Be True to Yourself

I recently participated in ALLi’s SelfPubCon, which focused on the business side of writing. There were sessions on using social media, monetising YouTube, website design, using AI for marketing … I watched video after video that made my brain turn off. Video after video teaching me how to cash in on the advertising deluge we all suffer from online. How do you get those irritating ‘commercials’ into your YouTube videos (so you can make money on them)? How do you use Facebook Ads? How do you cash in on third-party advertising on your website?

Ugh!

I hate the constant bombardment of ads for crap no one needs. Do I really want to be a part of that, even if it can make my writing business profitable? Is that really why I write—so people’s interest in my writing can sell salad spinners, ‘miracle’ weight loss pills and erectile dysfunction products?

I despaired until I stumbled across a session on selling physical books. The panelists in this session talked about selling books at markets and fairs, doing school visits, exploring unusual sales outlets like tourist destinations, how to encourage people to buy your books face-to-face.

Yes! This was my kind of marketing. The kind of marketing I’ve been focusing on in the past year. Talking to people, talking about my books, being in the same physical space with potential readers, watching how people interact with my books. Getting that personal connection with readers in the real world.

Start talking to me about SEO, CTR, and ACOS, and my eyes glaze over. But throw me into a room with a bunch of potential readers, and I’m all over it. Watching the session on physical book marketing, I finally realised that it’s not that I can’t understand the online marketing game, it’s that I don’t want to.

Making money from random pop-up ads in my online content goes against my values. Putting my own random pop-up ads in someone else’s online content goes against my values. Bombarding potential readers online every day goes against my values.

And that’s okay.

I don’t have to participate in that madness.

And, yes, perhaps if I had to pay all my bills with my writing, I would feel differently, because god knows it’s hard to make a living selling books at markets. But I like my day job. And while I would love to write full-time, I know that I gain a lot of writing benefit from my day job. I would be a poorer writer without it.

And if making art is about expressing yourself and your values, then why wouldn’t your marketing reflect that as well?

Indeed, how could I, in good conscience, make money from plastic widgets advertised on my website when my books and stories contain so many environmental themes? 

So I will continue to trot out my books at local markets, beside other local artists. I’ll continue to work on the board of the Tamariki Book Festival to help other authors do the same. I’ll chat with readers, listen to grandparents talk about the sorts of books their grandkids like to read, discuss dragons and my favourite dragon books with kids, hand out stickers and bookmarks, visit schools and tell children how hard writing is even for me. And I will sell a few books, sign people up for my newsletter (people who actually want to hear from me), and probably end up spending half what I’ve earned buying art from others. 

Is that so bad?

Sounds perfect to me, because it is much more aligned with my values. It values personal connections and supporting others. It recognises the value in the art itself, rather than measuring the value of the art in terms of what else can be marketed alongside it.

And maybe I won’t ever be able to support myself with my writing. But I will be true to myself.