When are you finished promoting your book?

When I started out in book publishing in 2008, I was under the mistaken impression that the job was completed when the book finally came out.

OOPS!  Forgot the most important, grueling part of the process, relentless promotion for at least the first year.  This is the part you fail to appreciate as a beginner writer, especially because most writers don’t take to PR work naturally.

Now, four years after my first book came out, and a year and a half after my second, the promotion process continues.  You know what I have learned?  The answer to the question:

‘When are you finished promoting your book?’

You are finished promoting your books when you are personally convinced that everyone who could possibly benefit from reading your books, has at least heard about them.

These facts are almost always lost on the newbie writer, the person who just wants to see their work in print for the first time.  Now when I consider writing a new book, which I am in the midst of at present, the most discouraging part is thinking about promoting this work for the next five years at least!

What does THAT mean?  I have found that with my second book: How To Believe In Love Again, the best way to maintain healthy sales, especially in e-books, is to maintain a separate blog focused specifically on issues surrounding love.  This means first creating and maintaining an attractive blog, and then writing a post or two a week to keep your blog fresh on Google.

Perhaps your response to this information is, “Forget it!  I don’t want to work that hard!”  But if that is the case, I would highly recommend that you don’t bother writing or publishing that book in the first place.

The only thing worse than not writing that book you felt you had to write, is putting it out and then realizing nobody is going to ever know about it.

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