Every year here at Writers In the Storm, we picture one word to guide us through the coming year. It might be an action or a belief or a philosophy. Below are our words. We hope you will share yours with us in the comments!
Ellen
My word for 2024: Observe
Years ago, I was given some wonderful advice, along with a homework assignment from my eighth-grade history teacher, Mr. Morrissey. I remember his name! This is because he made an immense, positive difference in my life with a few statements.
He asked the student sitting behind me, “What color are Miss Lucey’s eyes?” She guessed incorrectly after seeing me five days per week for six years. Amazing.
Anyway, my household was troubled and chaotic. Since I was pretty much ignored at home, having a teacher pay attention to me in a positive manner touched my heart.
For homework he said, “On your way home from school, look for something out of the way and observe it’s beauty.” We didn’t have to write anything down and hand the assignment in, it was just for our benefit.
To this day I try to be observant, and find beauty in the unexpected.
Cheers!
Jenny
My word for 2024: Lessons
Yesterday, I was doing one of those word search puzzles where the first four words that jump out at you are the ones to pay attention to in the coming year. While I usually give no credence to that sort of thing, these words exactly fit my recent life. My words in order were: family, change, lesson, creation. Obviously, coming off a year of cancer, I've had a lot of the first two in 2023. But it was the last two I pondered.
I've come to believe that the gift to be derived from cancer is the lessons. Overcoming fear. Patience. Gratitude. Believing in kindness. Giving back. Seizing the day - every day. Everything else comes from these things. So, for 2024, I am focusing on the lessons and seeing where they lead me.
Kris
My word for 2024: Pivot
The year 2023 was full of new experiences for me. I found a new publishing adventure and tried public speaking. I wrestled with technology and iterated my writing business, setting up automations and taking them down. And there have been many challenges as I have tried new ways to sell my books, with each iteration of my writing system leading to twice as many questions as I had before.
What? More questions than before? This means we don't ever get it all figured out? *shaking tiny fist* Darn.
More questions, more confusion, more complex systems to understand, all to tell a good story. And I don't feel alone. It seemed like many of our readers, and contributors here at WITS have had similar experiences recently.
Change is inevitable, so having the ability to PIVOT is paramount to finding success and satisfaction in our writing. Whether it is pivoting through paragraphs or strategizing my social media, I need to remain flexible and willing to change aspects of my writing career. And I wish this for each of you as well.
Lisa
My word for 2024: Adapt
I live in the space between creativity and technology. With the introduction of AI, this entire space looks like the inside of Dorothy's tornado. Fundamental truths are mostly staying the same (connect with your fans!) but everything else in the space is whirling and twisting.
I'm experimenting and exploring. As each new tool comes out, there is a tiny part of me that says, "you're too old for this...." So I must constantly remind myself to adapt! Explore! Have fun! Find new ways of doing things, while protecting my creative heart and that of my students and clients. 2024 is going to be an adventure.
Lynette
My word for 2024: Intentional
There is no one way up this mountain we call being an author. It can be difficult and draining and incredibly rewarding. In the past, I have used intuition and faith and perseverance to get to where I am but I want to move to the next level.
Intentional means done by design. It doesn’t mean ignore all intuition or joy. During 2024, I will make intentional choices that include intuition, joy, and peace and I will embrace the data that will help me make intentional business decisions on this year’s journey. Intentional decisions will help me climb this part of my mountain.
Are you an authorpreneur looking to increase your book sales and take your author brand to the next level? If you're feeling overwhelmed and don't know where to start, I've got you covered. With years of experience working with authors of all levels, from beginners to best-sellers, both locally and internationally, I understand the challenges you face. As a writer myself, I've navigated the confusing and contradictory advice out there. Let me guide you through it and help you achieve your goals.
Let's dive into the most common concerns I come across and let me give you my responses. After that, we'll explore how you can lay the groundwork for creating a one-of-a-kind marketing strategy tailored to your needs.
You want to sell more books but “sales” makes you cringe.
Sales is only one facet of marketing. When done right, it’s the final stage and the obvious outcome of a successful marketing strategy. Before focusing on sales, make sure readers know you and your books exist. Focus first on attracting readers who will like you and love your work, and build relationships and community with those readers. Promoting your author brand and books with authenticity and integrity builds trust and encourages readers to not only buy your books but to recommend them to others.
You love talking about your WIP but hate the idea of promoting yourself.
You don’t have to promote yourself, just be yourself and share what you are doing strategically with people who are interested in what you do. It also helps to have author friends to share each others’ books. It’s so much more fun to promote other writers and the books that you love.
You struggle to find more time to write, and don’t want to spend your writing time researching marketing trends which change every six months.
The truth is that digital marketing continually changes as the tools, apps, and techniques evolve. It is a full-time job to keep up with all the research, trends, statistics, current best practices, and more. It’s not that you don’t get it or can’t do it, but if you only do the research once every year or two when you launch a new book, it’s like starting over from scratch every time.
You tried to do your own marketing, but all the “expert” advice from the gurus hasn’t worked for you.
You can do your marketing if you want to, but make sure you’re getting expert advice from those who work with authors' brands. Advice for selling books from publishing houses or bookstores often isn’t relevant for indie-authors. Social media influencers may have millions of followers on a platform, but their purpose and techniques are very different than what you need to build a community of readers and increase book sales. Neither follows nor virality equal book sales.
You desperately want to delegate all the marketing stuff to someone else, but can’t afford to or don’t know who to hire
Delegating some or all of your marketing is still a viable option, even on a budget. Consider bartering services, forming a small group of authors who will share the work, or hiring a marketing coach or consultant for you individually or for your author group. If you choose to hire a marketing professional or agency, make sure they are experienced with authors or personal brands. Let them know your specific goals and budget so they can recommend how to get the most return on your investment.
Now, that brings us to a list of elements to consider when you’re deciding to research best practices and what exactly you need, to DIY, or whether to hire a professional to do some or all of your marketing.
Marketing According to Aristotle’s Rhetoric
The top priority is to evaluate your rhetorical situation. Aristotle’s Rhetoric is just as applicable to marketing as it is to writing and literary analysis.
Aristotle's Rhetoric (also published in English as The Art of Rhetoric) is a straightforward read if you want to dive into it. Most of the summaries and overviews I found online are more difficult to understand than the book itself. This one from LibreTexts.org is quite useful, with diagrams and a supplemental YouTube video if you are interested in learning more. To make this applicable to our current marketing needs, I've highlighted the five Rhetorical Appeals and explained how they form the basis of your marketing strategy.
Ethos– who you are as the author, your credibility, your brand.
Before making any marketing decisions, be absolutely clear about who you are as an author, what you want your readers and community to know about you, your work, your themes, and your reputation. Your brand is how you and your work are recognized and described. You have to teach your audience how to talk about you.
If your brand messaging (not just colors, fonts, and logos) isn’t fleshed out, the other marketing decisions will be inconsistent, and your marketing will not be cohesive or as successful as it should be. This is why what works for one author, genre, industry, etc., usually doesn’t work as well for others.
Pathos– is usually taught as an emotional quality, but it specifically includes knowing your audience’s perspective.
Once you have clarity on your author brand, you must get clear on who your ideal audience is. Knowing your audience’s demographics and psychographics will give you a much better chance of communicating and building relationships with them. Age, geography, interests, values, worldview, gender, and more factor in.
We know certain demographics spend more time on certain social media platforms than others. We know Gen X will have very different cultural points of reference than Gen Z. Readers in New York will have a different perspective than those in Wyoming, England, or New Zealand. All may love the same genre, but how and where you market to them will be different.
Logos– the logic, structure, or format of your communication or marketing.
How you craft your messaging and marketing will vary depending on the format or platform you choose. Each social media platform has a different format, and reader expectations, than the others. Content created for Instagram will not perform the same on LinkedIn or Pinterest. Articles created for a blog will not have the same impact as an email newsletter.
Your goal may be the same for all the forms, but the logic and structure will need to be adjusted. The goal may be increased book sales, but the logic of the message and where you put it has to be different if your piece of content is targeting new-to-you readers, a warm audience, or your VIP fans. This is why boosting a well-performing Facebook post into a paid ad often has less impact.
Telos– the purpose or attitude of the speaker, or in this situation, your goals and purpose as an author.
In marketing, we talk about the Know, Like, Trust, and Convert factors. If your purpose is to become known to a new audience, you want to choose a platform that will get you the most organic reach like Instagram, YouTube, or guesting on a podcast.
If you want those readers who just discovered you to actually like you and your books, you will want to post behind-the-scenes or day-in-the-life stories, quotes, or memes on Facebook, Instagram, X, or LinkedIn. If you are trying to build trust in a warm audience, then consistency in posting valuable long-form content (blog, podcast, or video) might be your best bet. If you are in launch mode for a new release and need to convert followers into sales, then email, Goodreads giveaways, or SMS Marketing might be more appropriate.
Kairos– how the setting, time, place, the overall context, affect your message.
When you were a teen and wanted to borrow your parent’s car, when did you ask for the keys? While they were rushed, stressed, or in the middle of yelling at you? Or did you wait until they were relaxed and happy, and you had all your chores done? Are you using a social media scheduling tool that tells you when your followers are online to post, or just posting randomly when you think of it?
Also keep in mind what is scheduled to drop when there is a major holiday or event, national crisis, or act of God. Knowing your audience and whether they are celebrating a holiday, grieving a loss, or riled up politically at the moment will help you decide how or whether your content needs to go out. Several large companies over the last few years took PR hits for scheduled posts that appeared insensitive because of a trending topic or issue, when it might have been seen as humorous or poignant at any other time.
What Does All This Mean For You?
Understanding these rhetorical elements will help you solidify your branding, content, email, research, and social media marketing which will then increase your book sales, or whatever objective you are hoping to achieve through digital marketing. I love applying literary and storytelling devices to marketing as it feels more natural and less “salesy” as authors and is usually best received by the readers we want to attract.
Let me know in the comments if you have any related questions, or if you are interested in additional posts regarding specific marketing topics or tools, and how to apply them to your author business.
Unleashing the Next Chapter has grown into a boutique digital marketing agency serving creative entrepreneurs and their communities through consulting & coaching, strategy, and management. UtNC focuses on holistic marketing with an emphasis on Brand, Content, Email, Research, and Social Media. Kathryn is passionate about helping writers and writing organizations learn how to use digital media to build their brands and serve their communities.
Kathryn is a wife, mother, stroke survivor, and service dog partner. She is happily addicted to books, tea, chocolate, D&D, and houseplants (not consistently in that order).
One problem I face as a writer is that my hands cannot keep up with my brain. This is one of the biggest limiting factors for me when it comes to wordcount. Over the years I've tried many different methods of talk-to-text, but I've never really been satisfied with it. I've always ended up spending more time correcting than I have actually writing, but times have changed.
With improvements in AI technology, I decided to give dictation another shot. I’ll admit, I was pleasantly surprised by the results. I've been using the Dictate function in Word for a while now and I’ve been fairly impressed. The learning curve was not as steep as I had anticipated.
Typing by dictation has become available in a variety of different software packages now. For that reason, I won't go into specific commands, as they vary from one program to another. Instead, I'll talk about some of the things I've learned so far and share some pointers that might help you along your journey as you delve into this improved writing tool.
Basic Commands
While specific commands may vary from one program to the next, there are similarities. Many of the core commands are intuitive. Things like adding punctuation and starting new paragraphs are fairly straightforward. When you reach a point in a sentence where you would like to insert punctuation, simply say the word and the software will usually get it correct.
If you're using the dictate function in Word, then there is also a setting for automatic punctuation. While it does a very good job, there are a few exceptions. I found that if I pause too long between words, the software likes to add a period. I tend not to use this function as I like to have more control and simply speak the punctuation where I would like it to appear.
Familiarize yourself with the specific commands of the software you are using and practice using those commands in a few test documents before moving on to your real work. It won't take long to get familiar with things. The editing functions can be trickier. They take a little more practice than the basic punctuation commands, but with time you’ll get it.
Develop Your Flow
If you really want dictation software to help you increase your word count, then you need to develop a flow. This has been one of the hardest parts for me. I went from my hands not being able to keep up with my brain, to my brain not being able to keep up with my mouth.
Developing a flow when you're dictating really comes down to a couple of things. First off, you need to be prepared. You need to know where you're going if you're going to speak clearly and smoothly. This means making notes and having them in front of you or thinking your scene through completely before you start speaking. My pantser brain really hates this part, but it's necessary.
The second thing, which is also difficult for me, is to turn off your internal editor. You're going to make mistakes as you dictate just as you would when you type. You need to learn to ignore them until you go back to do your edit. The software will sometimes use the wrong word especially when it's one that can have multiple spellings for the same pronunciation. If you want to develop flow, you need to just keep going.
The only way that you will ever develop a good clean flow that will give you higher word counts is practice. Get to know the software, get to know the commands, and get to know how your own brain works. With practice you will eventually find your flow.
Tell Yourself the Story
Now that you've learned the commands and got some practice, it's time for the next step. It's time to write using this new tool. According to author Terry Pratchett, “The first draft is just telling yourself the story.” That's exactly how you should think of this process.
The best way to get started with this newly improved technology is to sit down and just start telling the story. Don't worry about structure or how it comes out. This is just the first draft; it's supposed to be rough. The whole reason for a first draft is to get the ideas out of your brain and into the real world. Think of it as digging out the clay. Editing is where you will shape it into the work of art it's meant to be.
Final Thoughts
As with learning anything new, it all comes down to practice. I can't stress that enough. That's why I have mentioned it several times in this article. It's one thing to know how to do something but something completely different to put it into practice. Learn the commands, build your flow, and this newly improved technology will become a tool you use every day in your writing.
About Bob
Eldred Bird writes contemporary fiction, short stories, and personal essays. He has spent a great deal of time exploring the deserts, forests, and deep canyons inside his home state of Arizona. His James McCarthy adventures, Killing Karma, Catching Karma, and Cold Karma, reflect this love of the Grand Canyon State even as his character solves mysteries amidst danger. Eldred explores the boundaries of short fiction in his stories, The Waking Room, Treble in Paradise: A Tale of Sax and Violins, and The Smell of Fear.
When he’s not writing, Eldred spends time cycling, hiking, and juggling (yes, juggling…bowling balls and 21-inch knives).
His passion for photography allows him to record his travels. He can be found on Twitter or Facebook, or at his website.
