17 Mar 2019

The Ultimate Guide to Writing and Marketing a Bestselling Book

I don’t know where I first saw this book - I had never heard of Dee Blick, and the title isn’t one that would naturally appeal to me. But perhaps Amazon recommended it to me, because I have bought (or added to my wishlist) so many other books about writing. The reviews were uniformly good, and although the front cover did not appeal to me at all, I found a Marketplace edition for just a pound or two, so when I was in the UK about eighteen months ago, I ordered it.

‘The Ultimate Guide to Writing and Marketing a Bestselling book on a Shoestring Budget’ is not exactly a catchy title, but sounded like the kind of thing that could be useful. I had been in the process of writing a non-fiction book for some years; we planned to self-publish, but I had almost no idea about marketing. I planned to advertise it on my (related) website, and write a blog post, and hoped - rather naively - that people would like it, and recommend it. I had no expectations of a ‘bestseller’, but thought it could be useful to read about possible marketing strategies.

I published my book six weeks ago, and started reading this book shortly afterwards. I found the first few chapters interesting; the author describes some of her own journey as she started to write books, mostly related to business. She ignored expert advice at first, but gradually learned techniques and platforms to market her books. They reached Amazon bestselling levels - although she goes on to say that if a book reaches the top hundred of any category it can be called ‘bestselling’ - and that can happen, at least temporarily, after just one or two sales.

The first part of the book is about the planning and writing process, so not particularly relevant to me any more (at least until I get going on something else) but I found it interesting, although by the time I had read three or four chapters I was getting a bit tired of the continual promotion of the author’s books. Yes, I wanted to read some of her experience, but it began to feel a bit pushy as she kept quoting titles, and using examples that weren’t relevant to me at all.

Still, there is helpful advice about writing style, beating procrastination and other suggestions. The first section is only supposed to be for non-fiction writers, but a lot of what the author suggests could be relevant to anyone. I particularly liked the check-list style summaries which are placed at the end of each chapter.

Section Two of the book begins with useful information about the ‘additional’ pages - again, nothing new to me, but a good outline of what is expected, and what can be added in addition to the main content. Chapters about editing, selecting a title and creating a good cover and layout could also be helpful to writers who are floundering, or who have not thought about these things. There’s advice, too, about pricing and the various forms of self-publishing; I didn’t read every word, as I had already got past that stage, but it seemed to offer good advice, albeit continually peppered with not entirely relevant information about the author’s career and her other books.

The marketing section - which starts in chapter 14 - was what interested me the most, but unfortunately I did not find it particularly helpful at all. This is mainly because I am not a pushy person. As a strong introvert I am not going to give talks, or radio interviews, nor am I going to contact people out of the blue to ask them to review or promote my book. I was particularly uncomfortable about the suggestion to manipulate the Amazon search engines by daily searching for and then clicking on one’s own book.

Still, the encouragement to use social media was interesting. I do use social media in a low-key way - and the chapter about Twitter made me re-look at this platform, although I have never entirely seen its use. But the more I read, the more I realised I’m not cut out to be a marketer. I am very reluctant to try to push anyone to spend money on something I have written unless they are genuinely interested!

I skimmed several chapters, missing out entirely the sections promoting the author’s books. However some chapters are written by other people. I particularly liked the one about reviewing, by Sue Magee of TheBookbag, a site I used to review books for (and may do again one day… if time allows). The chapter about blogging was a timely reminder to me to write more on my main blog, something I regularly neglect.

On the whole, I thought this book well-written and potentially useful. But I did not like the way that the book itself had a promotional style, nor the assumption that a writer will be outgoing and pushy. I would rather resign myself to occasional sales by genuinely interested people than go to the trouble of manipulating figures and wearing down people’s tolerance by reminding them continually what I am doing.

Recommended in a low-key way if you are writing (or have written) a book and have the right kind of personality to do some marketing. It could also be very useful if you would like to write a book but know little or nothing about how to go about it, and what is involved in self-publication.

Review by Sue F copyright 2019 Sue's Book Reviews

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