Book
marketing is about keeping score. Do you want to win the game?
People
do things for the fun of it or because they are passionate about something.
That’s why kids play a sport or adults choose to write. But there is also a
competitive side to all of this. Kids want to win the games they play and
authors want to see their works get published, praised, and paid for.
Authors
can learn from those who play Scrabble.
There are people like my sister who are very smart and filled with a
great vocabulary, like my sister. But she loses most often to me because I
focus not on the quality of a word but the score of the word. Afterall, the
game rewards those who score the most points, not those who make nice words.
It
is the same in book publishing. Rewards don’t always come to the best written
books or the writers who work the hardest. No, compensation, fame, and
fulfillment comes for those who know how to play the book marketing game. How a
book is promoted and sold is more important than what is in the book. Now don’t
get me wrong, all things being equal, I want to see great books do well. They
deserve our attention. But the world keeps score and things don’t always add up
as you think they should.
Scrabble
scores go high when one uses certain letters with high values strategically. It
likes players who know how to take advantage of the board real estate – with double
and triple word scores. It also likes when one can build more than word at a
time, based on the juxtaposition of the letters already on the board. And
should you get an S or a blank, well, those are gold!
People
can score a lot by using words that we never use in everyday speech. There are
over 100 two-letter words that are recognized by Scrabble as legit, even though
in the real world you would never use xi, ki, or os in a conversation. What do
they even mean?
The
rules of Scrabble, like life itself, may not seem fair or reasonable, but they
are the same for everyone. The skills you need to succeed in life are not just the
ones you value, such as being a wordsmith or a great writer. No, you need to combine
your talents with a certain level of scheming street savvy to make it big in
life.
Too
often we are blocked or quarantined in our thinking. We act under a set of
beliefs as if they are rules when in fact you may be limiting yourself to a set
of morals or values that are misplaced. We all have a sense of how things
should be, but that doesn’t mean that is how they are.
The sooner you adjust to the reality of the book marketing game, the sooner you will break through.
The sooner you adjust to the reality of the book marketing game, the sooner you will break through.
PLEASE CONSULT THESE TIMELY RESOURCES
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Authors Promote Books When The Media Is Corona Centric?
Advice to
Authors From A Book Promoter of 30 Years
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Authors Selling Books Through A Pandemic?
A Book
Marketing Pandemic Playbook
What Types
of Books Can Get Media Coverage Now?
The
Bestseller Code For Book Marketers & Authors
What Should
You Do to Market Your Book?
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
©2020. 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.” He recently hosted
a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America.
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