Writing Success - Five Secrets To Developing A Great Writing Career
April 9th, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed
Every writer’s career has two aspects: the writing, and the marketing of your writing. It’s vitally important that you realize this as early in your writing career as possible. If you don’t, your career will languish in the doldrums. In 2007, there are more opportunities for writers than there have ever been, but you’ll only see the opportunities if you know how to look for them.
In this article, we’ll discuss five secrets which will turn you into a marketing dynamo. Please take them seriously. Apply them every day. If you do, your creative opportunities will expand, and your writing life will be fun, as well as lucrative.
Secret One: Spend As Much Time Marketing And Promoting As You Do Writing
This is the primary secret of writers who make great incomes. They market their writing extensively. Not only do they spend as much time marketing their work as they do writing, they’re aware that marketing brings them opportunities.
You have many ways you can market your writing - with a Web site, a blog, news releases, newsletters, ezines and articles. As your career develops you can even out-source your marketing.
Secret Two: Measure Your Results When You’re Marketing
You need a way to track your results. Web sites and blogs make it easy to track your site’s visitors, but you also need to make careful note of what you did and when. When you’re marketing, it’s a truism that from a standing start, all marketing activities take around three months to kick in, and to see ongoing, cumulative results.
Secret Three: Creating A Marketing Plan For Every Writing Project
You need a marketing plan for every project. Create the plan, with time lines, as you work on the project. If you’re writing an article query, have a list of magazines and Web sites to which you’ll submit the query. Then send the query out on a schedule. Give each market ONE WEEK, no longer, to consider your query.
If you’re writing a book, each step of the book’s sale needs its own marketing plan, from sending out query letters, to getting an agent, and promoting the book before it’s published, and after publication.
Secret Four: Realize It’s Not Rejection, It’s Feedback
If you’re bowled over by rejection, there’s a major benefit of marketing - if you consistently market, not only will you ignore rejections, but you’ll be completely unfazed by them. You’ll see rejections for what they are: feedback.
Secret Five: Find A Hungry Market
It’s easy to sell your writing to markets which are desperate for your words, much more difficult to sell to markets which are overloaded with material already. There are hungry markets (the Web, for one) and hungry markets make promoting your work fun and easy. However, if you’re determined to sell to a specific market, no matter how crowded it is, go ahead. You can sell your writing anywhere, as long as you spend time marketing your writing.
So, there you have it - five secrets to writing success. If you’re not having the writing success you should be enjoying, look to your marketing. You can and should be marketing as much as you’re writing. There are many benefits to marketing, and a great income is only one of the benefits. When people know who you are and what you do, you’ll be given opportunities which will thrill and amaze you. Enjoy your writing, AND your marketing.
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