Marketing 101
Matt: [00:00:00] Welcome everybody to write Out Loud the podcast about storytelling, writing, authoring all the creativity type of stuff that we do when we try to tell stories to each other. And of course, I am Matt Cassem, and this is the fabulous and the amazing, and the wonderful and the adorable
Christina: Christina,
Matt: Christina.
Christina: I don't, I mean, I, I feel like I need some fanfare with my name because it's like you have all of these wonderful things you're saying about me, and then it's like, Christina,
Matt: I be like,
Christina: oh yes. feel like I introduce you sometime in the Wonderful. It's fabulous. The charming, the effervescent, Matthew
Matt: See, being around you is all I need. So we are talking today about just some of the marketing types of stuff that you do as a writer, as an [00:01:00] author, as somebody trying to get your name out there. Even as a filmmaker, as a TV producer, there's a lot of marketing things that kind of go into getting not only your story out there, but your name out there as well.
And I think, you and I talked this before we started recording and what, what did you kind of call it?
Christina: Well, I wanna clarify. The word things is really not what it is. It is one thing. One thing. No. I, I actually, when I talk to my clients about it, I call it marketing one oh one, and I'm gonna teach you marketing 1 0 1 and there is only one thing that you have to know. One or as some of the comedians say you had one job.
One. So you as a writer have one job and it is your best marketing tool. And that is,
Matt: can, I guess what it is,
Christina: yeah. You can guess what it is.
Matt: can I guess what it is?
Christina: You can guess it is.
Matt: Is it [00:02:00] figuring out the best SEO for the
Posting for your story on like Amazon or anything? No, no.
Christina: Yeah. No. The correct category for your book. No.
Matt: Right, Now, not it,
Christina: no, no, no, no, no. I, I will say this, until they are putting me in a grave. You are number one job. The only thing that you have control over, the only thing for marketing is writing a good book, and it's the only thing that you need. You can try all of the things. You can throw a million dollars into marketing, but if you do not have a good book or things just don't work out. Which they do because, one minute you can this is the next thing in marketing. So there's been newsletters.
tina--she-her-_1_01-08-2024_191003: You've gotta have a [00:03:00] newsletter. There's been you've gotta take out Amazon ads. You've gotta take out Facebook ads. Oh, the thing that makes you now is a book bub. Yeah, BookBub feature deal, or a Kindle Daily deal, or, an Apple feature. All of those things can work and have worked, but they may not always work.
But what is guaranteed is if you have a well-written book, if you have 10 well-written books. What that means is when someone finds you and they love your book. They will A come back to you for more, which means if you've got those 10 books out there, you've sold another nine or B, they will buy your next book that comes out so you'll actually get more, of that front list action, which is great.
But really it is about having a [00:04:00] good book. Representative of you and your writing, that when anyone finds it at any given time, that means when that BookBub featured deal hits, even though you've had 10 other BookBub feature deals, this one hits, the, the world just stands up and listens. So what I mean by this, the best example is Colleen Hoover.
Colleen Hoover has consistently written best book after best book, after best book, after best book. And at any point someone finds her, they buy up the rest of the books. But this new thing came out, this new trend, the BookTok. Yes. And suddenly, suddenly all of her backlist was on the bestseller list Again, not just her newest book, not just, the newest release, but all of her backlist.[00:05:00]
That's because she wrote consistently and repeatedly and just kept putting one foot in front of the other. And when something hits, you're ready for it. You're ready for And again, the thing is you can continue to write good book after good book after good book. And maybe you're just not being seen you're not hitting the right promo.
What, what have you. A lot of this is what some people call luck, but what I believe in luck is what, Oprah used to say is luck isn't happenstance. It is , preparedness, meets opportunity. So what that means to me in the book world, a good book gets read. Then that person just like shouts it to the world, oh my God, I read this really great book and everybody's gotta read it, and I've gotta go back and [00:06:00] buy their nine other back lists that I, I missed the first time around.
And really, that's the only thing that you have control over. And I would argue that if you spend more time writing a good book. That when you get that opportunity, your preparedness for that opportunity is actually going to do even better than your expectations. It may not happen with your first book or your second, or your third or your fourth, or even your 10th, but at some point, another example beyond Colleen Hoover is Kristin Ashley. So this predates independent publishing indie publishing, self-publishing, the Amazon world, apple, all of the eBooks.
Matt: Sure.
Christina: She would submit her work to New York and get continually [00:07:00] rejected. Now, I don't know numbers, I don't know how many books she sent in how many years.
She continued to write, but the point is she continued to write. And when this thing called Self-Publishing came along, she had a stack of books she had written. That she published that maybe didn't quite catch on, the first year, second year, but at the point she's at right now, man, she has to be making six figures a month.
Has to be making,
Matt: Yeah.
Christina: but she's also got, I mean, that when we're talking about a boatload of back list now, I mean, she's gotta have 40 books out. 50 books out. Yeah. But again. She didn't publish, but she kept on writing and she kept on writing good, consistent stories. And so when she finally was able. To publish them herself and, too bad for New York.
Now [00:08:00] they're paying for it and paying for it, I mean, giving her million dollar contracts. Yeah, I absolutely, like I said, I don't know personal facts and figures. But I, I would not hesitate to say she's, she's making very good money month to month. Through self-publishing. Yeah. And, and through New York now.
But again, it comes down to she persisted. She didn't quit. She believed in herself and she wrote great stories.
Matt: Mm-Hmm
Christina: So again, her marketing scheme, I don't know that she had one other than, you know what, I've written these books and New York doesn't want 'em. I'm gonna self-publish.
Matt: Right.
Christina: by the way, if Kristen Ashley is, is listening, please come on the show.
Talk about how your journey went and talk about some of these things, to encourage these writers just to, to keep going, but keep going [00:09:00] in a way that, so. On the other end of the spectrum, and this is really from where this whole idea comes from, is and I'm not going to name names and you can write me and tell me as much as you want to talk about who these people are, but people I have worked with in the past that have had million dollar contracts with New York, and this is a known fact that stopped writing good books.
They were phoning it in because they didn't feel that they needed to improve the writing. They didn't feel I've made it is what they felt, and I know it all. So I'm just going to write my stories and turn them into my editors and and of course. Maybe many don't know this, but New York editors aren't there for the actual editing process.
You get a copy editor and you may, you may get [00:10:00] an editor who says, can you, this isn't got a plot hole here, a plot hole there, but most of them are in meetings. They're in marketing meetings, getting you a great cover, getting you, getting you some marketing, you know how to use your marketing dollars.
They're, they're doing the business side of things. That's what New York editors are for. So your job again, you have one job. Write a good book. Write a good book.
Matt: I love it. what do you say to somebody who says, okay, well that's my job and I can do that. But when I get to the, 10th, 11th book that I've written, and it's not just catching on, like, what the hell am I supposed to do? I'm, how do I, do I get my name out there?
Christina: So I can't see. This is, this is why the rest of it is out of your control. It is out of your control because you cannot predict what the market is doing right [00:11:00] now. The market is so super flooded with books. I mean, the numbers are astronomical and I, again, I wish I had more accurate numbers but an author told me recently it's something like 11,000 or a hundred thousand books published every single day, and then you times that by 365.
I mean, that's millions of books a year. And so, yeah, and so the thing is you kind of have to quantify that, if your book is ranked at 350 compared to, 250 million books that are out there,
Matt: Mm-Hmm
Christina: doing pretty good.
Matt: mm-Hmm.
Christina: So, so yeah. So you do have to be objective about where the market is at and, and I would say for other marketing things as you introduced that, I would talk about other marketing things.
Try everything. Throw the spaghetti at [00:12:00] the wall. If this is what's working now, give it a shot. If this is what's working now, give it a shot. But if I tell you what's working tomorrow, it's not.
Matt: Mm-Hmm.
Christina: So that's what I mean by the one thing that you can control is writing a good book and the things that, the thing is, how you do that is fully in your control and not just the writing of the good book.
So the person that's still, trying to find their footing after 10 books. I can't say that that's the writing either, because I think sometimes it just takes that long. It takes that long for someone to find the book that makes it go viral. And maybe going viral isn't the goal anymore. Maybe it's just building that backlist.
And again, something that's perhaps a little bit of a misconception is that you make your money [00:13:00] off of your new release. And while you may make a good chunk of change, the idea is that your backlist is your bread and butter. So the thing is, you can have one new release and that if you have every fan in the world, they buy that one book.
You know you're making. Millions of dollars, no problem. Okay? But that's not the way things go. You have to build it fan by, fan by fan. So you've got all your fans that have bought all your previous books, buying that front list, the new release, but the thing is the new person that's sliding in and finding that new release, you want that book to be so good that they go back and buy the other nine that you have released and someone buying nine books.
Versus someone buying one book. That's where your bread and butter is. Your bread and butter in that backlist. So again, that only reinforces what I said about writing a good book. [00:14:00] 'cause if you write a good
Matt: Mm-Hmm.
Christina: the people go, where have you been all my life. Go back and, buy the back list. So continuing to build that back list, that is what is in your control.
The only other thing I will add to writing the good book that I think is a good component that is highly overlooked is to be you
Matt: Mm-Hmm.
Christina: to write, you write the story the way you want it to be written, the way you wanna tell it. I mean, the thing is you can hear. People say, okay, vampire novels, overdone, motorcycle club books, Ugh, way overdone.
But the thing is, if you've got a neat idea, a new twist on it, why not? Because you have a different voice, you have a different background, you have a different, story to tell. It's like what we've said with ai. AI is missing that human component. It's also missing the U [00:15:00] factor. The U factor of what you've been through in your life goes into your writing. what people connect to. So that's important too, is, is being you, writing you everything else, there's other things that you can add to the, you have one job, write a great book. Have faith in yourself. Believe in yourself. Have confidence in your writing. The, the things that you can control is how to become a better writer.
I. And I think that's another topic that I wanna discuss another time. But essentially you, the, the worldwide web is full, full of writing tools and things to help you get better. The other thing of course is, hire a good editor a developmental editor, a content editor, someone who's [00:16:00] gonna work with you on those things about your writing.
If you wanna improve your writing, don't just hire a copy editor, 'cause they're, they're gonna fix the grammar and the, the spelling and the punctuation and things like that. And that is great. That is also important. But if you're not at your writing goals, then continuing to get better.
'cause remember that story about those, New York Times bestselling authors with multi-million dollar contracts with New York. If they don't work on producing the best story, then as every reader can attest to, the, if the quality of work isn't there, then people stop. Reading every single book
Matt: That may your only only million dollar contract.
Christina: Yes, yes. Yeah. I don't, I don't know that it happened with like the first million dollar contract. These, these authors that I'm thinking of are people that had, multi [00:17:00] contracts, different publishers, multiple publishers. I think, I think on one hand it was maybe them themselves spreading themselves too thin.
Matt: Mm-Hmm.
Christina: If, if you know that you're a , one book a year writer, then that's what you need to stick to. If you're a one book a year writer and you promise three different publishers, five different books, you're, you're in a shit load of trouble. You're either gonna be, late.
On those books, which isn't good because then you lose your placement for printing, you lose, I, I don't know if they have penalties, but maybe you have some penalties, monetary pen penalties that you don't, necessarily wanna pay. But at the end of the day, you have to know. How you write and not spread yourself too thin and not, I think that's another, another thing, another marketing trend is writing as many books as quickly as possible.
I mean, it would be [00:18:00] great if you can write a good book quickly. But I don't, I don't know too many writers that can, Kristen Ashley can. But sometimes too, you get a. One that maybe you didn't like as well as the other ones.
Matt: sure. It just goes off.
Christina: Yeah. But that also be taste.
Matt: It's interesting too because there's a couple of things that I've read recently about that kind of fit into this too, and I think, when you think about the marketing side of things and you think about the fact that you've written these great stories, right? We're just gonna assume for the moment that all of the stories in the books that you've written are solid, amazing stories.
Christina: Fantastic. Yes..
Matt: Just amazing. The other piece about the marketing and this, this whole blog was about how do you continue to get an audience. To wanna, to wanna listen, whether it's a podcast to want to read your book because you've written, watch your TV show and they, they talked about this thing called the curiosity gap
Christina: Mm-Hmm.
Matt: and you want to [00:19:00] really hone in. On asking questions that the audience wants to really wants to know the answer to. Do these things from a marketing standpoint that make them curious because they're gonna want to find out the answer because it's just human nature. We're all a little bit nosy and when we find out that there's this question that we, we don't have the answer to, and it's, it's an intriguing enough premise. Then we wanna follow it, right? So learning how to do that, I don't know what the answer is. I can't tell you what that is, but you, that's something that if you spend some time honing that ability to. Really address that curiosity gap and really find the find the ways to, to kind of draw in people.
Then you'll do really well. But I think the other trap that writers often fall into when it comes from a marketing standpoint, and it's really more of a pre-planning kind of thing, right? When you're writing, you're getting ready to put this book together, you start thinking, it's happened to me. You start thinking, I want a book that everyone wants to [00:20:00] read.
No, you don't. You really, really don't.
Christina: No.
Matt: going to take you for freaking ever to try to write that book.
Christina: Yeah.
Matt: You, you want a core audience of people that you are speaking to.
Christina: Yeah.
Matt: I'm writing this book for this, for, for me, certainly first and foremost, but this is the audience that I envision will enjoy this book, and it doesn't have to be a huge grand audience.
thousand people is enough.
Christina: Yeah. And here's, here's the key to that audience. Okay? You don't have to figure out what audience you're writing to, if you write it for yourself. Because you are part of an audience, you are part of a fan base, you are part of what you enjoy to, reading. There is a fan base for it. So if you are writing something, you would enjoy reading.
You've gotta build an audience. Your job then is to find that [00:21:00] audience. So that's more the marketing that is more outside of yourself, the, the marketing that's in yourself. Is you, your story that you wanna tell and tell it in the best way possible. Once you have that accomplished, then you just fi need to figure out, okay, where is my audience and how do I find them?
And again, that's why I hesitate to say, here's what's working now. Because I swear to God, I'm not kidding when I say, oh, just yesterday I was talking about this. And then guess what? Someone told me today, it's not working. I mean, it's just, it's ridiculous. I think the one thing that I will say that with marketing, for me that's always worked is keeping it close to your story.
And what I mean by that is let's use the example of like Harry Potter. Okay. Not that you can get this. [00:22:00] Big, right away. But think about the marketing around Harry Potter. She didn't allow for, just anything in the beginning, she was very, very careful on where she sold the rights to.
And the things that were being produced, you wanna stay in line with your stories. So marketing things like jelly bellies to be Bertie Bott's, every flavor, beans, oh my God, that went over fantastic because who didn't wanna try? And then get bad flavors and, that was, know, totally cool. So that's the type of marketing that I'm talking about.
So it would have to be specific to your story, I do think marketing 1 0 1 stuff that always works is, freebies, giveaways, I am a proponent of offering books for free, and specifically when you have a good backlist
Matt: Mm-Hmm.
Christina: to follow it up with. So [00:23:00] you, you've got a five book series.
I. Put the first book for free as much as you can. Not always, not a hundred percent free, maybe not permafree but have it for, the daily deals, the Kindle deals, the Apple deals, the Cobo deals, the book bubs, the, whatever. If someone is, some, a like author is doing a promo and you can give away your book for free.
Those are fans that maybe would be interested in you and they give you a shot for free. So I am a proponent of, if you've written a good book, give it away for free, for whatever timing. Like I said, I'm not necessarily saying Perma free but there are some people that swear by Perma Periphery too.
So, but again, it all comes back to the one thing. If you've written a good book that's gonna, draw them in for the rest of your stuff, then you're, you're giving one book away for free, but you're making money [00:24:00] on, five, 10 others. So,
Matt: absolutely. Yeah. I'm, I'm having a really good time actually on. On threads. There's a author who has just put out one of his books and he's really talking a lot about the process where he's, going to Barnes and Noble and he is going to all these stores and actually like signing copies of his book, right.
Christina: Yeah
Yeah,
Yeah.
Matt: He has, he's a teacher as well, so he is got students that literally show up with his book on, on their desk saying my God, love this book and now it's gonna be my book report for the quarter or whatever. And unprompted like, he, he just showed up to class and they were, several, several of them had his, his book there.
But you know, it's just really neat to kind of see. Things like that too, where you go out and you kind of have that personal connection with fans, right? Like they, you can kind that fan base. Now, not, not everybody can do that, but again, all these things that you can kind of do.
Christina: I, I think that they [00:25:00] can, I think. What it is is find the social platform that you're comfortable with.
Matt: Mm-Hmm.
Christina: You have to be comfortable with it. I'm not comfortable with the X factor, whatever it's called now. I'm not there. I've totally gone away from it. Facebook, you might catch me on one day, two days a week.
I'm on Instagram every day. I'm on Instagram every day. I am liking threads. So there are times where I've come across something that, oh, this sounds interesting, that person's engaging. Especially if they're a newbie and they're engaging in a way that's not like overtly selling. Those that are trying to overtly sell they're ads, and I'm scrolling past them,
Matt: Yeah,
Christina: But if they're engaging in a way. That draws me in. And it's not even necessarily engaging about [00:26:00] their books, it's just engaging as people. And then I start to follow them in, and then it's like, oh, maybe I should try their books. So, but again, if they haven't written a good book, it's not a good marketing tool. It's only a good marketing tool if you've got a good book to back it up.
Matt: Yep.
Christina: So I, I will, I will. Stand by my laurels the number one marketing tool. Marketing 1 0 1 is writing a good book, period.
Matt: Write it and write it now.
Christina: Yes. And write it now because the longer you wait, the longer it will take for you to publish. To publish book number two and number three and number four, and actually start. So you should start now where you are at. So whatever level of writing you're at, just dive right in. I, I would argue that [00:27:00] if you have a desire to write, you probably have a talent to write.
Matt: Mm-Hmm.
I would buy that. Yeah. The the author that I was talking about is Mark j Gregson in his book, "Sky's End."
Christina: Oh.
Matt: I think it actually proves your point, by the way, that the marketing that he's doing, he's written a good story. I mean, I haven't read it, but I assume he's written a good story. He's now telling a good story on social media, is his journey as an author through this
Christina: yeah. Yeah.
Matt: And the joy that it brings him and, and what he loves to, see people like connect with his work and things like that. I think it's just, it's such a cool thing, but again, I, it, I think it a absolutely proves your point of write a good story or tell a good story
Christina: Yeah. Yeah.
Matt: and people will come along.
Christina: Well, and that's, you actually brought up a point that I did not bring up, but that is absolutely true, is that when that author is engaging [00:28:00] and it draws you in, that's your example of the writing of their storytelling. So you just being, you, this man is, this author, is engaging, drew you in enough for you to buy the book and read it.
Matt: Yep.
Christina: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that's, again, you couldn't have said it any better. You couldn't have said it any better. Marketing 1 0 1 is be the storyteller that you are and write a good book.
Matt: It's like be the change you wanna see in the world.
Christina: Yes, exactly. Write the book that you want to see in the world.
Matt: Yep. Yep. 100%. Well, perfect my dear. I think we can wrap it there.
Christina: Put a pin in it.
Matt: What do you say? What do you say we challenge our audience with this week? I think we've kind of said it to be honest, but let me hear you.
Christina: Yeah. I would actually challenge them [00:29:00] to write for one day or one week or however long they want to set that goal and just ignore the outside world and write them
Matt: Mm-hmm.
Christina: be fully you for, like I said, one day, one week, one month, however long you wanna do it and see what happens. Yeah.
Matt: Yeah, absolutely. I think my challenge to the audience is basically this. We talked about telling a good story. Go find one. Practice, one tool, one technique, one I don't even know what you wanna call it, but you're gonna find one thing that helps you tell a better story and put it to practice,
Christina: one piece of writing advice.
Matt: Yep. But it's gotta be focused on the storytelling, not the process, not the, I use typewriter versus this. Like, no, no, no. Storytelling, like how do you tell a better, more engaging story? Find that [00:30:00] thing and just do it.
Christina: That's actually a good challenge for the audience too. So here's the double challenge. Write to us
Matt: Mm-Hmm
Christina: with your one piece of advice that is how to tell a better story.
Matt: mm-Hmm.
Christina: That is how you would tell people. To write a better story.
Matt: There you go. Yeah. Find us on the socials, write out loud pod and all of and share what you found. Share what you did. Send it to us. We wanna see it. Well, it's, you never know. You might end up being talked about in the nicest way possible
Christina: Yes. We only talk nice things.
Matt: That's right. That's right. We won't trash you, I promise.
Christina: Nope.
Matt: Awesome. All right. Well, thank you my dear, once again, it was fabulous. And we will see you next time.
Christina: Next time.
Matt: Bye.
Christina: Bye.