Marketing: An Author's Perspective
Maggie Way is a bestselling author from Australia who agreed to answer some questions about her perspective on digital marketing. She wrote the Entangle Me romance series, and has a new book out entitled Heart of Thorne. To learn more, visit her website - and be sure to pre-order her latest book.
Q: At what point as a writer did you take marketing seriously and what convinced you?
A: Before I started writing, I always knew marketing was always important and is the key factor that determines the success of an author. But being on limited funds, I chose to go the slow burn route - Probably after releasing.
Q: What are the most effective channels for marketing in your opinion?
A: Mailing list, 100%. They are the people I can directly advertise to when I have a new release. But in order to keep building and growing your audience, Facebook ads are effective as you can target the audiences and customise. But it's costly, so you need to be aware it will take time and money.
Q: How does digital marketing fit it?
A: It plays a huge part - one of the primary ways self-published authors build their audience is through digital marketing. That is through mailing lists, blogs, social media and their website. Authors need, and I really mean that, to make this a priority if they will have any chance of hitting the market in their chosen genre.
Q: How important do you think maintaining a social media presence is, vs say pay per click advertising?
A: You need to be able to do a good mix of the two. When you are first starting out, pay-per-click is where you will need to shift most of your marketing budget towards but as you build your audience you can start focusing more on social media.
Q: in pay per click, how effective do you think each channel is, such as Adwords vs Amazon vs Facebook ads, for example?
A: Based on my own experiences and talking to authors (high earning and ones just starting out) Facebook is where your money needs to be. Some are starting to talk more about Amazon, but I'm not familiar with that platform. I can't comment on Adwords either but very few authors I have spoken to have mentioned using it.
Q: How important do you think it is to have your own website and some kind of mailing list?
A: Very important. A website is a must have for all authors. You need to make sure that it's intuitive, clean and easy to navigate.
Q: What do you think is the best way to gather consumer insight and channel it in back into a quality product?
A: With regards to authors, I find the best way is to through surveys. The best audience is your current one, so via mailing list and social media. Ask them what they think of the cover, send them an excerpt of your current work in progress. Lots of book marketing firms hold surveys too.
Q: What do you think the best way for an author is to strike a balance between supporting marketing efforts and staying adequately focused on writing itself?
A: That's a hard question, because as you start to gain more fans your marketing efforts will have to ramp up even more.
It takes a lot of efficient prioritising, dedication and hard work. First of all, they need to always remember why they are doing this in the first place - for the love of writing. But they have to also want to make it work more than anything, because it takes a lot of hard work, dedication and persistence.
Q: Do you think an author’s role is equivalent to a small business?
A: Very much so, especially in self-publishing. Not only do you have to write the books, but you have to take care of the costs for production - editing, proofing, cover design - and marketing. The same goes for traditionally-published authors too; look at James Patterson. He is an amazing marketer.
Q: What do you think of the idea of "focusing on what you do best, and work with others to do the rest"?
A: Focus on your strength areas, and outsource your weaknesses. Of course, my passion is my writing and I like to proof my books but I absolutely pay for a professional editor. I also outsource my marketing needs.