Inspired Writer Collective Podcast

Episode 97: [Hannah Davis] Start Marketing Before Your Book is Done

• Inspired Writer Collective

Share episode

Send us a text

Stephanie Oswald chats with guest, Hannah Davis, about marketing your book. It's marketing advice that you can fit into your author life. There are many great insights and actions items for authors. The discussion covers everything from how to show up on social media to the importance of your email list.

Hannah Davis is a marketing strategist and website designer for authors who want to sell more books without sacrificing writing time for posting burnout.

With her 5+ years of marketing knowledge, she wants to help authors make their storytelling prowess their marketing superpower.

When Hannah isn’t designing websites or sending GIF-infused email newsletters, you can find her in the PNW writing or reading a book.

Connect with Hannah

Website
Instagram

Here are some freebie gifts to our audience from Hannah:

A year's worth of newsletter ideas

A book launch content planner

 Welcome to the Inspired Writer Collective podcast. If you've ever felt the pull to write your truth, to shape the chaos of real life into something meaningful and to share your journey with the world, you're in the right place. We're your hosts, Elizabeth and Stephanie, writers, coaches, and entrepreneurs who believe in you and know how important it is to find a writing community to guide you on your path to self-publishing.

You’re invited to connect with us by joining our Embodied Writing Experience where you’ll get a writer’s retreat directly to your inbox on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays each week. Whether you’re working on a memoir, a novel, or journaling for yourself, this is an invitation to slow down, tune in, and write with embodied intention.   


Join our Embodied Writing Experience where you’ll get a writer’s retreat directly to your inbox on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays each week. This is an invitation to slow down, tune in, and write with embodied intention.

Get on the waitlist for the Memoir Master Plan cohort here.

If you prefer to watch our conversations, you can find all of them on our YouTube channel.

You can find us on Instagram and Threads

Stephanie Oswald:

Welcome back, listener to the Inspired Writer Collective podcast. I am your co-host, Stephanie, and I'm here today with Hannah, who is going to be sharing some great information about marketing for authors. Hannah, why don't you introduce yourself to our audience.

Hannah Davis:

Hey, uh, thanks for having me Stephanie. So, as you said, I am Hannah. I am a marketing strategist and website designer for fiction authors who, uh, want to sell more books.

Stephanie Oswald:

Great. And one of the things I know when we were talking the other day that was really cool to hear about is you talked a lot about the importance of not falling into some of the.

Hannah Davis:

Mm-hmm.

Stephanie Oswald:

when thinking about marketing, because I know, you know, we as writers, we get overwhelmed by everything that's out there. So what are your thoughts about, getting yourself back on social media if you're, if you, you know, you've taken a break or getting on, if you're resisting.

Hannah Davis:

my whole like marketing. The philosophy is, if you don't wanna do it, don't do it. And if you wanna do it, it needs to be sustainable. So there's gonna be ebbs and flows in your schedule where you can, you know, crank up your content volume more and experiment. See, you know, do you like more versus less? But your general rhythm should be sustainable and feel like an extension of your creativity, not like it's robbing time from your writing. So with trends, you specifically, you kind of run into where. You know, it can be good for your content to try some, and if one resonates with you, most authors, I feel like aren't gonna resonate with, you know, TikTok dance trends. Like, I feel like that's all one we can mostly collectively skip. But say there's trending audio on Instagram, you know. If you don't like the trend that everyone's doing, you can still use the audio and do something completely different. The algorithm will give it a a boost just because it thinks that people like videos with that audio. So that's kind of a workaround. Or you can just plain and skip something if it doesn't align with you. Like a lot of times the training audio, I'm like, this sound has nothing to do with, you know. The posts that I'm doing, like it would make no sense. Like there's, so just skip it. Like honestly it, you need to do what works for you and find that rhythm where you're like, I, you know, I don't love that I'm doing this, but I'm okay with it. Like I didn't, you know, no authors really love marketing, but I'd like to get you to that point. I think it is achievable, but there should be at least a tolerable balance where it's, okay, this is, you know. What I have to do, but it shouldn't feel like it's robbing everything and sucking all your energy and soul out of your body, and you're like, why did I even wanna do this in the first place like that? If you're in that camp, you know, you definitely need to take a step back and, you know, not put all the pressure on yourself to do things a certain way.

Stephanie Oswald:

And do you feel that there are a certain number of times per week for posting? Um, I know you specialize in Instagram, uh, but across the board, is there a recommendation of,

Hannah Davis:

Yeah.

Stephanie Oswald:

it more sustainable?

Hannah Davis:

Yeah, for me, so I always start with the Instagram and kind of put Tam my way out.'cause I do email marketing too, and then I personally don't delve into TikTok a lot. But you could repurpose what you're doing for Instagram on TikTok pretty easily. So I'd post once a day, five times per week on Instagram. In the feed stories, you can do more, you can do less, you can just kind of let that be whatever feels organic to you. There's not really a. Rhythm to that as much. But if you do more than one post in the feed, at least on Instagram, and again, maybe TikTok is different and more sensitive to this, um, you actually end up kind of hurting your reach on posts most of the time. Because unless you have something like truly viral where it's getting millions of views, you know, which you know is not easy at all. Like if you have that happen, that is great. We're gonna take it, we're gonna celebrate it. That's not typical. So. With that in mind, you know, if you post twice, Instagram's only gonna go give you X amount of time. They've decided to dedicate, depending on how your good your content is. So if you split that over two posts, you know, let's say they're gonna give you a thousand views a day, that's not very much, and I'd like it to be more than that, but just for around number, they're probably gonna split it, you know, 500 each. It's like you could have just posted once and had a thousand, and then maybe it would've taken it off because it's more views on one thing. So usually I say three reels in one carousel and then let the fifth one be a wild card, depending on what you're wanting to post about, you could do another reel, you could do another carousel. Single feed posts don't do as well right now. That's not to say you can't throw that in, have that you part of your content, because again, you just wanna make this something you enjoy. And if you wanna post something that does is just a single photo, go for it. But that's usually the rhythm I recommend. And then you can take whatever you're turning into reels. Post the same exact thing on TikTok and even YouTube shorts. You don't need to be creating different content for different platforms with, you know, the caveat, once in a while, again, if there's something that sparks creativity that's happening over on TikTok and you wanna make one special thing, go for it. But again, for the norm, the sustainability every week, it, it shouldn't be having to do that constantly. And then I recommend for newsletters. Once a week, which I've been posting about that lately on social media. And I can tell a lot of people are just in shock because authors tend to do monthly newsletters and I'm like, no, you need to do them more often. But again, they should be quicker. If you're finding newsletters are overwhelming you, you're making them too long and too complicated. It shouldn't take more than 30 minutes for a newsletter. So you should be able to get that out weekly. And if. Again, make this your own. If you're like, eh, you know, I get what you're saying monthly is, you know, too long. I wanna do more often. Do every other week, you know, but weekly would be my recommendation for that, so that you're staying top of mind. And the rules with email inbox providers like Google and Outlook and whatnot, like to see a normal cadence of emails coming into the month. You can run into issues where people forget you and like, oh, I didn't sign up for this, and mark you a spam. And then they will permanently prevent you from emailing your list if that happens enough. So by keeping in a regular rhythm, they're like, oh, I always get, you know, an email from whatever your favorite author is on Tuesday. Like they look forward to it, and you're seeing people not opening your emails. One, you can clean'em off so that they're not getting your emails because they've effectively unsubscribed even though they haven't hit the button. And then. Hopefully by sending them content they like, they shouldn't wanna do that. And then you can look at, okay, if a bunch of people aren't opening my emails, then I need to change up my content. And a lot of authors could honestly simplify their newsletter so much. They end up a lot of times looking like magazines where there's a bunch of damages which can end up in the spam filter if you do too many. Again, that's not to say you can never include an image, but usually text does better. They you and you limit the images, but mm-hmm. You wanna kinda just streamline everything down more than you think and you'll see more success than if you keep tacking on, let's do this and let's do that, and let's do this. It, it's just gonna overwhelm you.

Stephanie Oswald:

I love that you went, went deep, did a deep dive there on email because I think that so often people forget. Get the value of email. I know some people resist even, me, giving their, uh, email address away, but authors and writers, there's still so much value in popping into somebody's inbox. And so when you talk about making it simpler. What is your recommendation for an email? So let's say I'm sitting down to write an email to my list. the best way to think about it? Do I wanna tell them everything I'm doing or do I wanna do little bits? What should it look like?

Hannah Davis:

Yeah, and this is the same formula I'd use for an Instagram caption. So you could use this in both places, just with an email. You can get longer because you have the option for headlines and to make it skimmable because only about 20% of copy online gets read. It's not like a book. So they're gonna be ski more through to find out, you know, is this information useful versus with a story, they're gonna wanna get every little detail and soak it all up. So. You start with something intriguing, a statement, a hook. Um, this can be a life update. I'm working behind the scenes on my book, or I have this character, or I've been waiting to show you. Here's here it is, or whatever. Like you're gonna just introduce whatever you want to tell them. And. Again, you can kind of play around with length and see what your audience likes. You know, depending on what it is, if it's character, you probably just wanna get right to the point. If it's behind the scenes, you might wanna say, you know, I had this inspiration from whatever. Then now you know, this character's turning into it, like you can go into a little more, and by using the headlines you can make it skimmable. So it didn't seem long. And then. So then you kind of segue a bit, you know, explain or just show whatever it is. Or, Hey, my book's ready for pre-order now. Um, e explain what you started out, give context to it. And then you're gonna follow up with a call to action that's applicable to whatever you sent them. So an example of character art, you know, uh, you can ask him to reply back. That's a call to action that's not used enough, because again, email providers like that. So. Or that could be a segue to, you know, it's on pre-order now. Or if you're like, it's out today then obviously you're gonna be go buy it on Amazon or wherever you're selling. Depending on whether you're going wide or not. But, and then just honestly, then just sign off and get out. Like it should be an Instagram caption that's been stretched a little bit, you know? And. Again, experiment with everything because you may find you can have longer emails and people will read them if you make them skimmable and intriguing enough where every line has to make you want to read the next line versus, which is similar to a book, but people will skim still more naturally versus a story you really have to pay attention to. Certain things'll be like, what? When did they end up in a tree? I, I missed something. I had to go back to the beginning of this, but.

Stephanie Oswald:

No, that's great. And so when you say skimmable, someone write an email with, you know, individual line lines, blocks of texts? Like how, what's, what's the longest like a block of text should be, because I know I've heard different perspectives on that.

Hannah Davis:

Yeah, it it, you wanna def and that's hard when you're used to writing a book.'cause I kind of come from the, I started marketing and then decided I wanted to write a book. So I'm coming from like the opposite, uh, direction to writing. And so it can be weird to be like, but this isn't grammatically correct with anything, you know. This goes under the sales copy category, any copywriting where you're wanting to sell something, which effectively you're doing. If it, if it is just giving out some information, leading up and teasing a book. Uh. You wanna break every rule to get them to read it within, you know, don't have 10 million typos. Don't do something really weird, but like, capitalize a letter that you know, the whole word that shouldn't be used. Headlines, breakup sentences generally in a single sentence shouldn't be longer than 13 ish words, but again, you know, just it, you kinda have to play around with that and see what works and how it's laying out. You don't want sup, you usually email providers. You can change whether something's narrow or wide too. That can help. If you make it more narrow, it's easier to read. The wider it is, the more your eyes have to go side to side, and that can make it harder to read in and of itself. And like for paragraphs, you don't probably want more than three to four sentences. If you're getting longer than that, then you need to do a line break unless you're sending like your full. Book blurb or something that's like preset then, then leave that as is because the, you know, your brain will switch and be like, okay, this is a book blurb. Like I need to soak up the whole thing. More so than if you're just talking about behind the scenes stuff. So.

Stephanie Oswald:

That's great advice. Um, I'm sure some writers are listening or cringing at the thought that, you know, breaking some rules. But then in a way, I kind of look at it as having a little bit of fun

Hannah Davis:

Yeah, this should be fun. It's a, it's a newsletter, not a novel, and I can't remember who said it, where you there? Some quote about how you wanna write for the ear and the tempo and do, here are some short sentences, and now I'm going to go into a really long sentence that sounds kind of run on, but I'm making music with my voice and now I go back to something, you know, kind of medium and like you want that rhythm more so in a newsletter where it, you're kind of crafting music with it. So it's. Sounds more like you're talking versus when you're going over, you know, a paragraph in a book. You want to pay attention a little bit more, you know, to the structure and is a verb in the right place versus with, you know, newsletters like you. You wanna do more like someone's talking, which you're not always gonna say something in the perfect grammatical order like you would when you're sitting down to write a sentence in your book.

Stephanie Oswald:

Oh, I love that. I love the thought of it being kind of lyrical and, and musical. I'm going to hold, tuck that one away from my, for myself, for sure. Um, and I love how you said that the newsletter can be the repurposing of an Instagram caption, because that to me sounds like it's. allows for even more simplification of the process that, oh, I already put this on Instagram. I can then just take this and put it in my newsletter. Maybe add some extra bits. It

Hannah Davis:

Yeah, you could reverse it too. Honestly, if you like, I find the medium of newsletters is much easier for me to speak from, and then I, you could then take it and chop it into three different posts. If you make it long enough or, or just in general, chop it and then say, okay, I'm gonna make each one its own thing. Sometimes that can work better, where if you're like, I need to get a bunch of thoughts out, and it's like, okay, this is a newsletter. Okay, now how do I par it down for Instagram? Sometimes that can work too, depending on if you're someone who has to start out creating graphics first and that's what inspires you, then you're probably gonna start with the caption. If you're like, I just need to get thoughts down and like, I know like I'm a writer, I know how to write like this. This feels more comfortable, you know, I'm gonna start with this and then go to social media. So this is all the part of just making it your own, like start what, where, what makes sense to you. Like I am talking about marketing website design. So I'm writing blogs so often, you know, I'll start there and like, I know I wanna talk about this blog topic that's gonna be even longer than newsletter. So then I'm gonna be like, okay, I have this blog. Okay. I know what my call to action is now for everything, so how am I paring it down? But depends on what you're doing. You might find one week you're flipping around and doing it in a different order, depending on where your inspiration is coming from. You might be doing all reels that week and then you don't have as much text to work with, so you would need to start with the newsletter. And honestly, one thing I think authors underestimate is. How often you can just talk about one thing that has to do with your book and not talk about five things through the week. Like that's another way you can simplify is pick, one thing, like I'm gonna talk about my main female character all this week. You know, go over every single trait, share quotes about her, like her world, her looks like anything. And that's. I mean, you could probably make content for more than a week. Out of that. You could make that your whole theme for the month. All you're gonna talk about is the main female character and just run with it. Or I wanna talk about the world building this week and highlight fun things about that. So that can be another thing. Way to simplify where not, especially when we're talking social media, not everyone is gonna see every single post and either one. They're not gonna see everything or two, they're not gonna care.'cause the one you're presenting it slightly different each post, you know, enough where it doesn't seem like you're posting the same thing. But also a lot of people don't care. Like how many, you know, fan edits there are, or whatever popular series we wanna pick on. Like they will, they will not care if they see something similar a second time if they love your characters enough. So.

Stephanie Oswald:

I, I love that. I love that idea about really focusing on either one topic a week or one topic for the month.'cause that does allow for so much more simplification. And I think it's great to, that you pointed out how not everybody's gonna see everything. And I think that that's, sometimes there's that misconception that, oh, if I put it out there. People who are already following me are gonna get tired, but I've definitely heard that repetition can be really valuable.

Hannah Davis:

Yeah, they say, you know, everyone has to hear something seven times before they really absorb it. And, uh, if, if it's something you love, like you can definitely hear more than seven times. Often that stat's used to, you know, describe teaching something which. You are teaching them something effectively in your marketing, but then there becomes a point with something like books where you, you know, you love the story that it, it goes beyond the teaching versus if I started talking about email marketing like we are today. Like I, that that's different, but.

Stephanie Oswald:

And so what would you say for a writer who says, stuck on going back to email? I'm just thinking about coming up with the. Subject line or what should it be? Something catchy or just something simple. So how do you like get a reader, you know, to open your, your

Hannah Davis:

Yeah, the goal is eventually to. Get your readers excited enough for the newsletter that where the subject line doesn't matter as much, but in the meantime, while you're building up that repertoire, you, you kind of have to play around with what works. And depending on your usually things that sound like they don't really go with the email. Do well, like more random things where it's like, oh, that's intriguing. Like I just did as an example in my own business, I just did, uh, something where it was like, Elwood, you know, from legally blonde equals$37 and like, that's like extremely random words. That doesn't make any sense. It led up to a product that I have for, uh, a welcome sequence and it's like that really had nothing to do with what I was talking about. It kind of did because I let up with it. Story, but like you, a lot of times random things are what's gonna get people to open. Like I was showing the product before I released it to a friend of mine and she's like, I don't think this subject line you suggested for this email template goes with it. And I'm like, it's not really supposed to. Like, it's the goal of the subject line is to get the email open, not always correlate, and you can't have. Subject lines where it's like that aha moment where you get to the middle, it's like, oh, that's why you had SpaghettiOs is the subject line. I get it now. But, and then other times, ones where you just blatantly say, you know, here is the character art are gonna get it open.'cause like, so clear, you know, if I wanna see this, I need to open or, or whatever the title is. Your book is out now. Like that's so it. Can depend on what you're talking to. There's pros and cons to both. You can split test subject lines with most email service providers that, um, and convert kit. I know you can do it on their flow desk. Mailer light should have all that, you know, depending on what your plan you're on. But, um, I don't honestly split test as much as I probably should, but,'cause I found the more random kind of works or the very clear. This is what the email is about work for me, but there's always a, you know, in between scenario, I mean, I could throw out random subject lines all day, but you, you just can just honestly try something random and you might be surprised.

Stephanie Oswald:

Yeah, I think that, I think that that's true. Sometimes you, you aren't sure what your audience is gonna connect with, and so definitely playing around with it. I, um, I love, I love doing that myself sometimes with, with our email list and

Hannah Davis:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think if you run into where you're just saying something really like boring, you know, quote unquote, like Happy Monday or whatever, those are the things that aren't good. I mean, you never doubt, like I said, but like. If someone's probably not gonna open that, or if you blatantly say something's on sale or something, you know, pros and cons. Like if, if your book is 99 cents on Amazon, like that can be a good subject line because that's intriguing, you know, I can get a discount of it sometimes you're better, just having that within the email and doing something else intriguing and. Oh, it's 99 cents. You know, by the way, that can work too. So you kind of have to play around with just trying different things and you'll see a pattern eventually, and that's part of why you wanna send them more regularly than once a month so that you can learn these things and then you'll see your newsletter actually being effective instead of just feeling like you're sending, you know, words into the abyss that no one cares about. Okay. And honestly, authors in general can just mention their newsletter in general and get more subscribers. Like that's another thing I see where people are just not talking about it enough. Like if I had a dollar for every time I'd see an author mention their newsletter, like, I'd maybe have 15 bucks. I don't even know if that'll buy me a paperback in today's economy. So, uh. Mention it more often than you think in your call to actions on social media because you own your email list versus social media. You know, it's great and you can get sell books through it and you know, get people on your email list and it's part of your sales funnel, but at the end of the day, your account can get taken down versus your email account getting taken down. And you know, as long as you're not doing spammy practices and you're cleaning your list and all that. I mean, I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but like that would be very odd versus I personally just recently had where I go getting messages saying I was a robot on Instagram, and it's like, I promise you it's me. There is no robbo robot here. I can't even get many chat to work. Like it's just me, myself, and I doing this. Zuckerberg like, get you're stuff together. And I've had my account deactivated temporarily for no reason. I'm like, I have no idea what I did like to this day like. I have no clue. So weird stuff like that can happen. I've seen people, you know, in other industries where they're like, I've had my account for 10 years and thousands of millions of followers, and it's just gone and they don't get it back. So I.

Stephanie Oswald:

Yeah. No, that is great advice and that's something that I think. social media surrounding us so much, everyone forgets about that again, is the huge value of having the email newsletter is that you own the list, you have direct connection to your people and. They're probably gonna pay attention to you more there, even if you think they're not, um, than hopping on social media every day because everybody engages in social media in such different ways, depending upon, you know, how they use it. I mean, if you're using it for business, you. it differently than if you're

Hannah Davis:

Hmm.

Stephanie Oswald:

randomly mindlessly scrolling. So I think that that's such a great reminder to our audience about the value of setting that up and like you said, to the call to action, uh, for getting on the newsletter list. That that's great advice.

Hannah Davis:

Yeah, I think a lot of times we get in our own heads like, we're bugging people or you know, they don't wanna see this. And it's like, yeah, they do, especially with the emails they're signing up for versus the algorithm with Instagram, they're not always following you, but even if they are following you, they're saying, I wanna see your content, whether they'll be showing it or not, it's another story. And you have no control over that to an extent, but, um, you're not bothering people by reminding your books exist. They want. That they want that experience of escaping for however many, you know, 400 pages, however long your book is. You're providing something people actively want. It's not like you're trying to sell, you know, underwater basket weaving or something that no one cares about. You are not bugging people. You are providing them something of value and they wanna find you. So if you don't post and you don't email and you don't whatever, go to the in-person events, you know, whatever. However much you're extending yourself beyond, you know, online marketing, you know, they wanna hear from you.

Stephanie Oswald:

Yeah, that's, that's great advice too, because I think, I know that's how I felt in the beginning was own. Know, I'm gonna be bothering people. And then now I'm like, no, it's okay to be loud and to be bold and to say more things. And I think especially for writers and some of us who are definitely more introverted than others who feel like, no, I don't wanna be seen. Um, and I think about that in terms of, you know, when posting on, you know, Instagram or whatever platform someone chooses, how much of their face. people need to see or can they just,

Hannah Davis:

Honestly, as much as or as little as you feel comfortable with, with some caveats that you need a mix of, you know, you do occasionally need to show just your book. Like I see some. Authors where I, they're more borderline really. They're influencers who happen to have a book more than authors, and it's all their face. And I'm like, oh, your username says author. Like that took me forever to figure out that you even had a book. So you can't go too far that direction. But most of the people who are probably listening this aren't going to that extreme where they're basically an influencer with a book versus a writer. But. If you wanna honestly never show your face, you can to take that ankle like I didn't for a while. Like some, you know, there's privacy aspects to this, you know, depending on your comfort level with that, or you just don't feel comfortable on camera. Like, and like I've just recently started experimenting with know, like reels showing my face more. And like, I didn't do that for a long time because it wasn't within something I felt comfortable with. So, you know. And that's why, especially with fiction, the more you can focus on your characters, you more can lean away from showing your face. And that's another thing where so many authors don't talk about their characters enough. Like focus on the trope and whatever, you know. Um, uproars on in threads, it seems like about books almost daily, where it's like, that's another thing, like, honestly, if more people could just ignore the drama and just focus on posting about their books, I think we would all have a more peaceful, more enjoyable time reading more books. But that, that's a whole nother discussion. But, um. Yeah, just talking about your characters more, the heart of your story, the world building.'cause that again is back to the experience someone is buying. You do wanna throw in, you know, the pie in the scenes, the author humor, you know about what it's like writing a book. You know, the reader humor because I imagine all authors or also readers, so like it all kind of is, has a synergy to it. So you do throw those in. So don't. Like find whatever balance works for you.'cause like I said, there you can go too far to the, you know, where it's just funny content and then never mentioning your book. But I'm pretty confident whoever's listening to this probably isn't too far to that angle, but it can't happen where it's like all you're posting about is, you know, like reader culture and it's like. You, you need to talk about your book too. So like if anything, if you're nervous about being on camera, you're probably doing better because you're gonna naturally lean then into being in the talking about your book side more, which is where you should be. Like I'd argue 70 to 80% should be about the actual book and what they're gonna buy, and then the 20% should be the fun stuff. But again, play around with it. You may find it's more 50 50 for your audience, depending on. What your book's about can make a difference. You know? It, you know, if we wanna zoom out of the fiction space, if you're doing something where you're teaching something or changing a mindset you're probably gonna have to do more education content versus for something fiction that's more, you know, entertainment. You don't really have to explain what a book is, and you know why you should read more. I mean. I mean, that might be interesting content if you feel inspired to create that, go for that. But like that, that sounds not as helpful. Versus if you're doing a self-help book, you probably need to prove your background and why you're an expert on this versus, I wrote a cool story about Dragon, so like, I don't really need to know your background as much. Just, oh, there's a cool story about dragons, like, sign me up. So.

Stephanie Oswald:

Yeah. I love that advice about leaning into, I mean, essentially what you already know, you know your book, you know, your characters, and just leaning into that comfortable space. And I, I love that. I think, um, that's definitely something I'm gonna take away from this conversation and think about for myself. Um, and so. Hannah, if you were going to give a new writer a piece of advice, what would that be? To get started with their marketing.

Hannah Davis:

Start before the book is published or even first drafted. Honestly, you cannot start too early because you have all the behind the scenes stuff, you know, with whatever you're comfortable sharing. You know, that isn't too much of a spoiler. You know, again, if it we're focusing on fiction, if it's nonfiction, you've got even more options'cause you're not really gonna spoil something. But, uh, I deal mostly with fiction, so, uh. You honestly just start as soon as you can. If you newsletters sending'em once a week sounds overwhelming. Start with a month for a couple months, then go to twice a month. Then, you know, get up the to the four weeks. Instagram, you can do the same thing. Like I'm writing a book also while I'm running this business, like the, it's very secondary to me. So I'm like maybe posting once or twice a week over on my author account versus business. I'm definitely posting at least five times a week to, because that's my livelihood. So, you know, while you're in the trenches, you know, trying to figure out, you know, the book writing too, like that can be. So good. That content of, especially if it's, you're doing more of the author life, you know, humor stuff of, you know, oh, I, you know, accidentally wrote the same scene twice, or, you know, whatever. Like people eat that up. They want the behind the scenes. They don't wanna just see this perfectly presented thing. They wanna go with you in the trenches a little bit. See, you know, what was your inspiration behind something? You just take up every, you know, nugget they can dig up. I mean, like I said, you should, if you see like popular books, all the. You know, posts and theories and things are like that is the type of customer you are selling a product to is someone who is going to eat up every little nugget of information they can find. If you present it in a way where it sounds valuable and intriguing, so. You know, share the behind the scenes. You know, start small if it's overwhelming at first. If you're like, I don't know about showing my face, don't at first just start with graphic. Grab, uh, a stock video and use it for a reel. Sometimes those do better when you're blatantly talking about the characters versus if you're doing something more on the humorous side than you showing your face can often be better. It really depends. It's definitely something you wanna think more. An art form and a rigid, oh, these are the rules. I must do these 12 steps to achieve greatness or whatever. You know it. Just have fun with it. Start smaller. If it's overwhelming, you'll get into a rhythm and find something that works for you, and then just grow and expand on it as you can. You know, if you're getting closer to actually publishing the book that put like a month before, that's when you really wanna pedal to the middle. The gas is on here. Full launch mode, you're sending probably emails more than once a week on some of the days when it's just announced it's there and show reviews and really get the hype up. You know, you're probably sending extra emails, you know, to your street team if you have one or our readers like that. That's when you pedal to the metal. You've got more going on that than the sustainable normal, you know, I'm drafting the book, so that can be different. But otherwise, just start small. Get the rhythm. So then when you do have the pedal to the metal, it doesn't feel as like you're going from zero to 60 or you've like created a nice steady 45 miles an hour and then cranking it up to 60.

Stephanie Oswald:

Well, that's wonderful. Well, thank you Hannah, so much for being with us today. And I know listener. There are some freebies that I'll put that Hannah has offered for our listeners. So those will be in the show notes. again, uh, happy writing.

Hannah Davis:

Thanks so much for having.

Stephanie Oswald:

Thanks so much.

Head Shot

Elizabeth Wilson

Host
Head Shot

Stephanie Oswald, Ph.D.

Host