{"id":10709,"date":"2023-11-07T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-07T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10709"},"modified":"2023-11-06T13:08:17","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T18:08:17","slug":"writers-need-both-sides-of-their-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10709","title":{"rendered":"Writers Need Both Sides of Their Brains!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The business side of writing requires that today\u2019s authors (especially new authors) cannot focus solely on their writing. They need to gear up the analytical left side of their brains to think like entrepreneurs. Extroverts make great entrepreneurs. Alas, most writers are introverts. We love to sit alone at our computers and create worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to do all that promotion stuff, and I don\u2019t know how!\u201d is the initial reaction. It\u2019s like telling a boy who loves baseball that, in order to succeed, he must take up needlepoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writers are generally aware they must compete fiercely for discoverability. In recent years, the estimated number of books published (including self-published) in the United States is 4,000,000 a year<\/a>. Yours is one of them. It takes a lot of effort to have that book noticed. It\u2019s one frozen drop in a Niagara of ice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a (marketing) flaw in writers\u2019 tendency to hang out with other writers\u2014you know, people who don\u2019t ask, \u201cSo when is yo(of a dozen or more) is done. We should be trying to connect with readers<\/em>. That takes work and as much creativity as goes into the novel itself. \u201cMy book is for everyone\u201d isn\u2019t a marketing strategy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Book groups, e-newsletters, and now TikTok are among the ways to reach some readers, but are they the right ones for your book? Are you comfortable with them? I like book groups, I like the Q & A, and the participants often buy the book, unless the club is sponsored by a library. TikTok\u2019s audience<\/a> skews too young for my books (half of their users under age 30), but would be perfect for another author. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like participating in book fairs. They\u2019re fun, but I\u2019ve learned the hard way they aren\u2019t a very efficient way to sell (my) books, though children’s authors seem to do better. And have a lower price-point. At book fairs, I do fall prey to that tendency to hang out with other writers. As we sit or stand there, hoping to catch the eye of a potential customer, whom do we talk to? Each other, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the hurdles, today\u2019s authors have marketing opportunities in both traditional and electronic publishing. A key difference is that traditional publishers are most interested in initial sales. If a book doesn\u2019t do well out of the gate, their efforts to promote it go from almost nothing to nothing at all, and the book vanishes. By contrast, Amazon (Kindle) and other e-publishers are in it for the long haul. Maintaining the e-file is all but free, and if an author has a book success next year or the year after or the year after that, sales of the earlier book\/s may very well creep upward too. This can be a boon to writers sitting on a backlist of books that never sold well, simply because they didn\u2019t get a big enough jolt in visibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The publishing mountain continues to get steeper, but writers persist. It\u2019s in our bones. And at least one side of our brains. But, like climbing any mountain, you do it one step at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The business side of writing requires that today\u2019s authors (especially new authors) cannot focus solely on their writing. They need to gear up the analytical left side of their brains to think like entrepreneurs. Extroverts make great entrepreneurs. Alas, most … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Feelilng frozen out of publishing success? It isn't just a matter of using your right-brain to write a great book. Today, you have to engage your left brain as well. You know that. You can do it.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[174,64,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-promotion","category-publishing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2MJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10713,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10709\/revisions\/10713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}