| Hey, I had one major advantage when I started publishing - almost fifteen years ago now- and that was a background in marketing. Ads, specifically, for a big tech company. It's a pretty valuable skillset, and one that I... didn't really use when I put out my first book in 2011. I'm not an idiot - well, not for this specific reason. It's simply that the major ad platforms we use today simply didn't exist back then. So, it's fair to say that marketing books has changed a lot since I started and the skills I was fortunate to possess only become more valuable now that ads are so important. But it's even more important to remember that, while selling books in 2026 looks completely different than it did in 2011, the fundamentals of marketing have not changed. Which is easy to forget with all the new flashies - and that's the subject of today's newsletter. Which might be riddled with typos as a I started it in restaurant and finished it in a bar! But before we dive into that.. three quick bits 1. In one sense, indie authors and indie bookstores should be natural allies but I guess you could say the structural nature of the industry always placed them at opposite ends of the market - and opposing sides of arguments as a result, I suppose. Which is why I was both surprised and delighted to see the good people at Draft2Digital have inked a distribution partnership with Bookshop.org - the independent retailer that gives a meaty cut of each sale to indie bookstores. This is a real win-win, and potentially a significant one according to the interview in Jane Friedman's newsletter today where the CEO detailed his ambition to aggressively grow sales of genre fiction; he sees self-publishers as central to that growth. We will be speaking about this again because I think it's interesting and cool. 2. My Amazon/DRM newsletter last week prompted confusion among some of those new to this issue. Allow me to me simplify: (a) Nothing about this affects how readers consume books in the Kindle app or on Kindle devices - regardless of your DRM choice. (b) Your choice only affects what readers can do outside the Amazon ecosystem - such as backing up their library or moving to a non-Amazon device. (c) You can change your mind any time so don't sweat it. Thanks also to those who emailed saying the EPUB download from Amazon worked for them. After some testing, it looks like it is working on Mac/Safari and PC/Firefox, but bugged on PC/Chrome and PC/Edge. Some of those getting a zip file can get a useable EPUB by changing the file extension... and some can't. Looks like Amazon has more work to do on this feature - particularly as no one is getting the promised PDF. After all that hoo-ha! Is all this more evidence for my Kindle Scribe theory? Let's see... 3. A resounding high-five also goes out to all those who emailed and commented on my last video to point out that that "Automatic Adjustments" is labelled "Auto Apply" in their Facebook ad accounts. Seems to be a change that some are seeing, perhaps in the US-only. But whichever label you have... switch it off. three ps If you like a catchy rubric - and who the hell doesn't! - then let's go with The Three Ps of Marketing. - Product
- Platform
- Promotion
We're going to cover these in an email each to get into it properly. Product is much more than the book - as you have heard me say more than once - but let's not skip over that part either. Books in commercial genres are much easier to sell than books in non-commercial ones. And if you are not sure where yours should be "shelved" then you must spend time thinking about that first because everything flows from this. And I mean everything. This will underpin all your marketing! Also worth repeating that a series is much easier to market than disparate standalones - or at least something that can be presented as a series. You have probably heard that a million times because it's just so important and something we often don't realize before we start working in the business - possibly because of the disparity between what gets media attention and what actually sells by the bucketload. (Often very different things.) But product is about much more than the book's contents -it's about the packaging too, which should reflect how you are positioning the book in the market place. Ps within Ps. It's Ps all the way down. OK, I'll stop now. What this means - in simple terms - is that your cover really should reflect your genre. Also your title, series name, blurb, taglne, the fonts and palette on your cover and marketing materials generally, the tone of your website, your email header graphics, your ad text on Facebook. Every single bit of packaging and presentation is an opportunity to convey genre; don't waste it. This is what I mean by everything flowing from where you "shelve" your book. You can write whatever you like, and these days there's no one stopping you from publishing it. Whether you find buyers for what you have written is an open question. One heavily influenced not just by how good your book is, but also what sleeve you put on it, how you package it, the way you present it to readers. If you mess that stuff up, you will really struggle to get sustained sales no matter what marketing tricks you pull. But if you can get it all aligned, it makes the job of promoting your book and building a platform capable of supporting a sustainable career much easier. choose your choice There are may paths to the top of the mountain. You have all sorts of different options for getting reader attention - and keeping it. You can choose what suits you. But the bit when we need to rein in our inner libertine is with the packaging and positioning. If you have written a thriller, put it in a familiar package. If you have written an epic fantasy, research the fonts and cover art of books which are already selling well - it's what readers are responding to, and what they expect. And if you have written a romance, respect the genre conventions. Surprise readers with your dagging prose, by all means. Write characters which leap off the page and linger long in the memory. Thrill them with your unexpected twists and dastardly cliffhangers. But present your book as something familiar. That's how they know they're gonna like it! P.S. Editing music this week is Kit Sebastian with People Are Strange. | 
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