The
other day I was fretting over preparing records and documents for my
accountant, so he could file my taxes for last year. It’s an exercise I go
through annually, often spending weeks stressing over something that I can get
done in a matter of days. This is what
many of us do – not just with our taxes or life challenges, but with our book
publicity.
The
idea of promoting one’s book wears each of us down. We put more energy into worrying than in
doing something about it. Fear is exhausting – and useless. It just causes us to delay and put off what
we really need to attack. My advice to
authors is this: Stop thinking about having to promote your book and instead
apply that time and energy into actually executing a solid book publicity campaign.
We
overthink.
We
obsess and fear.
We
worry of the unknown.
We
have performance anxiety.
We
fear failure.
It’s
all a big mind fuck. Don’t buy into it.
Relax. Take a deep breath. Step back from your mental rut and let
yourself move on and start fresh.
The
way to beat back anxiety over book publicity is to get up and do something
about it. Why waste valuable time
thinking about doing something when you can make some phone calls, send some emails
and knock on a few doors? Release your
brain power to focus on strategy, not stress.
Be creative, assertive, and passionate – instead of being fearful,
indecisive, and inert.
Of
course one doesn’t stop worrying about something simply because I say so, but
perhaps you’ll take comfort in knowing the relief I felt once I stopped
procrastinating and obsessing over what I wasn’t doing (taxes). You can feel that same feeling once you move
from fear to action.
Like
any task that seems monumental, start small.
Break it up into smaller tasks.
Allow yourself to succeed at something, however insignificant it may
seem. Build on that success and grow
your confidence. Begin to fight back by
seizing control of the situation.
Lastly,
know that it’s okay to fail, and with book PR, expect to fail far more often
than succeeding. That’s just the nature
of this beast – and it’s fine. The main thing is that you cross over from
sideliner to playing on the field. You may just get lucky and see things start
to go your way.
Celebrate your wins, accept your loses, and stop living in fear.
Celebrate your wins, accept your loses, and stop living in fear.
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Enjoy New 2018 Author Book Marketing
& PR Toolkit -- 7th annual edition just released
Brian Feinblum’s insightful views, provocative opinions,
and interesting ideas expressed in this terrific blog are his alone and not
that of his employer or anyone else. You can – and should -- follow him on
Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels
much more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by
BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2018. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in
Westchester. His writings are often featured in The Writer and
IBPA’s Independent. This was named one of the best book
marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized by Feedspot in 2018 as one of the
top book marketing blogs. Also named by WinningWriters.com as a "best
resource."
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