30-Minute Marketing: How to Sell Your Book and Have Time to Write

This is not for a writer who has one book--and that's it. Sell the one book. This is not for writers who are full time authors. You may very well allocate more time to marketing.

If you are a writer who also has a full-time job that pays the bills and must juggle time commitments, then consider the 30-minute option--taking 30 minutes a day to market, leaving time to write.

You're looking at the key element of the 30-Minute Marketing plan. Time yourself.

Yes, this will limit your time, and you will have to focus and use time efficiently.

(I now have 17 minutes.)

E-mails, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Smashwords, Book Country, Authonomy, Query-Tracker, YouTube, online news--choose with a surgeon's precision.

Why are you online? What will you accomplish? Whom are you interacting with? Or just blow 30 minutes--but then move to your writing.

Before you inaugurate this procedure, here are some preliminary steps:

1. Connect. Have your blog automatically fed to Twitter, Goodreads, your Amazon author site, to your LinkedIn profile. This will automatically extend the time you spend with your online community.
2. Assign particular days to particular sites: One day a week sending out a query for a book review of your novel. Ten minutes three days a week on discussions. One day a week on an author site like Book Country or Authonomy. Yes, of course that's not enough. But the sky won't fall, Chicken Little!
3. Separate marketing time from personal online time. How you deal with personal, recreational time online is up to you. Time it, swim in it, go for it, eliminate it--but think about it and make a decision about how you are going to deal with it. Don't mix the job of marketing with the social activity of online interaction with your friends--however you define that word.

OK, 2 minutes left. I'll try this out and keep you informed. Just gave myself 5 more minutes for proofreading and revision. By the way--that timer in the photo (with the obnoxious alarm) I just bought today.

Copyright 2011 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved