Let’s talk about what you can do for your writing career while we’re all stuck at home, in between the homeschooling and the stress and the baking (we’re all baking right now, right?), when life is totally upside down for the foreseeable future.
What if you have a book coming out soon? Is now the right time to promote?
YES.
We need your words and romance’s hopefulness more than ever now. I hope when this crisis is all over, people recognize how much art, of all sorts—books and TV and movies and crafting, etc. etc.—got us through all of this, so that the arts get more attention and money thrown at them.
In the meantime, however, one good thing about promoting your books right now is that everyone is on social media more than ever, desperate for connection and entertainment. So let’s find the bright side here (I’m a relentless optimist, you guys): this is a great opportunity to promote the hell out of your book on social media. Have eye-catching graphics, show potential readers why they’d love your book, and talk it up. Connect with those potential readers wherever they are (Facebook? Insta? Twitter?) and start developing connections and turning them into fans who will review and recommend to others.
How to promote right now
Lots of writers lately have been putting their books on sale or for free so people have stuff to read during the pandemic, and I’m super grateful for that—my TBR overfloweth. If you have the backlist and the ability to do that, awesome! If you don’t, then, you can still promote your work. (Do not put your book free if it’s the only one you have so far. Get your money, babe. Once you’ve got another book or two under your belt, you can play with price. Can you maybe do a giveaway instead?)
No matter if you lower your prices or not, build those marketing skills. Foster relationships with your readers, and respond to everyone who sends you a tweet or a comment and get connection and conversation going. Make sure your graphics are on point (use Canva or something like BookBrush). Grab readers with a killer hook in your blurb. We all know how much romance readers respond to tropes, so highlight the tropes that you’ve used in your book to grab their attention. (You can grab my Romance Tropes Guide to help you with that!) Or use quote cards with an intriguing graphic and a quote from the book that will leave readers wanting more. Think outside the box too—now is a great time to experiment and innovate in your marketing efforts!
You need these marketing skills now and when this is all over, so you might as well work on them. Especially when the time and headspace for writing may be at a premium (or non-existent), working on the marketing side takes a different kind of creativity than writing and doesn’t have to take terribly long, and you can feel like you’re doing something for your writing career while (hopefully) having some fun.
As much as it’s hard to create during this time of intense stress and disordered routines and total lack of time in a timeless existence (what day is it? WHO KNOWS. Last week feels like 80 years ago), I hope you can keep your creative muscles flexing so that you can be ready to write when inspiration and free time collide. Especially right now where the big-picture stuff feels very much out of our control, grasping on to things that we can control can feel really satisfying. And these things don't have to be big, like knocking out 10K words a day. (Let’s be real, most people can't do that when things are normal.) Recording notes to yourself about your project on your phone while the kids play, watching other people create and feeling inspired by them (here's an IG post that I did a while back about how a reality show helped my own creativity), and working on the other, non-writing parts of your writing career all count as useful ways to stay on your game during this time.