I hate marketing my own books and my own work. Which is odd because I spent most of my corporate career in marketing, and still perform marketing consulting, that is, marketing the products and services of other people.
With
clients, I very much enjoy working to define a business problem well, identify and
consider alternatives, and then help the client choose a path, and begin to
execute a path.
Regarding my
own product and service mix, I have written a couple of books over the past
couple of years, and will produce some more.
They’re distributed primarily through Amazon for paperback and Kindle
products. I have spent very little energy in marketing and selling the books,
and I know they offer more income potential.
I have read and viewed material on how to market on Kindle but I quickly
lose interest, and my meagre efforts have borne modest results. And I’m ok with
this. I produced the books to support
the speaking and consulting business and they have done that. But every once and a while I will look to
those books and decide they could be generating more revenue. Then I’ll try something, it doesn’t work well,
and I lose interest again.
Now I am a
bit aglow this week as I am running an Amazon price promotion the week of April
6-12th, 2022 on Kindle and as
a result, my book about a Quebec and Maritimes based hockey road trip of 18
games in 18 cities is selling well, currently #9 on their hockey bestseller
list nudging out Haley Wickenheiser’s biography. So now I’m curious where my book peaked but
I’m not going to go the effort to try to find out, although I will check the
list from time to time.
Giving Advice To Others
Isn’t it odd
that we can be good at giving advice to others but not act on similar wisdom or
advice for ourselves? I’m sure I could push more volume from my two books, but
marketing these products is not something I enjoy. And so I haven’t.
What I have
realized recently is that I should pay better attention to my more broad market. My recent speaking engagements have been on
the themes of running effective meetings, and injecting some levity and fun
into those meetings. We’re still in the Covid-19 pandemic, and hopefully easing
out of it, but we are now in a 6th wave in Canada. People always need advice, tips and tricks on running
effective meetings, and in these pandemic days on engaging with employees and
coworkers.
My point in writing this is to encourage others to spend time on work they enjoy. I acknowledge that I don’t enjoy marketing my own products. And based on my goals and objectives this is ok. Each year in Canada there are approximately 50 million books sold to 38 million Canadians and a lot are sold by authors with whom we’re all familiar, and I accept my very tiny slice of the market.
I hope you
have the ability to earn a comfortable income and choose to spend your energy
in places that offer you enjoyment.
