We writers can spend a long time writing and polishing our memoirs, but when it comes time to promoting our magnum opus, we fail to invest enough energy to bring that same book to the attention of the public that might want to buy—and—read the memoir we have labored to bring into the world. Marketing a memoir is key here.
I know one man who has written twenty books‚ but does not promote them. None of them are reaching much of an audience.
He loves to write book and loves to think of himself as a published writer—with 20 books no less—but I don’t think he is being read.
On the other hand, I want people to read what I have written. I want to earn income from my work. That is why I believe in marketing a memoir until it reaches its intended audience. Without a readership, I do not feel satisfied as a writer. I am, after all, in a conversation with a reader.
The articles below give you many ideas for marketing a memoir It has long been my belief that the public reading is an effective means of doing so. It is likely that your memoir’s prime audience is local (hometown, state, region) or group specific (retired ministers, parents of a suicide, travel photography). These audiences are well reached through a reading at one of their venues.
But there are many other ways of marketing a memoir. These include guest blogging, interview articles, Facebook and Twitter outreach, and paid advertising among others.
I hope the posts below will stimulate you to organize your efforts of marketing a memoir.
Overwhelmed by Book Marketing During a Pandemic? Use These Tips to Connect with Your Target Audience During Uncertain Times
Book marketing during a pandemic can be challenging for memoirists. These six tips will help you target your audience so you can connect with them better.
Sell Your Memoir to Your Intended Audience: 4 Tips
An important step to sell your memoir is to identify your intended audience early in the process. Your buying audience will affect what you include in your memoir and the manner in which you write it. You will likely include different material in your memoir depending on who you believe will purchase it.
[Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]We'd love to have you access this content. It's in our members-only area, but you're in luck: becoming a member is easy and it's free.
Already a Member?
Not a Member Yet?
Book Launch Tips: Business Boy to Business Man, by Robert Verreault
The book launch party was a lovely experience—one that brought to those of us who were involved in creating the book a strong sense of (forgive the overused term!) closure. Writing a memoir is a long haul and it is refreshing to have an event as one might a wedding or a funeral to gather […]
Who Will Be the Audience for My Memoir?
Writers ask me all the time: “Who will want to read my memoir?” Recently someone said, ”If I were to write my memoir, it would probably be of no interest to you or anyone else. There is no audience for my memoir!”
Your memoir has a niche audience.
Wondering about the available audience for your memoir is legitimate and necessary. At the core of the effort most writers commit to is a deep desire to share with others—to reach an audience. Certainly this is true of a memoir writer also.
This is the challenge: stop thinking that no one will want to read your memoir. It may be true that I may not be interested in your memoir, but someone in this wide world certainly is. There are some billion people on this planet who read English. Surely you will find there will be “an audience for my memoir” among that billion!
Find your niche
The name of the game for an unknown memoir writer seeking an audience is niche writing and marketing.
[Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
We'd love to have you access this content. It's in our members-only area, but you're in luck: becoming a member is easy and it's free.
Already a Member?
Not a Member Yet?
How to Write for A Larger Audience than Family and Friends — 4 Tips
While family and friends are a worthy readership for your memoir, it is possible to write for a larger audience.
Many memoir writers I have worked with will admit, if pushed, that they would enjoy a larger audience. I believe it is a pleasure for most writers to discover that the words they have written appeal to strangers and may even move them to action.
Here are four suggestions to enable your story to appeal to a broader public.
1) Write a story that is truly well-written and whose reading—the prose itself—will bring joy to your reader.
[Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
We'd love to have you access this content. It's in our members-only area, but you're in luck: becoming a member is easy and it's free.
Already a Member?
Not a Member Yet?
Preparing for A Successful Book Launch
Note: This is the 3rd article in a series of 4 on the writing process of A Sugary Frosting published in 2016.
Post 1: I Finish A Sugary Frosting: Notes on the Memoir Writing Process
Post 2: Mechanics of Writing a Memoir: It’s not all Inspiration
Post 3: Preparing for A Successful Book Launch
Post 4: Better Book Production is Possible
Preparing for A Successful Book Launch: I’m finished writing the text for my next book, A Sugary Frosting/A Memoir of A Girlhood Spent in a Parsonage. What follows is a synopsis of what I am doing to promote the book so that its natural audience is aware of it.
In 2016, I finished writing the text for my next book, A Sugary Frosting/A Memoir of A Girlhood Spent in a Parsonage. The book was farmed out to a support group of readers drawn mostly from my mailing list. These readers wrote reviews on Amazon so that, when I launched the book, there would be a number of reviews to boost the book’s ranking on the Amazon algorithms. (Each reviewer received a signed copy of the hard-cover book.) This was a game of quantity not of quality.
These readers had also been finding recalcitrant errors in the text. These are mainly little grammar and spelling mistakes – often attributable to typos. I also hoped, if there are any sequencing mistakes (that is having something in the memoir occur out of time order – and I didn’t think this was the case) these readers would alert me.
This was the stage where I instinctively wanted to say “work done!” I even wanted to say “work well done.” But, the work of bringing the book to the attention of its readers was far from done. The days when writers wrote and marketers marketed are over. Today, writers, whether published traditionally or independently, must be marketers. And so…
Below is a synopsis of what I did to promote the book so that its natural audience was aware of it. I published the first items on my list in this post and the next four in the post that appeared the next week. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
We'd love to have you access this content. It's in our members-only area, but you're in luck: becoming a member is easy and it's free.
Already a Member?
Not a Member Yet?
Why a Book Tour Works
DL: Why does a Book Tour work? It does so because it allows people to know, like and trust you—essential characteristics of any selling and buying relationship. The following is about some of what I have learned about book tours.
That fall evening in 1992, there were no parking spaces along the town’s Main Street as I approached the library, a copy of my recently published book, Turning Memories Into Memoirs / A Handbook for Writing Lifestories, lying on the passenger seat, its width thickened by slips of paper to indicate places from which I wanted to read at my program.
As I drove up to the site of my first outreach since the book’s publication, incredibly, I had been beaten to parking spots by dozens and dozens of cars that now lined the town’s Main Street.
Well! How exciting could that be! This was my fifth book and my first how-to. I had great hopes for it. I had been leading memoir-writing workshops for the previous four years, and Turning Memories Into Memoirs was the summation of my teaching and coaching. It was truly a compendium that covered memoir writing from A to Z, and any writer making use of its many suggestions and guidelines was likely to succeed at undertaking and finishing an interesting and meaningful memoir.
The publicity—press releases, calendar of events, posters—was what was available at the time (1992), and I had, as they say, “covered my bases.” And now, it was the moment of my big launch at the local library—from which I had launched my four previous books—and that evening, I was apparently doing so to a full house! How exciting to have every available street parking space taken.
Not only do I always enjoy going up and down the rows of seats at the beginning of a program to ask people where they are at in their memoir-writing project but I feel it is important for establishing rapport with the attendees. Now, keeping my excitement in check, I knew I had to focus on finding a parking spot so I might rush into the library to be there not only on-time but to be there to “work the crowd.”
So, it was with a solid sense of anticipation that I found a parking spot on a side street and rushed to the library, joining the line of people streaming into the building.
Dashing inside, I entered the room where I was to read. It was sparsely filled!
Huh? [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
We'd love to have you access this content. It's in our members-only area, but you're in luck: becoming a member is easy and it's free.
Already a Member?
Not a Member Yet?
How to Market Your Memoir Through KDP Select
Writing a memoir can be a pretty arduous task — dredging up old memories, mining complex emotions, and trying to frame your experiences in a way that will engage and provide value to readers. It’s no wonder that most authors, having finished their memoirs, feel like the hard part is over and they can finally relax.
But if you’re planning to self-publish your memoir on Amazon, don’t get complacent just yet. While traditionally publishing memoirists often have their marketing plans laid out for them, those on the self-publishing track need to put in a little more personal effort. And while there are tons of great resources to help you along, it’s also important to know how to market on Amazon specifically, as it’s by far the largest retailer in the biz. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
We'd love to have you access this content. It's in our members-only area, but you're in luck: becoming a member is easy and it's free.
Already a Member?
Not a Member Yet?
Best Ways to Promote Your Book
Once you have diligently followed the suggestions for publishing your book and your book is published, it’s time to enjoy being a “famous author” and start promoting your book.
Two ways to do that that come readily to mind are doing a book launch party and securing as many readings of your memoir as possible in a public setting. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
We'd love to have you access this content. It's in our members-only area, but you're in luck: becoming a member is easy and it's free.
Already a Member?
Not a Member Yet?
Three Ways to Find Podcast Opportunities
If you’re in business, you need to market yourself. There’s no two ways about it.
If people don’t know you exist, they don’t know what products and services you offer.
Regardless of whether you sell books, coaching and/or consulting services, widgets or done for you programs, people have to hear about you.
Another reality is this; the more of an expert people see you as, the more you stand apart from the competition.
One of the best ways to do this is by being featured on podcast and radio shows.
In the years I’ve shown experts how to get on shows, the #1 challenge for most people is the amount of time it takes to find outstanding shows to be featured on.
Three simple ways to find shows are: [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]