Leaving Your Comfort Zone

 

Did you know that doing the exact same thing over and over while expecting a different outcome is famously associated with the definition of insanity?

Creative types probably are a bit insane; otherwise, we couldn't come up with original stories, songs, paintings. We'd simply copy what someone else already did, because that thing, unlike our work, is popular. In other words, we're delusional.

Marketing, however, requires a sound mind, a condition we're lacking. We're dreamers. How many dreamers have you read about who actually became millionaires? Was it this guy?

  (I don't want to know what happened to him.)

How about this one?

 

 

(for when you crave an impromptu picnic) 

Because we're idiots, we go with the tried and true. We fall for whatever someone, be it an internet crackpot or a pseudo-marketing expert tells us will absolutely, positively work.

I've done it. Over and over.

Over and over.

And over and...well, you get the drift.

Then I get mad when none of those things work.

I've gotten mad at people who don't even know I exist. Which kind of takes the fun out of being mad. But mostly I turn my anger on myself.

I tell myself, well, you just didn't do that thing correctly. Nobody clicked on my Amazon ad? Well, I messed it up...somehow. I don't know how, but I'm obviously not cut out for this. (I'm still wondering what I did wrong, by the way.)

If none of these things work, what does? I'm not smart enough to figure that out. I know some things instinctively, but they're not things I can control, such as having an influential person recommend my book. When I was a kid, for a time I was into writing letters to famous singers and asking them for an autographed picture. Worked every time! I pasted all the photos into a scrapbook, in fact. I suppose they were signed with auto pen, but I was just a kid. What did I know? Think that would work today--with my book? 😂"Hey, if it's not too much trouble, could you, famous person, read my book and then post a glowing recommendation for it on X? Big fan, by the way."

So, scratch that. Taylor Swift likely has people to do her reading for her anyway.

(I'll bet a million dollars there are self-published authors who do just that, though.)

Sometimes audacity works; sometimes it just gets the cops showing up at your door.

Or I could take my non-existent million dollars and blow it all on ads. The law of averages would definitely apply. 

Those are the two things that work.

There's something else about comfort zones: 99.9% of creative people are introverts and extremely insecure. We'd rather crawl under our beds and hide than put ourselves out there. Extroverts can burst upon the world with abandon. We, on the other hand, would be nowhere without second guessing. When I took the plunge and signed up for a Storygraph giveaway, my first thought was, nobody will enter. After I discovered well over two hundred entries and realized I'd be awarding all 100 copies, my fear became, what if everybody who wins hates it?

I didn't even allow myself to revel in my unexpected success.

Silly as it sounds, whenever one of my ads didn't work, I assumed people were laughing at me, pointing their finger and ridiculing. And no one even knows me! I was embarrassed in front of those imaginary phantoms. Crazy, or rather insane.

What exactly, in terms of marketing a book, is outside our comfort zones? What could we challenge ourselves to do, despite the potential embarrassment? Well, whatever you do, don't Google "out of the box ways to market a book". I learned that I can do book store events or host my own book-themed party (I only have one friend, so very small party), I can commission jewelry that's based on the theme of my book. (Not sure; thinking guitar earrings? a pendant shaped like the state of Wyoming?) I can create book boxes and "sell them". Nobody even wants my $2.99 ebook, so what are my chances of selling a $45 - $65 book box?

No, no! I'm thinking, things I can do right here, sitting in front of my computer. Please don't make me go out and beg bookshop owners!

The two things that spring to mind that I haven't done so far are blog tours and that Fable book club scheme I posted about yesterday. I'm hardly convinced either of those would work. Isn't there anything that's sure-fire? 😏And cheap?

In its favor, Fable is free. Virtual blog tours are definitely not free; in fact, they can be wildly expensive. 

I need new ideas, ones that allow me to retain my dignity, yet actually produce sales.

If you came here to get the answer, I apologize. But the title of this blog should have been a clue. 

What I will say is, if you're a failed author like me, don't give up. A great idea might come to us in a dream. 

It could happen.