🥇🥈🥉December prize-giving
A round up of the best book marketing (adjacent) advice I've found on the internet this month
Hello, and welcome to a round up of the best pieces of book-marketing advice I’ve read this month 🥇🥈🥉 I hope you’ve all had a fab Christmas and have squeezed in plenty of whatever it is that you love. I’ve been binging old box sets and films I’ve watched a hundred times as there’s something about this time of year that makes me crave familiarity.
First of all, an update…
I missed my target by a mile…
At the end of October I decided to set myself a target of hitting 1k free subscribers by the end of 2024. At the time I had just over 700 free subs so needed to find 300 more people who wanted to learn how to use Instagram to promote their books, or build an audience, over the remaining two months of the year.
It was a tall ask: my average free subscriber growth rate is around 50 per month, so finding 300 in two months was going to be… a challenge.
As I’m writing this (on 28th December) I have 910 free subscribers and I’ve missed my target by 90 - a healthy 30% below what I had aimed for.
So, am I disappointed?
Well, on the one hand, no, not really. 200 more readers did join me here, which is double the number who would probably have found me if I hadn’t pursued that arbitrary goal.
Then again, maybe a little, because how nice to say, TA DAA! I HIT MY GOAL 🥳
But then again-again, that excitement would last around 3 minutes, and what would it actually mean?
Would it tell me anything about the value of the work I’m doing with writers and authors? Or is the value better measured by the feedback I receive from people I already work with?
Would it make me happier? haha, imagine.
Would it change anything about what I’m doing here? Nope. My clients’ and members’ needs guide my decision-making here. What they’re struggling with is often what lots of writers are struggling with and I use that data to inform the support I offer.
Would it make a difference to how many people join my membership, or sign up for 1-2-1 support with me, (which helps me pay my bills)? Well, maybe, eventually. But the conversion from free-to-paid often takes time (if it happens at all) and my 1-2-1 services are fully booked, so again, WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Truth is, the number MEANS NOTHING unless I make it mean something.
And I’ll get to 1000 one day 🤷🏻♀️
Now for what you came for ;-) my fave three pieces of online book marketing (adjacent) from this month…
🥇 First prize goes to this reel from anti-capitalist business coach bearhebert_
For some reason I can’t embed the actual reel but if you click here you will (I hope) be taken to the post that is an ABSOLUTE BANGER of an explanation of why you might feel uncomfortable about marketing your book (and it’s less than two minutes long #WINNING).
If that link doesn’t work, click through to her Instagram account here, and the reel is currently on the second row on her reels grid 💃🏻
🥈 Second prize goes to this article from : Is BookTok Past It’s Peak?
For a while I’ve been making the argument that BookTok should be viewed as part of a menu of marketing options that exists for authors to choose from, rather than a silver bullet (which, frankly, has seemed to be the publishing industry’s attitude to BookTok since it blew up in 2020).
Suggesting BookTok is The Thing that will transform the sales trajectory of every book flattens the landscape of different genres and audiences and does not best serve authors who also have preferences about how you ‘show up’.
Have a read of this article for a thoughtful take on how BookTok is evolving, which might help you decide whether it’s the platform for you.
🥉 Third prize goes to who wrote about reframing ‘marketing’ as ‘connection’
Anyone who has spent any time reading any of my stuff, or scrolling my Instagram account, will know this is one of my favourite reframes so I am immediately invested as soon as I see someone else - especially an author, rather than a marketing bod - walking this walk.
ICYMI
In the first few weeks of 2024 you might remember there was a flurry of ‘I’m quitting Instagram’ posts that went relatively viral here on Substack.
To be clear, I have NO desire to convince anyone to use Instagram, BUT as we’re approaching that time of year again, and I’m predicting we’ll see another sprinkling of those kinds of posts, I thought you might find my responses useful (basically, I spend too much time thinking about these things so you don’t have to ;-).
In brief, my position is that if you’re thinking of/ already using Instagram to find more readers for your book, or to build a platform for a future book, it’s important to think about more than what you’re going to post about.
It’s important to be mindful of the space we make for Instagram in our lives, and to be proactive about how we confine it to those spaces.
You can read more about my thoughts here:
And, while we’re on this subject, you might also be interested in this one if you missed it the first time around 😉
You deserve a million subscribers!
Thank you so much for the mention, Nicola. I'm actually delighted about this. I've taken time off completely this Christmas and New Year, to take a step back, to continue to reframe, to be able to start again on 6th January with an approach that will be much more on my own terms and what works for me. I've signed up now as well, so looking forward to getting further inspiration from your posts.