Writers should also be marketing experts

Clio, one of the nine muses from Greek mythology, represents poetry and history. She's usually shown holding a scroll or book. She must have had a good marketing agent to still be known so long after the end of the civilization that created her.

One of the many aspects of writing that the February 2007 San Francisco Writers Conference (http://www.sfwriters.org/index.cfm ) focused on was marketing. In today’s publishing world, whether on line or on paper, authors are expected to be far more active in the marketing end of the business than back in the golden years of editors, when Max Perkins of the publishing firm Charles Scribner’s Sons coaxed and coddled and edited and marketed such writers as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Ernest Hemingway. Often writers (myself leading the pack) resist marketing, seeing it as pushy or embarrassing or not something we should stoop to doing. Isn’t that what an editor or agent is for? The answer from the established writers, publishers, editors, and agents gathered in San Francisco was NO. Because marketing is such an important part of being a successful writer (which I define as, “being a writer other people read and being paid for it”), I plan on regularly pounding on a marketing soapbox with tips as I trip over them, links to sites and people who can help, and anything else I think will help not only myself, but others. For example, each week I receive a number of free marketing newsletters that help me to stay pumped up about marketing and that offer a number of good suggestions. Profitable Marketing Insight, published by Profitable Sales and Marketing, Inc. (http://www.psmc.com/about.html ) is one such newsletter. It provides excellent information on marketing in general, as well as for small businesses. Until we become Hemingways and Whartons, we writers can definitely be considered small businesses. The company’s president, Elizabeth K. Fischer, is also a writer, and her success as both a business owner and author are testaments to her marketing insights.