Promoting Your Book: Promotion is Part of the Job

Welcome to our fall 2019 series, “Promoting Your Book.” In this series, the site’s regular columnists will discuss an element of marketing that’s worked for them. Nowadays, every writer needs to have some involvement in the promotion of their work. Ideally, this series will give marketing novices a starting point, or writers with some experience a notion of how to do things better.

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By Rob Brunet

It is somehow deliciously ironic that the first piece of new writing I put out, after an extended absence, is about book promotion. After all, when my debut was published five years ago, I did a shit tonne of it. Measured in effort per copy sold, it was almost nonsensical, but given the chance, I’d do much of it again. Why? Because it’s not just about sales.

One of the coaches I met along the way told me to forget about copies moved, and think instead in terms of readers gained. Readers are people who, having read you once, may read you again. If they met you, read you, and enjoyed your book, those chances are even better.

That viewpoint resonated with the approach toward selling I’d learned early on in my previous career—as a freelance writer-producer of corporate communications. The rule was, spend thirty per cent of your time finding new work—even when contracts were flowing—or face periods of no work when current gigs dried up. Since I’d promised myself to bring the same work ethic to the business side of writing as I had to lifelong self-employment, it made sense to fully engage.

Gung ho is probably a better way to describe me. I created a web site, sought short story publication, set up an author page on Facebook, and drank from the Twitter fire hose. I started a newsletter to build a mailing list, did any public reading I caught wind of, did bookstore signings, attended as many as four conferences in one year, began hosting Noir at the Bar Toronto, jumped on this Thrill Begins team, joined the board of Canada’s national crime writers association, and (to give back) started teaching creative writing. To say I immersed myself in the “job” of promoting my writing would be an understatement.

The privilege of being effectively retired from my prior career gave me the luxury of time. The level of distraction, however, showed up in my writing. That’s another story for another time, but in a word, here’s why it’s relevant: balance.

Most novelists pursue writing alongside full-time careers and even fuller personal lives. I’m always stunned when writers younger than me pump out new works year after year, are ever-present in the crime-writing community, and sprinkle in Instagram stories about the young families they are raising. Hats off to all of you.

It’s been five years since my debut came out, and I don’t yet have a second novel to promote—although one manuscript is complete and more than one other underway—so it’s a matter of time.

Which brings me to the point of this piece.

I’ll be a bit more selective about the promotional activities I’ll engage in when my next novel comes out. But the choice won’t be exclusively guided by what’s likely to be most effective at moving the sales needle. I’ll pursue activities that I enjoy and am good at. It will be event-based, because I crave social interaction with other writers, my tribe. And it will leverage new writing—whether the flash pieces I enjoy creating fresh for Noir at the Bar readings, or short stories for publications that help us find new readers. I’m sure I’ll maintain a social media presence at the risk of wearing out those who haven’t tuned out already, but I won’t blast it the way I once did.

Most importantly, I’ll treat promotion as “part of the job”, but not the job itself. As a wise fellow author told me early in my journey, after years of heavily engaging in promotional activity, he’d learned the very best thing he could do to promote his work was to write an even better book next time.

Pretty sure that’s why most of us are doing any of this in the first place.

Rob Brunet’s debut novel was STINKING RICH, from Down & Out Books. His crime fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Thuglit, Shotgun Honey, Out of the Gutter, Noir Nation, and numerous anthologies. Before writing crime, Brunet ran a digital media boutique producing award-winning Web presence for film and TV, including LOST, Frank Miller’s Sin City, and the cult series Alias. He loves beaches, bush, and bonfires, and lives in the Kawarthas, north of Toronto. Follow Rob’s blog, events, news, and reviews at www.robbrunet.com. Or catch him on Twitter at @RRBrunet.

To learn more about STINKING RICH, click HERE.