How to Market and Publish Shakespeare Style, Part 6 of 10

Welcome to all who are new and to all who comment, great to have you here. As you can see the font is a bit different, but that is more to do with my beloved Internet access. To speak of marketing challenges. It seems to be a thing of big cities where you have Internet… wait I’m supposedly in a big city. Oh well. It could be worse, at least there is such a beast as Microsoft office. It will be come and go for the next little while, but I’m thinking about all of you! What about Marketing with challenges, the book isn’t selling and things are harder than they look?

It isn’t hard to feel a bit angry or discouraged, after all as writers we have a vision and belief that all will turn out well. We wrote the book, we were passionate about it, and bang! Nothing happens. You’re publisher doesn’t print out that many books, it takes a lot longer to get the book finished, there are days when the passion isn’t there. It isn’t writer’s block, more like marketing block.

So what would say Shakespeare or Tolkien do? Easy, write something else. Work with what there is with your most recently published book and enjoy it. It might be temporary. In modern times, keep writing a blog, and go for writing classes, just get you name out there. These two men were constantly writing, making connections with their fellow writers, and more important, the readers and viewers of their work. They, as we do, needed to make those connections.
The way they did this was doing what they did best, write, and write and connect some more. This was their backup plan. They would write to readers, and take interviews, with Shakespeare, this was with royalty, who might give him more money to stage another play or commission him to write another sonnet. For Tolkien it meant writing and teaching and work with the Inklings. All this is a part of marketing. Some days it’s not fun, but it is a needed thing.
I have the new mentor groups up, and we’re getting into things, so here’s to novels from some very passionate and powerful writers, many whom you will see guest blogging here. This is all a part of connections and of people and passion. We want our books to succeed and to do so in the best possible light. I’d love to have the power of Tolkien and his books, but I also want my books to succeed on their own terms.

My Question for you today is this: If you publish a book and it doesn’t do as well as you’d hope what will you do to make it a success?