Tag: Joanna Penn

An Aha! Moment via Joanna Penn: Publishing vs. Marketing

Joanna Penn is so smiley and enthusiastic and knowledgeable that she always gets me inspired. This webinar was no different.

Got a sudden insight from Joanna Penn’s webinar on goals for the new year (2017):
Marketing is what you do to SELL a book.
Packaging, editing, and categorizing are what you do to PUBLISH a book.

This is almost guaranteed to be obvious to everyone else. Why was this such an eyeopener for me? Once I saw the difference, I could break down the process into smaller tasks.

A few years in the query trenches makes the difference between writing and publishing crystal clear. My idea of publishing was fuzzy: it included everything from literary agents and editors to book reviews and book signings.

Marketing decides who the likeliest readers are and sets out to win them over. When you pick out comp titles for your book, you are choosing an audience with particular tastes.

Publishing MAKES the packaging (including some baked-in marketing):

  • edits the story
  • chooses the right categories and keywords.
  • writes a book description that ticks all the right notes.
  • designs a book cover that appeals to readers and matches what your story delivers.
  • chooses formats (audio, e-book, print) and distributors that reach the story’s audience.
  • tinkers with packaging later on if the book doesn’t find its audience

Marketing USES the packaging to attract readers with:

  • book reviews
  • ads and promotions
  • blog tours
  • social media
  • sales and offers

Rachel Aaron has a fascinating, detailed post on which marketing techniques work.

So now that we’ve gotten the difference between Writing, Publishing, and Marketing straight, we can go back to writing the next book. 😉 Because that’s the strongest Marketing* technique of all.

*If you want your work to be clear cut, take up something heroic, like logging with drafthorses.

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Impossible things to try before breakfast: Bicycle Gymnasts and JINX’S MAGIC

Two gymnasts riding the same bike. One standing on 1 leg with 1 arm in the air.
Things you never knew were possible on a bike. @Jan Decher, 2015.

What makes us decide to try impossible things? A thing can call to us, but we still don’t try it. Some of it must be inborn and some must be the recognition that a thing is possible.

In Crossing Unmarked Snow, William Stafford captures the “inborn” part beautifully.

The things you do not have to say make you rich. Saying things you do not have to say weakens your talk. Hearing things you do not need to hear dulls your hearing. And things you know before you hear them those are you, those are why you are in the world.

This weekend, I went to a summer festival for the local YMCA. Three bicycle gymnasts put on a show. Most of what we saw looked impossible. How do you learn to stand (on feet or hands!) on bike handlebars while the bike circles the floor? A bicycle pivots at the handlebars. We’re talking acrobatics with traveling scissors. Generosity was so evident. The performance was free and stellar: concentration, coordination among the riders, and now I can’t even remember if there was music. I was too busy clapping.

It’s so miraculous when something impossible works. Ice skaters, musicians, dancers, and others practice and practice, but when the performance comes, it’s still miraculous. My husband said afterwards: “They have so much CONTROL over their bodies.”

The encore was a fleet of smaller bikes for kids 6-12 to try out. Little kids lined up right away. Older kids looked on regretfully from the sidelines.

I still couldn’t imagine myself doing a handstand on a moving bike, so I went to help at the used book stand. A customer handed me a stack of books and beamed.

“How much work goes into writing a book?” She smiled, shaking her head. “I can’t even imagine.”

Since I’ve been writing fiction for a long time now, I can imagine that very easily. It looks impossible when you see only the finished product. But with consistent work, a miraculous fragment or two becomes less rare.

So much so, that the audience continually raises the bar. “We’ve seen that already.” Once you’ve proved that something can be done, nothing is the same. If you want to amaze people again, you have to create something else.

This weekend, I read JINX’S MAGIC and marveled over author Sage Blackwood’s performance. I was completely immersed in the story until the very end. Not an easy feat in a sequel.

Jinx’s learning style made me think of the bicycle gymnasts. He learns magic by climbing inside a spell and seeing how it works.

The bicycle gymnasts pitted their muscle control, balance, and ability to work together against gravity, acceleration, and painful falls. They kept coming up with new twists and combinations until you were sure they were going to fall off.

What kept me reading in JINX’S MAGIC was the tension between the characters. Were they on Jinx’s side or not? Would they support him at the critical moment or let him fall? I wondered if Jinx would make the right choices for his own life and for the Urwald. It makes me want to climb into the novel and take it apart so I can see how it works.

Author Joanna Penn commented that one of her goals is to show society that it’s possible to make a living with art.

Both JINX’S MAGIC and the bicycle gymnasts showed me unexpected possibilities. You have to see that something is possible before you start walking down that road to a new adventure. It doesn’t even have to be very possible. Just imaginable.