What New Authors Need to Do: Market

My money quote from Grael Norton, acquisitions editor for Wheatmark, during Wednesday’s webinar at the Authors Academy (disclosure: I’m a Gold Member):

“You are not doing a marketing campaign. You are living a career as an author-marketer.”

The best part of this insight, IMHO, is it recognizes that, as authors, we need to focus on long-term results (book sales), not short-term and discrete projects or programs. We need to be strategic in our marketing plans to build a comprehensive platform, and not let the individual projects or programs (tactics) fall outside this larger framework. It all should work together toward the goal of establishing a long-term, sustainable readership base for our work. Or, as Grael also said, “It’s a marathon, not a spring.”

Author: SR Staley
SR Staley has one more than 11 literary awards for his fiction and nonfiction writing. He is on the full-time faculty of the College and Social Sciences and Public Policy at Florida State University as well as a film critic and research fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, California. His award-winning Pirate of Panther Bay series (syppublishing.com) has won awards in historical fiction, mainstream & literary fiction, young adult fiction, and reached the finals in women's fiction. His most recent book is "The Beatles and Economics: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and the Making of a Cultural Revolution" due out in April 2020 (Routledge).