No, my publisher has always done the marketing.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I did have a nice career in print, but traditional publishers don't always have the resources to create individualized marketing for their authors. Mine never figured out how to package books as hot as mine so that they found their full audience. Finally, I got frustrated enough over my lack of traction to walk away.
My books didn't fit a marketing niche.
There's a difference between publicity and marketing. A lot of writers don't realize how much marketing goes on beyond the scenes, with sales reps and advanced reading copies, all that stuff that happens months before a book is published.
I've got lots of books sitting here that have never been published because nobody could make any marketing sense of them.
I don't chase publishers. Publishers chase me.
Forget market or publishers or whatever. Just write with fire and joy, and in my own experience, those are the stories of mine people have wanted to read.
I want my writing to reach people. I don't write for a market. I write from my heart, something that appeals to me. The marketing, segmenting etc., can be done by your publisher, not you.
In the past the publishers I've worked with have been extremely generous. And in almost every case, have been people who believed in the work rather than the sales and marketing.
Publishing is a very mysterious business. It is hard to predict what kind of sale or reception a book will have, and advertising seems to do very little good.
My e-books sales have overtaken everything else, so I think all the marketing has become very much driven by the author now because of social media.