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Today’s marketplace actually favors a self-published author who has an entrepreneurial streak.
As more people read news online, and as print journalism begins to fade (faster than you might expect), it’s also likely that more people will also be buying e-books than print copies. Books in paper form will always be around, I believe, especially since brick-and-mortar bookstores remain something of a force in publishing and retailing, and many authors want their books to be sold in bookstores as well as online.
But authors have more power than before, when it was just print. The writer-author who has managed to build the kind of fan base that enables him or her to build a business through books might also turn to publishing the work of authors. And for your own books, once you have your audience, have built your marketing platform, then the distribution of your book is fairly simple, at least electronically. But book-distribution services are more likely to welcome entrepreneurial authors than before. It’s in their interest, just as it is in the interest of traditional publishers, to work with self-published writers.
But how to begin? How to find that audience? You begin with your idea, of course. And then you attract your audience. Let’s say you haven’t yet written your book, or it isn’t yet in its final stages. What you do is join a conversation with your tribe. Through social media. Gather feedback to help you steer your book. Rework your audience-guided book and edits it according to the feedback you receive. (I’m talking here about nonfiction books – authors of wildly popular genre fiction, such as romance or erotica, know almost immediately what interests readers.)
Just as there are many options for self-publishing now, there are many ways to get your message out through the explosion of social media sites. Beyond Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and Instagram are many others that have the potential to give you access to an eager audience.
But you have to be aggressive to get the hang of reaching your audience effectively. You have to take your career into your own hands. If you build a sizable fan base your book will sell well and if that’s what your goal is you can then market it to traditional publishers. In any event, just as the writer is the creator and propagator of his or her ideas, the entrepreneur is a creator of business.
We’ll explore this further in the next post.
