Marketing Your Writing Without Feeling Like a Brute

by Diane Holmes, Marketing-Zone: Marketing Yourself and Your Book, founder of Pitch University.

Today, we begin slaying the real reasons you think you had marketing your writing.

There are many unconscious reasons (of the Soul Eater clan mostly) that march around your brain, chanting about how marketing feels B. A. D.

But never fear, I’m just the Marketing Slayer to drag this Brute into the daylight and stake them with Mr. Pointy

Mr PointyAuthor Marketing Angst #1 (a.k.a. The Brute Effect)

Chances are that, as you deliver your marketing message, you feel like you’re cramming it down the throat of your potential clients and readers.

You don’t feel helpful and jazzed (our definition of marketing you should be doing).  Instead, you feel like you’re having to show up with a baseball bat, brass knuckles, and the powers of darkness.

  • Buy my articles.  Really.  You need to do this.  Now!  Right now, Mister!
  • Hire me.  I’m good.  Great.  Over the top.  The best you’ve ever seen.  You need me, and I’m going to tell you why.  So, don’t interrupt.  This is very, very important.
  • Let me work for you.  You’re hiring.  I’m perfect for the job.  Read this, and this, and this.  They’re good, aren’t they?  Exactly what you need.  Very exciting.  Great topics.  Beautiful prose.  Do it do it do it do it do it….
  • Writing for sale!  Click this link.  It’s wonderful.  Really good.  You like to read, so go get this.  Pay attention as I stand on my head.  Look a unicycle.  And juggling.  And my hair’s on fire!

What’s going on when you end up feeling like a Brute.

#1  You’re not doing the right kind of marketing.  The invitation to join Brute Union was a tipoff.

#2  Secretly you believe you’re not being helpful at all.  So listen to yourself.  You actually do believe in your writing, even if you don’t remember that in the moment.  You’re here on Earth doing something you  love.  Let the love shine through.  Or the passion.  Or the inspiration, laughter, and sense of meaning.  Whatever “it” is, that’s your  ticket to marketing you love.

Yes, But How?

Here’s delightful, funny example.

Author David Murray, author of “How Sermons Work” and “Christians Get Depressed Too,” translated his worldview and approach to his topics (practical, compassionate, ability to laugh at self), into an awesome marketing tool.

He created the video below to promote his Sermons book.  He’s basically saying, “Have you ever been in this situation?”  But he’s doing it in such a unique, funny, too-true way, that you can tell he had a blast putting this together.

The bottom line is that he befriended his audience.  Take a look.

How Sermons Work from HeadHeartHand Media on Vimeo.

Nothing brute-like here.  Just a video that was helpful and left even the viewer feeling jazzed.

Demon dispatched.

In This Series So Far:

  1. Step Inside the Marketing Confessional
  2. Does Marketing Your Writing Feel Like Prostitution
  3. Marketing Manifestos To Shake You Out Of Your Rut (don’t be a lemming)
  4. Every Writer’s Marketing Dream
  5. Marketing Is Funny Stuff

Upcoming Articles:

  • Doing It For Money: Free Opinion  vs. Self Interest
  • Engraved Invitations: Genuinely Interested vs. the Unsolicited Cold Call.
  • The Big Gulf: Friends vs. Strangers
  • The Crass Factor: Humility vs. Shameful Ego
  • It Doesn’t  Even Work: Receiving Validation vs The Stink Eye
  • You’re Lying; Selling Your Writing is Different: Opinion as a Consumer  vs. The Muddle of Buy Me.
  • I’m Not Ron Popeil or Billy Mays: “I don’t know what to say” vs. Skilled Patter
  • I’m Not Even that Good: Confidence vs. Insecurity Runs Rampant

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Diane Holmes Crop 1
Diane writes two columns for Freelance-Zone: Fiction-Zone: Leaps in Fiction Mastery and Marketing-Zone:Marketing-Zone: Marketing Yourself and Your Book.

She’s the Founder and Chief Alchemist of Pitch University