Book Marketing for Authors
Bemidji Public Library
Date | Time
$40
No More Overwhelm!
It’s hard enough to WRITE a book, now you have to become a marketing expert, too?!
I am a writer helping other writers. My 3-hour, intensive book marketing workshop will cover everything from social media strategy, Amazon advertising tips, and digital launch parties to podcast interviews and local events. You will leave with a complete toolkit to give your book a fighting chance in this saturated market.
But here is the most important part of what I teach:
Reasonable effort
The Emily Enger Secret Sauce is all about rejecting many of the going marketing recommendations that cause burnout. Because the liberating truth is, not all of today’s vast opportunities and platforms have successful translation to the bookselling industry. Why invest time and energy into something if it doesn’t (often) work? This workshop is designed to help focus your marketing strategy so that it becomes an integrated, comfortable part of your life, not a chore or addiction.
Marketing doesn’t have to cost your soul
We are writers. We want to bring substance and beauty to the world, not trite sales pitches and manipulative money-making hacks. I believe we can honor our calling without compromise and still sell books.
Who is the workshop for?
Every writer must learn about how to build their platform. Whether you have written ten books or are still working on your debut first draft. Self-published, traditionally-published or hybrid. Fiction or nonfiction. This workshop is truly for everyone.
Publishers now expect authors to network and expand their visibility. At a recent writer’s retreat I attended, an editor from one of the Big 5 publishing houses admitted that the size of a writer’s social media following is a significant factor in whether or not a manuscript will get published by them. Whatever happened to living like Thoreau, alone in a cabin soaking up inspiration apart from the noise of society? Is that even possible for writers anymore?
I think it can be, at least to a point. Let me show you how.
My Story
I never intended to go into marketing. My degree is in English. From the age of 10, I told everyone I met that I was going to be a writer when I grew up. I didn’t quite anticipate that the college debt would come due a good deal sooner than the time it takes to write a good novel…
Thus my entree into marketing and communications. Companies appreciate someone trained to be articulate. Plus, I had taken university-level marketing classes and was an early adopter of blogs, website building and Facebook–and by that time, it was clear that an online presence was the future of sales. Many companies were eager to find a token “young person” to help connect them directly to their audience. Over the course of ten years, I worked for a mid-sized LLC in upstate New York and multiple Minnesota-based non-profits.
Eventually, the mad pace of marketing caught up to me, as is often the case in the industry. I left my job as Communications Director at a regional art center to re-fuel my personal engine. I focused on raising my babies in my cozy house in the woods. I began writing again.
To make some extra money, I took a few freelance marketing jobs, primarily specializing in “creative” or “artist” brands. My proudest success was personal: my husband’s woodworking business. With very minimal paid advertising, I used a website and organic social media reach to get his side-hustle so much exposure that he was able to quit his primary job as a news reporter. He is now a full-time woodworker.
It was through marketing an author-friend that I first noticed the substantive issues with book marketing trends. As both a writer AND a former marketing professional, I knew from personal experience that the going social media advice given to writers was bad. Not only did it have minimal chances of significant success, but the ever-engaging rat race was also the antithesis of the lifestyle a writer needs to maintain in order to keep their creative juices flowing.
Thus my desire to develop this workshop. Since freelancing for authors, my inbox has been flooded with writers asking my help to get their books seen. But with my own writing goals and motherhood duties, I don’t have the ability to take on more long-term clients. It was heartbreaking to turn them down. Instead, I decided to help teach them the tips and tricks I have learned for how to push away overwhelm and use their unique skillset to connect to their audience.