I think I'm more marketing- and sales-oriented than others, and the notion of selling books continues to interest me.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
If there is going to be any meaningful sales, it's going to be through word of mouth and people recommending it to their book club and then a thousand more book clubs do it, and then you get into real sales numbers.
I began tailoring my books to cater to one or another universe of readers. I found it incredibly boring; and frankly, it felt stultifying. I'd previously been in advertising. I felt if I was going to create something to fit a specific market, I might as well have stayed with advertising.
I'm not a great shopper but I do buy a lot of books. I'm the publishers' friend - I buy a hundred books a year and read four.
I read my books to writing workshops and friends, and I'm often focussed just on keeping them entertained. I never think about marketing at all.
My books didn't fit a marketing niche.
I tend to turn down books originally published as e-books. As for selling books directly to e-book publishers, I would do so only if all traditional publishers had turned them down.
I've got lots of books sitting here that have never been published because nobody could make any marketing sense of them.
I find it hard to think of myself as selling books. I don't even have a Web site. I want to sit and write, not sell.
I never sell a book. I sell myself. And the way to sell yourself is to be an instrument of love.
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.