion collection will be available in April 2019. She is also currently working on a young adult eco-fiction series with the first novel in this series, No Entry, coming out in September 2019. She has been teaching flash fiction online since 2009 at WOW-womenonwriting. Visit Gila: www.gilagreenwrites.com
This was brought to us by Joel Friedlander, The Book Designer.
https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2018/10/the-writing-marketing-balance/
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