ENTRIES TAGGED "LeanPub"
Author platforms and the Black Box Effect
A report from Author (R)evolution Day
If you’ve spent as much time reading author blogs as I have, you may have noticed a disturbing pattern. In nearly every “here’s how I did it” post in which the author explains her route to greater visibility and sales, there comes a point when something happens that the author did not plan for or expect, that puts her over the top.
I call this the Black Box Effect: the degree to which authors are still mostly in the dark about what makes their book marketing and platform-building efforts succeed. For authors to take full advantage of this incredible time in publishing we need to reduce that effect, which means we need better data, and better tools to help capture and measure the data that already exists. So I went to Author (R)evolution Day last week to see how far along we are in chipping away at the edges of that black box.
Build, Execute, then (finally) Publish
The last four steps for platform and authoring success
For the last couple of days (see part one here and part two here) I’ve been sharing what I consider the new paradigm for DIY book marketing–a kind of cart-before-the-horse strategy where you market yourself first, and then publish later.
Yesterday we looked at the planning behind this kind of marketing strategy. Today we’ll look at execution.
Heading towards marketing first, publishing later
Laying the foundation for vision, branding, and social channels
In yesterday’s article I gave you a tantalizing introduction to what I consider the new paradigm for DIY book marketing–a kind of cart-before-the-horse strategy where you market yourself first, and then publish later.
Here’s what I think it could look like for any writer approaching the publishing process for the first time. (Warning, this a 1-2 year strategy…)