Write Brain/Left Brain Blog Tour

Down the Author Marketing Rabbit Hole!

Whoa! What’s down that Author Marketing Rabbit Hole? Will you be able to control your slide? Will you end up in hell, or worse, with no book sales? Alice may have been a brave soul, but you’re an author and marketing is far scarier than the Queen of Hearts.

Let’s make this simple. I’ll be your guide, your personal Mad Hatter. But remember, everything I tell you makes perfect sense; all you need to do is allow yourself to hear with your creative ears. Let’s start at the top.

Marketing is NO DIFFERENT than Writing

Most fearful authors skirt the Marketing Rabbit Hole because they imagine marketing to be so far from their creative skill set, it’s impossible to learn. No so! In fact, marketing, done well and with enthusiasm, is EXTREMELY creative, exactly like you are!

If you write a novel and put every effort into being creative and excited about the story environment, characters, and events, why would you give any less to creating awareness for that book? If something didn’t fit well with the flow of your plot, you’d change or eliminate it, right? The same goes for marketing. Every effort, every approach, every strategy must move your success efforts forward.

An author’s first hurtle is to stop seeing marketing as foreign or the enemy, and start looking at it as the success ally is really is. Once you make friends with marketing, a million doors open for you.

Okay, let me put on my Mad Hatter hat and lead you on the ride of your life. Sit here on the edge and …

Slip and Slide Down the Creative Marketing Trail

Whatever your book is about, whatever the genre, and whatever specific hooks you’ve written inside it, you can easily find wide and deep audiences beyond the limiting book genre strategies. Let’s slither along the idea path and see what can happen.

Imagine your book is a mystery about a suspicious death in a health club. Your main character and protagonist is handicapped from serving military duty, and frequents the gym regularly to keep strong and in shape. He joins the biking club that the victim belonged to and rides with them all over the country, learning bits and pieces that lead to solving the murderer.

Now, what are the unique hooks in this book? I see health clubs, biking, military, and travel. Those alone lead to lots of people who will love this book; however, the Marketing Rabbit Hole goes much deeper to uncover many, many more directions for the author to travel. Let’s take each unique hook and extrapolate it as far as it will go. These words are called SUPER Genre descriptive words. REMEMBER, each descriptive word must lead to a prospective audience, so words like fear, bloody, or red herring should appear in your SUPER Genre. Those words describe the emotions or elements of the story, but not prospective audiences. Okay, here goes:

• Health Clubs – gyms, yoga, hiking, spinning, cross training, healthy lifestyle, healthy eating, health food websites, healthy life bloggers
• Biking – biking clubs, bike shops, biking websites, bike enthusiast bloggers
• Military – wounded soldier recovery organizations, military family clubs and organizations, military wife bloggers, handicapped inspirational websites and organizations
• Travel – Travel clubs, travel agent websites, travel focused bloggers, bike tour websites, and bike competition websites

Now, instead of standing at the top of the Author Marketing Rabbit Hole and shouting to mystery genre lovers and mystery book clubs along with every other mystery author on the planet, you’ve just uncovered a total of 22 new targeted audiences full of people who will love your book. These are people interested in the things inside your book, and people to reach out to and connect with. These are book buyers who will become loyal fans because you reached out to them where they live—not where they are bombarded by books and author promotions all the time.

Search for these people on twitter, Facebook and in your own neighborhood. Join yahoo groups that focus on these unique hook topics. Locate these unique hook bloggers and offer to guest blog to their audience, an audience that will be thrilled and flattered to hear from an author, especially with a book that focuses on things they enjoy. Contact website owners and offer to write a monthly short article on the topic in exchange for a free add for your book and the buy link on the website. They get content; you get access to their already captive customer base. These things work! These people are interested. All you need to do is be brave enough to take the leap. If one says no, move on to the next. These approaches are loaded with your target hook lovers.

And here’s the best part—there’s not another author in sight. These audiences are all yours.
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/
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I should be sooo tired!