Are you suffering from the fear of promoting other authors books? There are several ways to promote your book as an author, however, today is about promoting the books of other authors.
People write books every day. Some get published and others don’t. Promoting your book as an author is not a hard task. But, it is one of the marketing plans that requires strategic strategies to win over.
Commitment has been one of the forces that have kept people excelling in business. Whether you review products through your blog, or you are into freelancing. Anything you do – it is your selling point.
Building relationships with other authors is among thing you shouldn’t avoid. Business relationships can take many forms. As an author or storyteller, you obviously want to create good relationships with your readers or audience.
You may also want to connect with other authors for possible partnerships. Whether co-authoring a book or adding your products as book purchase bonuses.
Book promotion is designed to get people to find your book, and not, to find people to get your bookClick To TweetCreating a network of smart, ambitious people to share knowledge with is one of the best things you can do for your writing business. Thanks to technological advances, marketing yourself and your work can be done for pennies (and often for free). The hardest part is knowing where to start and what avenues have the most value to you as a writer.
Promoting your book is not a task that you can do in a day, a week or even a month. Often, the fruits of your efforts won’t be immediately evident. It takes time and persistence to get your book noticed.
However, some authors are afraid of promoting the works of other authors. A large part of any business is helping people work together well. This is where your work as an author comes in – to help other authors market their book well.
“Work hard” is the worst career advice if you want to move up the ladder and become a top asset to your company. Because when you don’t take the other necessary steps for promotion, you’re just spinning your wheels.
What is one of the necessary steps? Promoting others.
You must not wait to get paid before you promote the book of other authors like you. Promotion can be writing a book review or mentioning their books on your social media handles.This is something you can set aside 10 – 20 minutes of your day to do.
3 Reasons Why People Are Afraid of Promoting
1. The Absence of the Right Platform
A platform is influential. Having the right platform is good. Nowadays people publish books like never before. Everyday contents are being unleashed in form of blog posts, magazine articles, inspirational quotes or email newsletters.
Sometimes peoples writing niche stands as a barrier to what they promote.
Take for instance; a health writer may find it difficult to promote the book of a tech writer to his or her audience. Reason being that “tech” has less or nothing to do with “health.”
This result could be as the fear of losing their audience or the audience losing interest in what they share simply because that is not the idea of why they choose to engage with their contents.
2. Envy of their Success
Some writers want to be successful authors yet only some of them are ready to pay the prize of becoming successful. People make it a responsibility to monitor the success of other authors. They always want to know the number of folks that engage with their contents or purchase their books.
Through this act, when they see an evidence that the other authors audience is larger and submissive unlike theirs, an envy grows within. Because of the envy that has grown within them, they feel afraid to promote their works having in mind that their readers may develop interest in the works the author (or authors) promoted.
3. Presence of Competition
There are some very good things about competition. And there are some challenging things. Healthy competition is good for authors. Unhealthy competition can lead to frictions among authors. Cooperative spirit among authors is essential to make profits.
Some people have the misperception other think less of their brand, which may be through by the way. Whether they think less or no, the truth is you should compete because you like the process of competition, not the emphasis on the outcome.
One of the mistakes most authors make is to compete with authors in the industry they should consult. Don’t make the mistakes. The fear of being a loser has caused many not to promote the work of their fellow author.
They are afraid that the next author will make more sales from book sales than them. Hence, they are afraid that they will lose out because of the money involved. This is a bad mindset and you shouldn’t choose this route.
How to Get Over the Fear of Promoting Other Authors
1. Knowing What It Means to Promote
Some folks lack good knowledge of how the marketplace works. Promoting the books of other authors is not a big deal.
Book promotion is a marketing tactic that you can use to get your business more online visibility. For instance; when you mention an author’s book, for instance, in a blog post and tell them about it they can share the posts to their social media channels – it brings traffic to you, more readers and exposure.
Instead of criticizing successful authors, study them. Study what they do and how they do it. If you must ask questions, do it the right way. Book promotion is a marketing tactic that you can use to get your business more online visibility.
2. Identifying the Benefits of Promoting Others
Today, there are millions of books online all over the world. But, we still get agitated trying to convince people about the benefits of writing a book. Even if making money online isn’t a primary goal, the book could help in many other ways.
Authors can attract more customers through cross-promotion. Cross-promotion has the potential for a big marketing payoff because partners can successfully expand through each other’s customer base.
They can gain a credible introduction to their customers more effectively than with the traditional “solo” methods of networking or promoting. Cross-promotion is also a great way to cut marketing costs by sharing between partners.
3. Don’t Try to Compete, but to Complete
Constructive competition leads to collective learning. In some cases, the best way to learn is to watch other successful authors perform. Competition drives innovation and quality. Complementing others is a better way to compete.
When you refuse to acknowledge your competition, it makes it seem like you have something to hide. Bad-mouthing the competition is even worse, as it creates the perception that you’re afraid.
But when you artfully (and not overly) talk about the competition, it showcases your confidence in what you have to offer. Use competitors doubly to your advantage by sharing their content that’s both useful to your industry overall and showcases your confidence.
4. Getting More Knowledge About the Market
Content marketing is top of every marketing team’s to-do list, yet few authors know how to truly do it well. That’s because most focus on sharing content that’s useful to themselves versus content that’s useful to their audience.
It is very hard to build a market all alone. Authors hate plagiarism. Don’t try to copy what other authors wrote – study how they write and apply the same formula with a little tweak.
The marketplace is too big to succeed alone. Even the musicians we have today get popular through direct and indirect promotion. Bloggers blog about their songs, they get mentions from fellow musicians and their fans share their songs on the social media outlets.
Leaders believe competition spurs productivity, but employees hate it. However, endeavor to foster healthy competition and ensure you don’t stress out people.
5. Promote Others and Get Promoted
Building relationships, being authentic, identifying shared goals and values helps authors to know how to promote others.
Share some vulnerability; like the “I’ve got your back” feeling – and others will reciprocate. Develop mutual respect for other authors and make meaningful connections for people to network with each other.
Promotion is not only about getting things done, it’s about being an inspiration to the people around you, especially when you are moving towards a leadership role.
Final Thoughts
All you really need to build a good network with other authors is to be willing to meet new people and step out of your comfort zone.
You need to accept the concept that writing and blogging go hand-in-hand. Authors and bloggers need to have a social media presence. This is crucial to the success of any author or blog.
Your Turn
What is the most important asset in your writing business? Your product or service or the readers? What ways do you use in promoting the book of other authors?
People reacted to this story.
Show comments Hide commentsWhat a wonderful and educating content. Now I am free from the ignorance and fear of promoting other authors or writers.
Prince you are really doing a promising work.
Looking forward to a similar content 🙂
Thanks for reading, Tony.
You are welcome.