As of two days ago, I had no clue what went into a marketing plan. I knew I needed one, I got what the term meant, but I didn’t get what practically I had to put in one.
Then a friend of mine came over. Dot, the business side of Author Peter Grant, ended up giving me a day long tutorial on marketing, covers, and a ton of other yon random stuff about the business side of things that I didn’t know.
We discussed what I could do for my releases for short stories and through this discussion she wrote down what steps I’d do when and then I asked about marketing plans. She pointed to the water bill envelope she’d scribbled all over and said, “That’s a marketing plan.”
Wait, what???
A marketing plan is everything around the release of the stories, how you promote, where your advertisement budget goes, and even your covers. My marketing plan is scheduled around short story releases, as opposed to promos for a book, and I don’t really have an advertisement budget, but I do have advertisement platforms through my author friends, my bf, and my blog.
I had a plan without even realizing it!
I will be publishing one short a week through October (because what better time to kick off an urban fantasy author career 🙂 advertising through my friends and social media, and then in November I will start releasing shorts every other week until March, leading up to the release of my first book in April.
Yikes!
So not only do I now have the release planned, I have a semi-coherent marketing plan. Mine is mostly depending on releases because I have a large back list of short stories, and on my friends who have much much bigger audiences than I do, but still depending on social media. My bf reaches up to the tens of thousands. He has a completely different market than I do, but then again, there’s some cross over and those guys have wives, sisters and girlfriends.
We touched on covers and blurbs, all of which play into marketing. If it isn’t setting up the business and it isn’t writing or editing, it’s probably marketing. The cover does nothing to the book except sell it, that’s marketing.
Taking my example into consideration, what could you do that’d go under the umbrella of “marketing plan?”
As for me, starting at the end of September, I will begin the roll out of the Evie Jones’ covers and blurbs. And as of the beginning of October, I will be a published author.
Shit just got real 🙂
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