Tag: marketing

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On “Going Commercial” – And Loving It.

I’ve just been invited by Amazon Canada to be an Amazon Influencer. This means that I get my own website at Amazon.ca to display all of my books (finally!) and I can recommend products to you there as well. As one reader put it, “You’re going commercial?”

You bet I am, but I’m not doing anything differently with my online presence than I have been for many years. It’s just that a large corporation finally noticed that what I have to say (of my own volition) to my followers may be useful to them. If that’s what some call “going commercial,” I say bring it on, bring it big or go home broke. I’m not doing anything I’m not proud of; in fact, I’m really excited about this, because I’d already been plugging books and products in my Instagram/ on Twitter and YouTube for two years without even realizing it. Now I’ll just be earning a small percentage per purchase when I point readers to books and products that I already use and love.

I’ve always been a writer for the love of writing, and if I can find ways to do what I’m passionate about every day, stick to my morals, and still make a decent living in the 21st century as an author? Then “going commercial” is something I’m darn proud of.

The best part is, this is one more way that I can prove to those of you who aspire to become authors that, yes, Virginia, we CAN be wealthy writers! Very few can make a living that will sustain a whole family simply by writing books (especially if you don’t have over ten published books out yet). We can, however, make a decent salary for ourselves as writers if we think outside the box and do more than just write books. We have to consider selling those books as ebooks, paperbacks, audiobooks; selling the rights to adapt those books into films; speak about our lives as writers and get paid for that, and use social media to gain more interested readers, which gives us leverage in making business deals with corporations and organizations that we respect.

I started out as a poet, first published at age five, and decided to become a writer then and there. At the time, I didn’t realize I was headed into a profession that would pay me very little (even as a trained journalist) for coming up with fresh ideas and stories out of thin air. It didn’t make sense to me: why are writers so undervalued, when people who catch footballs and run with them earn $5-20M a year?

Reality sunk in quite quickly in my twenties when I began sending out story ideas to magazines and learned I’d be paid two to forty cents a word for my work ($1/word for the top magazines) and that the average author in Canada makes $6,000 a year. For some crazy reason, though, I kept on writing. I think the reason is called passion.

I’ve since made it my mission to be transparent with followers who tell me that they want to be authors, too. I try to remind you that it’s going to be challenging, but not impossible, to make a living doing this. I only started making a good profit at writing fiction two years ago. It started out as what I called “skate money” to buy my daughter skates, but soon my earnings became “vacation money,” and I was able to buy a $500 daybed for our backyard, several lovely vacations for our family and I paid many bills (or as my husband Bill likes to joke about it, “Pay Bill.”). While my book income continues to grow, I wouldn’t be able to handle the mortgage payments on my own, plus saving for University for our daughter, plus all of our yearly expenses, without the help of my spouse’s income. I can’t sustain my family in 2018 on my author earnings. Yet.

And that’s why I’m going commercial. Plus, I love online shopping. I love avoiding traffic and crowds and shopping in my luxurious grey robe. Now, when I’m not writing my next novel or working on getting the last one adapted into a movie, I get to buy dresses, purses and shoes and tell you what I think about them? Yes, please!

Check out my new Amazon Influencer Link and please use it whenever you want to buy one of my books or audio books. It will be much appreciated.

Thanks for taking this journey with me,
Heather

Heather Grace Stewart
Shopping online is my second favourite way of doing it. I most love shopping at outdoor markets, buying flowers and hand-crafted decorations for our home.
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Authors, Value Your Work!

Imagine if civil engineers worked for free. They’d probably do a shabby job, leave work at noon, and say, ‘oh well, you never paid me,’ whenever their bridges collapse.

As authors, we owe it to ourselves and to future generations to put a price tag on our hard work. Free and 0.99 cent deals are fine now and then, to help us promote ourselves when we’re getting started, or to find a new audience for an older work,  but it’s important to this industry that we remind readers, and often, that we are the bridge builders in literature.

Heather

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Marketing: Not My Favourite Thing.

Ugh. Marketing. Just the word sends me running to the fridge for comfort food.

We authors are not built for marketing our books. We need to learn the business, and it’s not an easy one.

I do like interacting with readers online, and I especially love meeting them in person at readings and book signings. But figuring out how to stand out in a sea of millions of other hybrid (traditionally & self published) authors? Yikes. It gives me a migraine.

Yet, I try to spend at least an hour every working day marketing my work. I write every morning, then make business calls and compose or answer emails, and then I take at least one action towards marketing my latest two books. My earlier works? They take a back seat. I can’t do it all. I hope they’ll be discovered when I share a link to all my work online.

One tool that has helped me immensely in marketing my work online and creating printable posters for readings is CANVA.COM It’s so user friendly, and it’s fun! In the last few months, I have made a lot of promotional posts for Facebook, Twitter and even made my most recent book covers with it. It’s free to use your own photos and template. You pay a small amount ($1 each item) if you want to buy the rights to use certain photos and/or designs.

Made this in Canva today:

Remarkably Great by Heather Grace Stewart-3

Yes, writers write, but we also need to learn to market what we produce, and not just for launch day. We need to speak up and help new readers discover our work. If we don’t (and we don’t happen to have a wealthy publicist who takes us out for a sushi lunch every week- yeah I’m not dreaming at all! ), who will?

Heather