by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
A few days last week I felt really invisible. My stuff wasn’t really getting shared, and people weren’t all that excited about visiting my site and reading the words I shaped into stories every week, and sometimes, when we feel invisible, we can forget all the value that lives in our writing. Because it’s not necessary, not like business tools or parenting techniques or “7 meals to cook in 15 minutes.” It’s art.
And then I started going back through some of the blogs I wrote last year, which I’m turning into a book, and I texted my husband. “This stuff is really good,” I wrote. “Even better than I remember” (writers don’t say that about everything).
We have a hard time seeing what value lies in our writing, because it’s artistic and it’s entertaining and it’s a fun story, not an I’ll-die-if-I-don’t-get-this kind of thing. But let’s just think about this for a minute. What kind of life is a life without art? What kind of world is a world without the beauty of words turned stories? What kind of society would this be without poetry?
It’s not an easy seeing. I know. I’ve been launching pieces of myself out into the literary world, and it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done (besides raising children), because it means I have to toot my own horn a little. I have to tell people there’s value in my work. I have to be its champion, and you know what? I would MUCH RATHER have someone else do that. I’d much rather have someone else tell the world that my products have value. I’d rather have someone else claim that lives will be better for my words.
But something I’ve had to come to understand is that there is value in what I do. There is value in the words I spend twenty-five hours on every single week. There is value in the books I write and compile and then release. There is value in my offerings, in my talent, in my entertainment. My art fills a hole in the world, and it may not be a hole we can see surely and point to without question, but it’s a hole that is there all the same, and people are changed when art fills in their holes.
It doesn’t matter if we don’t have a five-step takeaway for every product we launch into the world. It just matters that we are looking for holes and we are filling them.
There isn’t a whole lot out there about selling entertainment and how to do it, because most of what’s written from the business perspective is about selling value, and when we’re in the entertainment realm with our parenting humor blog or our thriller novels or our kid-lit poems, the line between value and non value is a little blurred to those in the business world. They don’t often see the value in a person, bent nearly to breaking, reading the words of another who has been broken and finding strength and courage enough to say, “Me too. Let’s carry on together.” They don’t often see the value in words that grant hope and peace. They don’t often see the value in abstract things like poetry and music and stories.
But that doesn’t mean that we can’t take business principles and mold them to fit our entertainment offerings so that we can become even better at what we do. The first way I did that was by finding my “value propositions” for my different platforms.
A value proposition is a short phrase that states what value you bring to the world. It can be easier to craft a value proposition when we’re doing things like teaching writing or selling courses or meeting a real, tangible need in the writer world. We’re going to have to work a little harder when we’re not.
One of the holes I most like to fill with my nonfiction is the hole that says “I am alone.” I write honestly about life with six boys, and I turn it into a humorous, lighthearted offering on my parenting humor blog. I write about serious issues like anxiety and body image and depression and loss, and I help people feel less alone in their struggles. People find solidarity, and they are encouraged, and this is a valuable thing.
So, in crafting our value proposition, we have to think about what our art will do for the world. Will it encourage? Will it entertain? Will it offer humor to a dark world? Will it tell the whole truth?
Without a value proposition, we can get lost in weeks of invisibility. No one seems to care what we’re doing, and we start to wonder why we’re doing it. But value propositions can remind us that there really is a reason.
4 Steps to Creating Your Own Value Proposition
1. Define who you are.
Are you a storyteller? Are you a truth teller? Are you a fellow traveler? A sage? A muse? What makes you unique? Come up with who you are to your “tribe,” and you’re well on your way.
2. Determine who your audience is.
You’ll hear it all over the place, and it’s true: The wider your audience, the less influence you have. If we can narrow things down a little, we’ll be able to reach a wider audience, which doesn’t really make sense in the math of it, but it does, a little, in the marketing sense of it. Lots of people say they’re for everyone. Not a lot of people are saying they’re writing a humor parenting column for moms who only have boys. Niching down is scary. I know. It was for me. But sometimes it’s the best thing we can do. I felt much more focused when I niched down This Writer Life to be parents who are time starved and still trying to pursue a writing career.
Who is going to listen to you? Who do you most want to help. If you say, “Everyone,” you will help no one.
3. Figure out what you will help people do.
This could be anything as abstract as providing a new insight to readers or invoking a laugh to something more tangible, like learning how to use WordPress or self publish a blog post or write effective copy. Sometimes it’s hard to see what we will help people do when we’re on the entertainment, novel-writing side of it, but if we look closely enough, it’s possible. There is something unique that we bring to this world, and no one else can do it like we can. People can buy transformation they hope will happen in their life just as surely as they can buy a course on writing faster.
What unique thing do you have to offer in the world of entertainment?
4. Put it all together.
My value propositions for my platforms look like this:
Fiction writing/Wing Chair Musings blog:
I am a storyteller. I help readers who are curious, open-minded and seeking authenticity grasp new insights on life, love and family so they can remember and embrace the truth that already lives inside them.
Crash Test Parents (humor blog):
I am a mom of six boys. I help boy moms understand that the best way to survive life with boys is with a sense of humor, so that they can fully embrace the wildlings they’ve been given.
This Writer Life:
I am a parent writer. I provide productivity, publishing and writing advice to time-starved parents so that they can pursue a writing career in the margins of their parent life.
By far, the easiest one of those to write was This Writer Life, because it has more tangible benefits. But entertainment can have value propositions, too, and it’s worth it to do this work.
These aren’t perfect value propositions. They will probably shift and change over the years. But they’re a good start.We can do a whole lot with a good start.
Value propositions help you get clear on who you want to be and what you need to do to get there. Put yours together, and watch your focus completely change.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life, This Writer Life Featured
Some people in the writing world think it’s hardest to get started. And it’s true that it’s hard to get started. But it’s also true that it’s hard to stay started, especially if you’re a parent.
I go through these cycles where I think about how my boys are just growing up so fast. Husband and I just moved the baby, who is nine months old, to his crib, and he’s our last one, so we sat in our bed getting all teary-eyed, because he’s the last baby we will ever have in our room, forever, and that feels significant and sad. And of course then I started thinking about how I’m using so many moments when I’m with the boys to work on email lists and to edit submissions and to edit other books, and maybe I should be spending that time playing and looking into their eyes and just enjoying who they are today without tomorrow and business and expectations stealing them from me.
When we’re parents, we can start to feel some guilt for pursuing a dream in all the spaces, because shouldn’t the spaces be reserved for our children?
But what I circle back to every time these thoughts start haunting me is that life and a dream are interconnected. When we are living life from the pursuit of our dream, we are living a real, authentic life. When we are pursuing a dream in the spaces of our lives, whatever that may look like right now, we are serving our dream. They both inform each other, and they’re both tangled around each other. They cannot be separated.
If I were to quit pursuing my writing dream tomorrow, I would not be a pleasant person to live with. I write to make my world clear, to preserve my most sacred memories, to make sense of my frustrating and joyful and disheartening and victorious experiences. If I didn’t have that outlet, my family—my children—would know. In fact, they did, for several years before I made my dream-pursuit a real possibility after I grew tired of watching it wave at me as it flew on by. I’m a much different person when I’m pursuing my creative interests. I’m a better wife, a more patient mother, a more whole person because of my writing.
Our writing enriches our lives. Our lives enrich our writing.
So we can talk about balance all day long, but what it really comes down to is integration. How can we integrate our creative pursuits with our lives? How can we integrate our lives with our creative pursuits?
How can we become a more whole person?
You’re the only one who can answer those questions, because it looks so very differently for all of us. But it’s worth answering them. For our families and for us.
Here are some ways we can find integration in our art and our lives:
1. Create with our families.
Maybe this looks like sitting around a table every night and writing in journals together. Maybe it looks like incorporating storytelling into our everyday life. Maybe it looks like brainstorming with children when we’re stuck on a plot line, because other people (especially children) have really great ideas, if we’re willing to dig down to those diamonds and really listen. Maybe it looks like writing a picture book together.
This summer my boys and I wrote pictures books together. My boys are still working on the pictures, but, eventually, they will finish, and we will publish, and they will have books published at the ages of 8, 6 and 5. That’s a pretty powerful experience for children—to know that their art matters.
Our family life can become our dream-pursuit life, too, even if it’s just in a casual way for now and someday becomes something more serious.
2. Find the spaces and give some of them (not all of them) to dream pursuit.
Our lives are better lived when we are pursuing a dream in some of the spaces. Children need some of our space, of course, because they are growing and we are their parents, and we will want to give them time and attention, since we know that our writing is richer for the life experiences we collect on a daily basis. But we cannot give every space to our regular life (especially things like laundry and dishes and cleaning bathrooms, since procrastination often lives in those things), just like we cannot give every space to our dreams. When I worked full-time and decided to write a book, my house didn’t get cleaned for a whole year. I gave myself permission to exist in a dirty (but not unsanitary) house, because the dream was waiting to be pursued.
3. Talk about our dreams with the people who share our lives.
Kids are great dreamers, and it’s worthwhile to talk to them about our dreams. Sometimes they are incredibly generous and will come up with things like, “I’ll take care of my brothers while we’re watching a movie if you want to work on a project,” like my 8-year-old did the other day. It was generous of him to offer his time to watch his brothers (even if I didn’t take him up on it—because he’s only 8), but as they get older, they get to enter into this dream with us and try to figure out ways they can help us shape it into the spaces.
If our kids never know what we’re trying to do, they will never know how they can help. And if they never know we’re dreaming in the first place, they will never know it’s okay to have their own dreams. We talk about our dreams regularly with our children, because it’s so important to our family life. We do Dream Sessions once a quarter to make sure our children know what dreams are and how important they are to a life.
4. Understand that there are seasons.
Sometimes there are season where life takes all the spaces. And sometimes there are seasons when writing demands all the spaces. Right now I’m working on deadline to finish a memoir by the end of the year, which means that I am working diligently during Family Movie Night to finish it. But there’s also an end date to that arrangement. The arrangement only stands until the memoir is finished. After that, I will be able to sit beside my boys and watch a movie with them.
There was a season, about a year ago, when our oldest was struggling with some anxiety issues, and I found myself unable and unwilling to write until we could sort through things with him and get to the very bottom of it, because my boy needed me. And then I had to write to sort out all my own feelings about what had happened. And then I had to spend more time with him. And then I had to write again.
So the seasons come and go. As long as we keep in mind that they are not forever, that this time we have or don’t have to create is not forever, we will be able to move and flow with the seasons of life.
5. Let go of the guilt.
Easier said than done, I know. Especially in the beginning, we will feel a lot of guilt about how we’re trying to pursue writing when our children are still waiting to be raised. Is it selfish? Is it ridiculous? Is it irresponsible?
No. We are writing to become whole, and this ALWAYS serves our children. We are doing what is best for all of us. And that’s worthy. It’s enough.
Guilt has no place here.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
Alright. So we’ve gotten through the resistance of selling ourselves, I’ve taught you what I learned about product launches from doing my own launch, and last week I shared how to get better at each progressive book launch. Today I’m going to give you a handy list of everything we need for an effective book launch. You’ll just have to fill in the pieces.
But a quick word first: Some of us think, when we have that “one, big book idea” that that’s it. We’re done. We launched out book and that’s all we’ll ever need to do.
False. If we’re interested in making writing a business, we will have to immediately pick up a pen and go at it again. And again. And again.
You know the best way to make it as a parent writer? Keep writing. Book after book after book. Because one will probably never be enough. I’m just telling the truth.
But this is good news, too. Because chances are, not only do we have more book ideas, but with each book we put together we’ll also be able to experiment with our launches until we get it exactly right for us and our audience.
Now that I got that out of the way, I wanted to share with you a nifty list for what I’ve included with my second launch, using what I learned from the first launch. This list will continue to evolve and change, but, for now, here’s what I believe is needed for an effective launch.
There are many different aspects of launching a product. There’s the initial getting-information-out, which is essentially creating a buzz about the product. The prelaunch time. The earlier this can start, the better. Months in advance would be great. I usually don’t plan well enough for that. This second launch had a landing page about six weeks before the project was scheduled to release.
Even if our projects won’t be done for a couple of months or a year, the sooner we can get a landing page up and start generating interest in it, the better our launch will end up going. What I’ve learned most from my process is that even when I’m in the rough draft writing stage, I need to be thinking about how I’ll be marketing my book. With so much out on the market, it’s harder and harder to stand apart, so it’s important to have that plan already in place.
So, in case you missed it, the first step to an effective book launch is a landing page.
Elements of a good landing page:
- A section with the book cover on display, along with a great product description. I hate writing product descriptions, mostly because it’s like “selling” the book that I wrote, but this is hugely important for drawing people in. Product descriptions are some of the most important tools for selling a book.
- A video that details, in a general way, what the project is and why you decided to write it. For my particular project, I decided to include little snippets of my family, because the project was one about living from family values. For fiction projects, you can document the writing process (or if it’s too late and you already have it written, you can stage it).
- Good copy that tells a story about the project. My landing page included some of the story behind what drove me to write the project (which was a nonfiction book—but I’ll be trying this out with a fiction project in December), what’s included it in and, the most important part, when it will release.
- A section where those interested can sign up for an email notification for when the project releases. This is important. These are the people who will be your primary customers. They’re already interested in the project—enough to sign up for a list where they’ll be emailed once the project is on the market. I chose to incentivize my email notification list with a companion guide about the project. People love having an inside look (for fiction) or some kind of practical application (for nonfiction). My fiction project, which will have a landing page sometime in December, will include a short story “prequel” that will introduce people to some of the characters.
It doesn’t end at the landing pages. Husband, who is a content marketing consultant, detailed out a three-week social media marketing campaign, where I would:
Share a book excerpt on my blog once a week
Post on Facebook and Twitter about the project three times every week.
Week one: The process and behind-the-scenes
Day one: Text
Day two: Picture
Day three: Video
Week Two: Origin story/inspiration behind the project
Day one: Text
Day two: Picture
Day three: Video
Week Three: Who the book is for and how the world will be different because of it.
Day one: Text
Day two: Text
Day three: Video or picture (in our case it was an infographic)
Three days before the book launched, we released three pre-launch videos with the following content (we will probably change this order next time):
Video 1: The story behind why I wrote the series
Video 2: What I hope people will get out of the series
Video 3: A real look inside (in the case of this particular book launch, it was how hard it was to live from our values every single day)
This might look like a lot of work. But here’s the thing: I did all this work once, for a series that will be spanning an entire year. When I do it again in December for my fiction series releasing in March, I will only have to do it once for a project that will span about five years. When we’re writing series, we can get the most out of a thing like a landing page, and when subsequent books release, we can still just point people to the landing page. It might be a lot of work for single books, but the truth is, single books probably need it even more (and also a greater lead time).
If you want to know more about the details of how to do this, visit my latest project landing page or connect with me on Facebook or Twitter. I don’t claim to have it all figured out, but I am actively learning and tweaking my process so that I can launch my books into the marketplace with the greatest momentum possible.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
Before I launched my first self-published book, This is How I Know: a book of poetry, I spent hours poring over launch strategy and trying to figure out the best way to go about launching a book of entertainment, because even though writing comes naturally to me, marketing does not. Not even a little bit.
Much of the information out there has to do with launching a product like a course or a book that has a specific takeaway with it, and it isn’t really geared toward entertainment things like fiction or songwriting or something that is more a “want” than a “need” for people (even though, arguably, people need entertainment in their lives or they’re not really lives worth living). So, in a way, I felt like I was crossing into uncharted territory.
That’s what made me want to write down every single strategy we came up with for our book launch—because I knew that I’d be doing it again, and I needed to learn from my mistakes and tweak my process so that every subsequent book release would do better than the last. No one else would do that for me. No one else could tell me exactly what would work, because I was selling entertainment, which has a completely different value proposition than something like a self-help book. People aren’t learning something from my project. They are feeling something. That means I had to invoke emotion.
So I wrote the copy for a landing page and three videos that we used to promote the project, and I made sure that emotion was in every bit of it. And I think it was a pretty good effort—but as I shared in the last post, there were certain things we could have done better.
It’s important that every time we’re doing a product launch, we are analyzing and assessing our efforts and keeping track of what works and what doesn’t, because if we want to build a business out of this writing, we’re going to have to come out with more products. Which means we’re going to have to launch them. Which means we’re going to have to have a solid strategy.
I came into that first launch knowing that it would not be done perfectly. Maybe none of the launches will ever be done perfectly, but the one thing I can guarantee is that every one of them will be better than the last. Because I have come up with an evaluation plan.
It’s funny how we implement things like evaluations into other parts of life. What’s working in this parenting? What’s not working in the way our family eats dinner together? What can we do better.
And yet, when it comes to writing and running a business, we excuse ourselves from it, because it’s “just not for us.” We just want to be writing. We just want to be creating. We just want to use our time wisely.
But the thing is, we’re using our time wisely in evaluation. Not only in evaluation of our stories in the rewriting and editing processes, but also in the evaluation of our strategies behind things like book launches. This is what will monetize our business—and even if we’re doing writing just because we love it (which I hope we’re all doing), if we ever want to succeed as an author, we’re going to have to monetize it. It’s what agents will tell you when you pitch a book. It’s what publishers will tell you before they’ll buy your book. It’s what you have to tell yourself if you’re self publishing.
And the only way to get better at monetizing our art and launching our products is to evaluate and learn from what we have done before and from what others have done.
After my book launch was all over and done, Husband, who is a branding consultant and content marketer, and I sat down to analyze what we’d done and what we could do better. I shared a little about that in the last post. And as soon as we finished that, we began to plan the next release, which would happen six weeks later.
Because even though my poetry book only sold about 11 copies, because my audience is still relatively small, and an even smaller percentage of people will actually buy a book, I knew that the best way to keep growing my audience was to keep producing products. Keep writing books. Keep launching them out into the world.
But not without a plan.
Here are some ways you can be learning and refining your launch strategy.
Step 1: Research
Research is necessary for effective launches. There are always things we can improve on, and unless we have a background in marketing and product launches, we’re probably not going to be able to know everything there is to know about how to effectively launch a book into the marketplace. We can learn from people who know much more than we do.
One of the best resources on product launches, in my opinion, is Jeff Walker. He runs the Product Launch Formula, and he’s fantastically generous with his content and offers a paid course for those interested. I have not take the paid course, but as soon as there’s budget for it, I plan to.
Step 2: Assess.
Look with a critical eye on what went well and what didn’t. Unless we’re constantly assessing these things, they’re not just going to jump out at us. It wasn’t until Husband and I sat down and looked at stats and numbers of views for videos that we could figure out what might have gone wrong or exactly right in our strategy. And of course there will be some variables, because sometimes it’s just a bad time of year or a bad day of the week, and there’s not really a way to analyze why, but if we’re experimenting and keeping track of things like stats and response and sales, we can better know where to go from here.
Assess not only stats but also the quality of content you put out about your book. Sometimes there are tiny little things that could be tweaked to have a better result. It’s best to analyze these aspects with someone who isn’t quite as connected to it, because we can often be blind to our own work.
Step 3: Implement/tweak.
Once you’ve assessed what worked and what didn’t work, make a plan for the next launch that will implement and tweak the problem areas. If we’re not constantly improving, we’re either remaining in a static place or moving backward. Analyzing has not purpose if we’re not willing to tweak the places that need improvement.
Step 4: Experiment with the launch.
I try to keep in mind that every launch I do is an experiment. I’m probably never going to have this whole thing figured out. But I do expect to get better and better at it, and, eventually, I’ll develop my own solid strategy that works for me. I don’t know that there can be any formulas, per se, because each book will be individual for its own market, but I can constantly experiment with what works and then assess and tweak and continue doing research that will put me on better footing for the next time.
Step 5: Repeat.
These steps will be repeated again and again and again, as many times as we are laughing projects. And before we know it, we’ll get really, really good at them, so they’ll become more second nature. Before we even start a project, we’ll be thinking about how we might launch it.
These steps will guarantee we get better at every successive book launch.
(Next week I’ll give you my checklist for my upcoming release.)
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
Launching a product is a pretty scary thing to do.
I launched a product several weeks ago, a poetry book that I spent about five months writing and editing and compiling. A couple of nights before the launch, I wrote this in my journal: “I have to admit that I’m feeling a little nervous about releasing the book, because there’s just so much in it that’s me.”
I felt terrified. I was afraid that no one would see value in the project or that they would be disappointed with the content or that they would never buy anything from me again because of that.
Here’s the truth about launching a product: It’s super scary. Nothing is assured. We don’t know how well it will do or what people will think or whether they will even get what we were trying to do. Writing is so subjective. Not everyone “gets” our kind of writing.
My release was a poetry book, and poetry is one of those things that people either love or hate, and I knew that putting myself out there was going to be a scary thing. But the other truth is this: If we are ever going to succeed at building a thriving business, we are going to have to sell our work.
I didn’t know if I could ask people to buy. Sure, I give out a ton of free content every week, but would people really care when it came time for me to sell something? Would they even pay attention? Would they be able to see the value in what I had done? Would they even remotely care?
But I stepped over that fear tripping around my ankles, and I did it anyway.
And the book did about as well as I thought it would do.
Leading up to the launch, I studied the work of Jeff Walker, a product launch expert, so I could gather every kind of tip there was about successfully launching a product. I followed his tips and released videos about my project and talked it up on social media channels and email lists. But there were many things I should have done differently. So I thought it would be helpful if I shared my mistakes with you.
But before I tell you what mistakes I made, I have to give you this disclaimer: When we’re new to selling products, we’re going to be finding our way into it. We’re going to be testing different theories, seeing what works and what doesn’t on a project-by-project basis. It’s important for us to know that we’re sort of in an experimental stage, because if we set our expectations for that first launch too high, we’ll get so discouraged we won’t want to do it again. Mostly because launching a product is a LOT of work. But it is worthy work.
If I know anything about this business at all, I know it’s built on persistence. We have to have persistence to become the writers we want to be.
My launch strategy was this:
- About a month before the release, I started letting my newsletter people know that I was launching a poetry book.
- I recorded three videos about the book, which I started releasing once a week three weeks before the launch. Video one was about the origins of the book—what made me write it and the inspiration behind it. Video two was about what I hoped the book would do—basically show people a piece of their lives in mine. In video three I talked about the layout structure and shared a couple of poems from it.
- The day of the launch, I sent out an email to my newsletter group to let them know the book was on sale and that I was running a 48-hour special on it.
- That same day, I shared a couple of poems at different times on both Facebook and Twitter.
- When 24 hours passed, I sent another email and did another social media plug, letting people know there were only 24 hours left to get it at the introductory price.
- And again, an hour before the book went off sale I sent another email and shared something on social media.
All in all, I shared about four of the book’s poems on social media during the 48-hour window.
After the launch, my husband (who is my branding and marketing consultant because he’s really good at what he does), and I assessed how it had done. Here are some things we learned:
1. The first pre-launch video was the most viewed, and each video’s views decreased as they were released.
This told us that the pre-launch content shouldn’t just be videos and that we needed to keep them closer together, since releasing them with a week between meant that people likely forgot that I was launching a book and that another video would be coming. So for my next launch, which comes Dec. 2, we will be launching a video a day to see how that works in terms of views and sales. I’ll be reporting on that launch as well.
2. Make a landing page, share it and point to it.
This is a crucial factor. No one signed up for my release notification list for my poetry book, because they didn’t really know about it until the day of the release. I mentioned it casually to my email list in that first email about a month before the list, but I never let anyone on social media or my blog know about it. We brainstormed ways that we could do this more effectively for the next launch, and we thought creating a landing page sooner would help, because when I’m mentioning the project, I can just point people to that page. So that’s what we did. On this new launch page, I have an intro video on the landing page, giving an overview of the project, and then the pre-launch videos will come closer to the release date.
3. Create open loops with the pre-launch videos.
Open loops are part of a story that will logically lead into another story. Think about series and what they do. They leave a few open loops so that people look forward to the next installment to find out what happens. That’s the same thing that needs to be done with pre-launch content. People need to finish that first pre-launch video and say, “I can’t wait to see the next one so I can close that question in my mind.” It’s part of our human nature to want to know what happens next, and story can do this really well when we’re willing to tell a story with our video content.
The pre-launch videos for my poetry book did not contain open loops, which could be why every video released after the first one had fewer views.
4. Generally talk about it more.
I know. I feel the same way. I hate selling myself. But the truth is, if I believe my work is worth having fans gathered around it, then I HAVE TO DO IT. Otherwise no one will ever know what’s happening. People signed up for my email list for a reason: they enjoy my writing. They’re a Facebook fan for a reason: they enjoy my writing. They follow me on Twitter for a reason: They find value in what I have to say. Surely they will enjoy knowing that I have more of that writing packaged up in a book.
For the next release, my husband has advised me to share something about it at least two or three times a week. So that’s what I’ll be doing.
In next week’s blog, I’ll discuss how to get better at product launches. (That right there is all it takes to create an open loop.)
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life, This Writer Life Featured
I recently launched a poetry book called This is How You Know.
Before the launch, I did all kinds of research on product launches, consuming everything I possibly could to learn how to do this kind of thing in an effective way. I studied the work of product launch guru Jeff Walker and took extensive notes and made a plan and had evening meetings with my husband after the kids were in bed so we could try to create something that would interest people and encourage them to support my career as an author.
For the launch, I released three pre-launch videos, spaced a week apart so that, from start to finish, they spanned three weeks. The first video was met with some excitement from people who read me regularly and were happy to finally see a book on the market. The second one was met with fewer views. The third was met with hardly any views at all.
All of that lack of response made me feel guilty that I was “pushing” the videos on people, because at the end of them, what I was really trying to do was sell interest in my poetry book. And then came the launch week, and my husband, who is a content marketer and branding consultant, told me I’d have to kill it on social media and my email list, letting people know about the book and trying to get sales, and I groaned aloud.
We don’t always like to sell ourselves, do we?
I would much rather have someone else sell me. I would much rather have someone else talking about how much my book will help others. I would much rather defer to others when it comes to spreading the word.
It’s true that every week I give more than 5,000 words in free content away, but sometimes it seems like I’m trying to sell that, too, because I’m posting it on all the social media channels, and I’m letting people read the stuff that will eventually form the basis for book material, so it always feels like they’re doing me a favor by reading and sharing it.
But the reality is that my words provide value. My words help make a murky world clear. My words have a tangible effect on people, bettering their lives or giving them information or just encouraging them with humor and truth. So I’m giving. I’m giving and giving and giving, every single week, day in and day out, and I’ve never sold a thing to anyone before this poetry book.
We can feel like we’re not doing what’s right, because no one really likes to be sold to, but the reality is that what we have, the message we carry, the product we’ve developed, has value, and it has the potential to change lives and minds and hearts, and this is a valuable thing to do—that providing transformation in the form of words. So what we’re really selling is not the actual book but the transformation that comes from reading it. And this is a valuable thing.
What we have to offer holds value, and we have to get over this idea that people are doing us a favor by reading it and sharing it, because no one’s going to do those kinds of things as a favor. Do we give out those kinds of favors, or do we share things when we find value in them?
If we’re going to make a career out of our writing, we’re going to have to get over this not wanting to sell our products, because if we believe that what we’re doing is valuable, then we’re going to have to communicate that value in order to get it in the hands of the people.
And the truth is, if we’re indie authors selling our 70,000-word book for $4.99, that’s not a whole lot to ask of the people who follow us. That’s about the same price as the Starbucks they probably had yesterday. They get a whole story that could change their lives or show them a deeper truth, which is more than Starbucks ever did.
Next week I’ll be talking about all the things I learned about product launches from this poetry book launch, and the week after that I’ll be talking about how we can get better at product launches. But for now, I wanted to get this out of the way: We have to become comfortable with selling ourselves if we’re ever going to make this a career.
Here are some ways we can do that:
1. Recognize that what we have to offer holds value.
Maybe it’s just an entertaining story. People love to be entertained, so our offering has value. Maybe it’s just truth wrapped in the veil of humor. Well, the world could do with a lot more humor, if you ask me, so it has value. Maybe it’s something you’ve learned along your journey. Not everyone has learned the same thing, so they will find value in what you have to share.
There are people who would tell you that if all you’re doing is writing stories about yourself, people will never be able to find value in what you do, because there’s not an actual takeaway that has “takeaway” flashing in gigantic neon lights. Don’t buy into that. Your story has value to people because it’s you, and the right people will be able to see that. So believe in your value and then sell.
2. Understand that what you’re selling is not you.
What I mean is that when I was selling This is How You Know, I was not selling me. I was selling an opportunity for my readers to participate in the mystic art of finding themselves in a book of poetry. If we open our eyes widely enough, I believe we can see ourselves in any story or poem or song or essay. There are snippets of truth that hide in our story, that can change our audience for the better, and that’s what we’re trying to sell—the benefit to the reader, not the product in and of itself. With This is How You Know, I told my readers that I hoped they could find a piece of themselves in the poetry that recorded my everyday comings and goings, as I have done with countless poets over the years.
And, at the end of the day, if people don’t buy my book, that doesn’t mean they don’t like me. That they don’t find me valuable. Writing is a subjective field to be in, anyway, and sometimes we can put a little too much of ourselves in it. It can feel as though if a person doesn’t like what we sell or if they don’t buy it, they’re essentially saying something about us. That’s a lie.
I am so much more than the sum of my products. I am so much more than the sum of my art. I am so much more than the sum of my stats and shares and likes. It’s not easy to see this truth when we’re only selling our book for $1.99 and we have thousands of friends on our social media sites, and surely they’ll buy it, even if they don’t have a Kindle or they don’t like reading ebooks or they don’t even like poetry, because it’s only $2 out of their pocket. Except they didn’t, and now I’m wondering why they don’t like me.
We just have to break free from this. Whether or not we sell well does not change who we are.
3. Remember we are helping people.
It definitely isn’t easy to wrap our heads around this one when what we’re selling is entertainment, as in humor or even some narrative nonfiction. The value proposition is a little subtler, so we have to dig a little. But it’s also true that the human experience needs entertainment, and so we are really selling something that will brighten the world and make it more beautiful or fun or interesting. That doesn’t seem like such a hard sell.
4. Know we can’t give away free stuff forever.
This is really the long and short of it. If we’re interested in taking our writing from hobby to career, we have to get comfortable with selling things. It takes work to get there, but every product we launch is giving us more practice in the process.
So launch.
