#PublishingReinvented 250 The Enlightened Writer: A Tale of Courses
Meet Ava. She just wanted to write a book. One book. A lovely story about time-traveling cats and interdimensional pastries. Ava thought writing meant just writing.
Ha.
First, she was told she needed to take a course on character arcs. Then another on world-building. Then one on building character arcs inside the world she just built. Then a masterclass on "the psychology of your protagonist and how that shapes your inciting incident."
Naturally, none of this mattered if she didn’t understand "Story Structure According to the Ancient Athenians." So she took that too.
Three months later, Ava had 47 PDFs, two unfinished outlines, and a severe caffeine addiction. But she was finally ready to write... until someone whispered those fatal words:
“You’ll never sell a book unless you learn marketing.”
Oh no.
First Ava had to become a Brand. She needed a website (built via a 9-part Wix tutorial), a newsletter (with a freebie magnet she had to write in Canva, obviously), and a consistent tone of voice across Instagram, TikTok, X, LinkedIn, and her Pinterest for Authors board (featuring quotes she hadn’t written yet, over stock photos of foggy forests).
But wait! You can’t market without understanding funnels. Or CTR. Or lead gen. Or how to A/B test your landing pages so readers convert (into what, she wasn’t sure—possibly cult members?). So she enrolled in:
“Email Marketing for Writers Who Hate Emailing”
“SEO Optimization for Fictional Vampires”
“How to Build a Personal Brand Without Crying (Too Much)”
And the three-part summit: “Launch Like a Boss, Sell Like a CEO, Cry Like a Baby.”
Two years later, Ava’s book was still unwritten. But her online presence? Flawless. She had 832 followers, 12 email subscribers (including her mum), and a podcast episode titled “What I’ve Learned About Marketing as a Writer.”
And one day, she sat down, cracked her knuckles, and whispered, “Time to write Chapter One.”
But wait—should she use first-person? Better take that Narrative POV Bootcamp just to be safe.
If you prefer not to be Ava take a look at this post about the differences between Do it Yourself and Done for You book marketing.
#PublishingReinvented is the Substack you’ve been looking for.
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As for marketing, I am someone who finds it hard to judge my own marketing efforts... even though my career was in public relations. On one of my earlier women's psychological novels, I hired a pr firm to obtain radio interviews across the country. Their press release title "A Pr Pro Pens Mystery" was a surprise as I would never have thought of that.
Had to LOL on this one, Laurence, hits the nail on the head!