Your ‘Just Do It’ Appointment

Researching markets, ugh.
Checking statistics, ugh.
Finding agents, ugh.
Noting preferences, ugh.
Writing queries, ugh.
Not selling, argh.



These are the steps that so many writers hope to escape, skip over or avoid. But if you are dodging these tasks, then you’re not selling. You may be bitching to anyone who will listen but you’re not selling. “It’s a bad market,” you say; “I missed the window,” you whine, or, “I can’t find an agent who understands my book” and so on, ad nauseum.



Apathy reigns
I’ve been teaching e-courses online for a long time and there is one thing that writers fail at consistently, and that is marketing. They will spend years slogging through how-to-write books, taking great pains designing characters or nonfiction topics, laboring over craft, attending conferences, but when it comes to selling, their brains stop.



These are often very talented individuals who claim they love writing but they cannot wrap their minds around the fact that they have to do a market study and write to find their message. It’s like they get amnesia and can no longer remember what it is they’re supposed to do after the book or the article. And you know why? because it’s a pain in the ass. (And they could save themselves a lot of heartache by knowing what to do before writing too, but that’s a subject of a different stripe and begins with my other e-class.)



Marketing is hard
For many decades, people have gotten the impression that writing is creative. It needs a muse, deep thought, unusual ideas. Writers like to hear the words: nurture, talent, inspiration, and passion. What they don’t want to hear is that they didn’t do the right marketing, that their synopsis says nothing, that their agent query missed the mark. They don’t want to separate themselves from this sleek little phraseology that: writers ‘don’t need no stinking’ marketing. They want to believe that sales happen as if some divine influence will fly down from editor heaven and discover their work, simply because they like to talk about it. But are they saying the right words?



The right words
People are getting published. And some of the books that are on the market are not earthshaking, stunning, or breathless prose. They’re just stories, or just how-tos, or just semi-interesting topics. So what’s wrong with you and your writing? Like anything else, you’re not doing your complete homework. And until you start asking yourself: “What are the right words? What is the best approach? Did I do a market test? Is my audience definable and do I recognize their needs? Do I know who publishes my type of book? Am I understanding what this agent wants? Can I explain my book the way it needs to be told? Have I really analyzed the competition? Have I approached this as a business?



Local schmoozing
I spoke to a local writers group in my community this past September, (it’s ironic too, because I founded the group in 1990). My topic was something they requested I speak on—and that was: how to get an agent. So, in preparation for the luncheon, I asked some basic questions: what are we having for lunch? No, ah, sorry, I asked if they could each e-mail me a query that they were currently working on or sending out. Thrilled at the prospect, I got quite a few samples.



The results
Two of the samples were not written as business letters. One person could not describe their book at all. Two other folks used generic examples instead of specifics. One was too scant, the other too long. One person did not have credentials. Most all of them had a case of “wills’—“my book will….” Several of them did not reiterate their product name. And the writing was either poor or boring on most of them. Worst part of it, I had to tell these people my results! (I did cushion the blows with tricks of my own, I’m not heartless for heaven’s sake.) But the point here is that you might not be different from these other writers, who may be very good in their own right (sorry for the pun).



Read carefully
If you pay attention to this article and read through it with a highlighter, you will be much further along toward solving the marketing puzzle. And for some, it will always be a puzzle because they don’t want to sit down and match up the colors, find the right shapes, or look for the pieces that make up the frame; their puzzle will always be unfinished, languishing. So you know what you must do: look for the clues and just do it. Make an appointment to just do it.



Andrea Campbell is the author of ten traditionally published nonfiction books on a variety of topics. She is a new publisher, an editor, and a teacher. She teaches two e-courses for Absolute Write: Publish That Book, which will alternate with The Gatekeepers: All About Agents and Editors—Getting them, working with them, and growing as a career author, starting January 15, 2008.
http://www.absoluteclasses.com/Campbell/gatekeepers.htm