Welcome to guest blogger Deborah Riley-Magnus
AUTHORS ARE CREATIVE, MARKETING IS NOT
Legendary nineteenth century promoter P. T. Barnum marketed a simple circus as The Greatest Show on Earth. He understood that his circus was just a collection of animals, unique people, performers, and illusionists. He also understood that every other circus traveling the country had the same product. For him to call his circus The Greatest Show on Earth and actually sell it as The Greatest Show on Earth was extraordinary creative marketing.
Great author marketing is as creative as, and often more creative than, writing. Each and every author has their own circus of characters and locations and unique selling hooks. A book is just a book if you choose to look at the product that way. Such limited thinking leaves the author with nothing more than a pretty cover and a collection of pages behind it to market. It’s the reason most authors think of their customers as book buyers, and not the massive broad or wide audiences they actually are. Take it from P. T. Barnum; you really should start looking at your book as a collection of unique elements that will draw people to it. When people love, and/or relate to the unique hooks inside your book, they have a connection that elegantly leads to purchasing the book. After all, they love horses and your book has a cool horse in it. They already know they’ll love the book because you reached out to them in social media and real life places where they love to talk about horses. You understand them.
Authors choose to see marketing as not creative because they haven’t seen the creative potential of marketing. They haven’t realized how deeply connected good marketing is to the story they wrote. Everything you need to effectively market your books is already written inside your book. You’re already a marketing genius; you just need to understand how to show it. All those creative twists and turns, all those imaginative uses of everyday elements, all those artistic inclusion of location, career, character strengths or limitations, all those inspired unique elements that make your story great, are also your book’s unique hooks. Your book’s unique hooks are the springboards for connecting with large audiences. Your book’s unique hooks lead to cross markets where hundreds, even thousands, of people who love or relate to those unique hooks gather. Instant audience! The key is to create deep connections with those audiences, and numerous other unique hook target directions inside your book that still await your attention. Great marketing takes this creative process and layers it on top of more and more unique hook audiences until the author has developed a massive collection of people … all listening and interacting with them.
The idea that writing is creative, but marketing is somehow technical and difficult is completely unjustified. Marketing is intuitive and all effective marketing activities are creative and directly relate to the book you already wrote. If anything, writing and marketing are two sides of the same coin. Understanding this and cultivating the flow of all this untapped creativity can only lead to compiling a whole mess of coins.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Write Brain/Left Brain:
Bridging the Gap between Creative Writer and Marketing Author
Marketing is a very scary prospect for authors. It seems like a foreign language meant to be spoken in a far off land without an embassy to help explain the culture. None of this is true. It isn’t marketing that’s the issue—it’s a fear and general misunderstanding of marketing in relation to an author’s talents and skill set.
It’s time to open the author’s mind to the purely creative aspects of marketing as it relates directly to their specific book and audience. WRITE BRAIN/LEFT BRAIN skillfully bridges the gap between creative writer and marketing author, and opens the wide road to sales success.
Available at Amazon and B&N
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Deborah Riley-Magnus is an author and an Author Success Coach. She has a twenty-seven year professional background in marketing, advertising, and public relations as a writer for print, television, and radio. She writes fiction and non-fiction.
In 2013 her nonfiction, Finding Author Success (Second Edition), and Cross Marketing Magic for Authors were released. Her newest book, Write Brain/Left Brain, focuses on bridging the gap between the creative writer and the marketing author.
Deborah produces several pieces monthly for various websites and online publications. She writes an author industry blog and teaches online and live workshops as The Author Success Coach. She belongs to several writing and professional organizations.
Blog http://rileymagnus.wordpress.com/
Teach http://theauthorsuccesscoach.com/
Fiction http://drmagnusfantasy.com/
Tweet http://twitter.com/rileymagnus
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/deborah.rileymagnus
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=66062158&trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile
I should be sooo tired!
AUTHORS ARE CREATIVE, MARKETING IS NOT
Legendary nineteenth century promoter P. T. Barnum marketed a simple circus as The Greatest Show on Earth. He understood that his circus was just a collection of animals, unique people, performers, and illusionists. He also understood that every other circus traveling the country had the same product. For him to call his circus The Greatest Show on Earth and actually sell it as The Greatest Show on Earth was extraordinary creative marketing.
Great author marketing is as creative as, and often more creative than, writing. Each and every author has their own circus of characters and locations and unique selling hooks. A book is just a book if you choose to look at the product that way. Such limited thinking leaves the author with nothing more than a pretty cover and a collection of pages behind it to market. It’s the reason most authors think of their customers as book buyers, and not the massive broad or wide audiences they actually are. Take it from P. T. Barnum; you really should start looking at your book as a collection of unique elements that will draw people to it. When people love, and/or relate to the unique hooks inside your book, they have a connection that elegantly leads to purchasing the book. After all, they love horses and your book has a cool horse in it. They already know they’ll love the book because you reached out to them in social media and real life places where they love to talk about horses. You understand them.
Authors choose to see marketing as not creative because they haven’t seen the creative potential of marketing. They haven’t realized how deeply connected good marketing is to the story they wrote. Everything you need to effectively market your books is already written inside your book. You’re already a marketing genius; you just need to understand how to show it. All those creative twists and turns, all those imaginative uses of everyday elements, all those artistic inclusion of location, career, character strengths or limitations, all those inspired unique elements that make your story great, are also your book’s unique hooks. Your book’s unique hooks are the springboards for connecting with large audiences. Your book’s unique hooks lead to cross markets where hundreds, even thousands, of people who love or relate to those unique hooks gather. Instant audience! The key is to create deep connections with those audiences, and numerous other unique hook target directions inside your book that still await your attention. Great marketing takes this creative process and layers it on top of more and more unique hook audiences until the author has developed a massive collection of people … all listening and interacting with them.
The idea that writing is creative, but marketing is somehow technical and difficult is completely unjustified. Marketing is intuitive and all effective marketing activities are creative and directly relate to the book you already wrote. If anything, writing and marketing are two sides of the same coin. Understanding this and cultivating the flow of all this untapped creativity can only lead to compiling a whole mess of coins.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Write Brain/Left Brain:
Bridging the Gap between Creative Writer and Marketing Author
Marketing is a very scary prospect for authors. It seems like a foreign language meant to be spoken in a far off land without an embassy to help explain the culture. None of this is true. It isn’t marketing that’s the issue—it’s a fear and general misunderstanding of marketing in relation to an author’s talents and skill set.
It’s time to open the author’s mind to the purely creative aspects of marketing as it relates directly to their specific book and audience. WRITE BRAIN/LEFT BRAIN skillfully bridges the gap between creative writer and marketing author, and opens the wide road to sales success.
Available at Amazon and B&N
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Deborah Riley-Magnus is an author and an Author Success Coach. She has a twenty-seven year professional background in marketing, advertising, and public relations as a writer for print, television, and radio. She writes fiction and non-fiction.
In 2013 her nonfiction, Finding Author Success (Second Edition), and Cross Marketing Magic for Authors were released. Her newest book, Write Brain/Left Brain, focuses on bridging the gap between the creative writer and the marketing author.
Deborah produces several pieces monthly for various websites and online publications. She writes an author industry blog and teaches online and live workshops as The Author Success Coach. She belongs to several writing and professional organizations.
Blog http://rileymagnus.wordpress.com/
Teach http://theauthorsuccesscoach.com/
Fiction http://drmagnusfantasy.com/
Tweet http://twitter.com/rileymagnus
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/deborah.rileymagnus
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=66062158&trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile
I should be sooo tired!
