Expanding Your Writing Skills Can Help You Market Your Book
January 22, 2008
A writer is a writer is a writer, right? Not quite.
You may have published a novel, non-fiction book, or e-book in your industry, but if you want to be proactive in your book marketing and promotional opportunities, you need to diversify those writing skills. Writing a book (or e-book) doesn’t mean you know how to effectively write in other specialties that can be beneficial in marketing your book.
You certainly don’t have to become an expert in every type of promotional writing available (and you won’t be able to tackle every type of writing anyway). That’s what specialists are for. But if you can take on some more of the marketing responsibility through writing, would you? If so, here are a few things you may want to learn how to write to help you promote your books (with links to resources that can help you):
- Press Releases
- Media Advisories
- Web Content (for article marketing)
- Marketing Copy (sales letters, brochures, etc.)
- Pitch Letters
- Blog Posts
How else can you stretch your writing skills to help promote your books or e-books? Share your own ideas or favorite resources.
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All Book Marketing is a blog on book marketing and book publicity, run by publicist and online PR specialist Jennifer Mattern.
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:25 pm
A good few years ago, the actor Dustin Hoffman was lured over to the UK to play Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and a film crew, typically enough, followed his progress. One would have imagined the acclaimed method actor would have had little problem absorbing himself in such a part but he found himself ill equipped and I remember clearly at one juncture Hoffman goes over to the film crew, looks the camera lens full in the eye, and said, “This is hard. This is bloody hard.”
The same happened when Alison Moyet – known in the trade as “The Voice” – got the chance to sing some opera; she was totally unprepared for what was being asked of her.
I’ve written fiction since I was thirteen but very little non-fiction. I found writing a blog, even one that only appears twice a week, quite a task; the time constraint alone was daunting and it’s taken me several months to get into the swing of it.
Having looked over things like pitch letters and press releases I’m starting to realise that this is a whole different ball game and maybe one I’m not suited to. That said, the Web is awash with how-to sites, a little too many for my tastes because you can become swamped with information (as I did with SEO) if you’re not careful.
January 29th, 2008 at 9:16 am
Great post, many do not understand the necessity to understand that not all writing is the same, especially when your talking about online marketing copy.
Great resource!
Thanks!
Maria