If your novel is good enough, it will market itself
You’ll look desperate and needy if you market your own book
If you have an agent and/or publisher, they take care of all the marketing and PR anyway.
Stop wasting your time banging on about that novel you worked so hard on for so long, you’re embarrassing yourself.
It is other people’s job to make sure potential readers know it exists, not yours.
If you think the above is nonsense, we’re on the same page.
Here’s the reality, whether authors like it or not:
- some authors have both a big 4 publisher AND a large marketing/PR budget behind their novel
- some authors have a big 4 publisher but still have very little marketing/PR budget behind their novel
- some authors have dynamic, engaged agents behind them
- some authors don’t have an agent at all
- some authors have a small or mid-range publisher who simply don’t have significant marketing budgets for their authors
- some authors have well-meaning publishers who lack modern-day marketing expertise to compete in the modern world
- some authors have publishers who still have an old-fashioned approach to marketing and PR
- some authors self-publish.
What do ALL of the above have in common? Every single one of them needs to assist in the marketing and PR effort for their novel, to a greater or lesser degree.
Authors, whether they’re trad published, self-published or yet-to-be published – need to build their own online platform and social media presence to:
- sell more books
- attract more readers
- succeed.
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.