How to Market Yourself as a Writer
I went to the final Alison Baverstock talk at the Kingston Readers’ Festival last night, I feel quite sad that it was the last one, it’s been quite nice to go to something ‘writerly’, makes me wish there was a writers’ group near me but sadly (as far as I know) there isn’t.
Baverstock’s talk was on ‘How to Market Yourself as Writer’ and I suppose really as someone who has yet to properly finish a manuscript it was therefore a topic that was a little premature but useful nonetheless. Although I know getting published is the first big step (actually heck, its probably finding an agent first), I am fully aware (specially thanks to the great advice from Susan Hill and her forum – follow links on my blog roll to the right through her blog) that even when / if you do get published, the battle isn’t over then, your book is just a small fish in a very big library like ocean and chances are there is no / very little money to market your book and in today’s world your first book has to do well to guarantee that there’s ever going to be a second, so you need to be proactive about marketing your book. And it’s not just about your book, it’s about you as a writer as well, the public is fascinated about writers and you need to, to quote Baverstock ‘provide access’. So anyway she gave lots of useful tips, which I’ll try and remember if I ever get that far; have a web site, utilise local links, be prepared to send your books out for reviews yourself, lets hope I do get that far one day. On my personal writing front, it’s actually going quite well, an earlier tip from Baverstock about writing longhand is really helping and a recent research trip to a local historic house for ideas for my work in progress has provided a wealth of ideas, so fingers crossed.
