Marketing yourself is like sandpapering your own skin

13 April 2023 / By Nigel Cooper

Authors are more than just writers, we’re ‘the face’ of our work. We have to market our books – and therefore ourselves. 

For me, that was the hardest thing to get used to after I signed my first publishing deal for my debut Beat The Rain. The expectation that I should build an ‘author brand’.

Despite working in digital marketing for most of my career, that was marketing other people. Being told to do it for yourself is another thing entirely.

If you’re just starting out – either ‘yet to be published’, self publishing or with small press, you’ll need to build a profile.

Here’s 5 key things to help you navigate the process.

Linked In Carousel 1: book marketing by Nigel Cooper
About The Author

Nigel Cooper

Nigel’s debut novel Beat The Rain was a semi-finalist for Best Debut Author in the Goodreads Choice Awards 2016. His second novel The Pursuit of Ordinary was a finalist in the People’s Book Prize for Fiction 2019. It was also one of the 8-12 titles ‘called in’ for the Man Booker Prize, a first for his publisher. It was also long-listed for The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize. His third novel will be released in September 2022 and is now available for pre-order. Nigel brings his own experience of the trials of getting published, building an author profile and marketing his own novels to AuthorSpark. As well as co-founding AuthorSpark, Nigel co-founded digital marketing agency and employee advocacy platform We Are Togethr alongside Andrew, alongside online content sister company Togethr Lab. Prior to that he was a newspaper subeditor and a writer and editor for Channel 4 Interactive.

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