While on a family
vacation at Cape Cod, we happened upon a cool beach on the bay side of a town
called Orleans. It's one of those beaches where, during low tide, the water recedes
far off shore, exposing many dry sandbars with areas of water no higher than a foot
in between them. At the lowest point, I must have walked out three-quarters of
a mile from shore. Four and a half hours earlier, all of that was covered in
water. It was a beautiful, natural sight. The sun shined brightly, the wind cooled
you, and the rare site of the transformation of a beach was just stunning.
I have visited upon many
beaches, including those of Southern California, Florida, Long Island, and
Connecticut, but this scene is one of the more remarkable ones. Rarely do we
get to see such a changed landscape over a mere few hours. One minute you see
water by the shore extending far out beyond the limits of your eyes. A few
hours later, thousands of feet of from the shore, no water is to be found. It
looks like an optical illusion.
This beach offers some
lessons with our effort to market books. In fact, I have these five lessons to
share:
1. Things can change, sometimes quickly. Just as
the beach could look a lot different in just a few hours, so can the book
marketing landscape. You need to see beyond what's in front of you and know
that a whole other world exists below the surface.
2. Do nothing is static. We are always moving from
low tide to high tide and vice versa. So too is this true with the book marketing
world. Things are always in motion, forever changing. Nothing stays the same
for long. Be ready to seek out opportunities that may not be apparent now but could
come to fruition shortly.
3. Be ready to make adjustments to what you do. Think
of how the whole ecosystem shifts with the direction of the tide. Fish, plant
life, and oxygen levels change when the water momentarily rises up and again
when it's flows back in. Your book marketing needs to be as fluid and
responsive to changing circumstances and opportunities.
4. Try to anticipate changes and see things as they
could be, not just as they are. You can look out at a certain time of day and see
that the land is clear and dry and then later see it is filled with water. You
know, thanks to science, exactly what time which circumstance will exist, so you
have the benefit of knowing for a fact exactly how things will be. With book
marketing. you need to put the clues together and anticipate what could happen
next and then proceed forward as if things will line up a certain way.
5. Pace yourself. Do what you can, when you can. If
I wanted to walk out in the water, I would only get so far before I have to
swim. But when it is low tide, I can walk much further before I have to swim. Know
when the conditions are optimal to do whatever activities are needed for you to
succeed at marketing your book.
You don't dig a well
once you're thirsty. You plan and prepare. You anticipate. It is the same with book
marketing. Seize upon the opportunities your landscape is bound to provide, and
when those options ship with the tide, move on in.
Perhaps a bonus lesson
one can take away from the beach is that we are reminded of how beautiful the
world ism and that sometimes we simply need to rest, relax, and do nothing but
play in the sand. Sometimes you’ll even find a beautiful seashell – and see an
amazing sunset!
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