-
How to Package Yourself (Advice)
What you need
Here is a list of all you need. You can always add over your career.
Your Name: Sounds simple at first – but writers (and artists) can have Pen Names.
Visuals: A photo or video of you, a photo/video of your book cover. Better still to have a photo/video of you holding your book cover. That’s really it.
Audial: Speak in public. Today, recordings also really help. Any video will do just saying hi. You do not need more – but some go so far as to have their own podcast, vlogs, etc. Of course, interviews are great if you have them.
Copy: An elevator pitch, a follow up pitch, and a writing sample. Done.
(FYI: The term Copy means text written in an advertising. Every word from the headline, tagline, value statement, to legally required content is called Copy. People who write those are called Copywriters – not to be confused with Copyrights.)Here is a list of additives that can help:
Message: Maybe you have a theme in all your writing that expresses a continuous message through all of your work. For example: a writer may focus exclusively on military fiction with a message of espousing courage and valor. Two different writers may both focus in real/realistic science but have different messages of wonder and horror, respectively. A writer may focus on oppression and abuse with the message hoping to prevent these from ever happening again. Not every writer has a message.
Endorsements: Any positive reviews you get – obviously getting an endorsement from an influencer (e.g., anyone famous already) is the best kind. You CAN pay for these. Those are called Paid Endorsements. Celebs and athletes do that all the time. Authors usually cannot afford these and there wouldn’t be much point to them anyway. Maybe if you impress a famous writer but it’s not enough alone, then a beer or a good dinner might sway them.
How to do it:
Post your photo/video everywhere you can. Speak in public and share your audio clips. Repeat your pitch (and message, if you have one) as frequently as possible. Make your writing sample available (Get permission from you publisher, just in case. Some could get weird about it.)
Advertise. This just just mean pay someone to display an ad on a a website or newspaper.
The word Advertise is a compound made up of “Ad-“ and “Vertice”. “Ad-“ means to promote, encourage, push further. Adventure means to promote venturing forth into the unknown. A “Vertice” is where two paths intersect (A nexus may be any number of paths intersecting). Advertise means to promote the intersection of two people’s paths – yours, and your audience.
To advertise, you needs to meet people. Period. If you use an “advertisement” you are creating a proxy to do the meeting for you. Those can be expensive – mostly because the further away the audience is from you, the less effective those ads become. The term Public Relations (or PR for short) refers to advertising directly to the public yourself. This is more cost-effective, but because of its intimacy (or perceived intimacy) reaches fewer people.
So meet people. Shake people’s hands. Hand them business cards. Do readings. Do signings. In today’s world, the best proxies are interactive – and either delay or simulate an audience’s experience with you. Those include websites and social media.
It’s that simple.
[Please make me aware of typos or questions. Thank you.]
-
0 Replies
Sorry, there were no replies found.
Log in to reply.