Marketing Your Novel Doesn't Have to Suck the Life Out of You

I’ll let you in on a little secret. I hate querying. Despise it.

I hated querying agents and publishers. Which is why I created my own imprint.

I hated querying bloggers, book reviewers, and authors to read my books. So I stopped sending out ARCs (although I am looking into hiring someone to do it for me).

Why do I hate querying so much? Because it is extremely time consuming. I’d spend an hour and a half formatting my query and manuscript exactly the way a particularly anal agent wanted it, only to find out they were no longer accepting queries.

If you’ve ever queried before, you know you can spend hours and only get two or three queries out—which would likely never be read by the person you’re sending it to, but probably by their overworked, underpaid assistant.

I started doing the numbers on just how much time I spent doing that.

Time that I could have spent creating.

So I stopped.

I wanted to find organic ways to market where I could still be a creator. A way of marketing where I could use my writing and filmmaking skills.

That led me to documenting my journey toward publishing my two novels Mindbender: From Harlem With Love and Diary of a Girl at the End of the World here on Substack. I also plan to release supplemental materials for my novels in the form of short stories from the worlds these novels inhabit.

It also led me to YouTube, where I could utilize my filmmaking skills in a series of micro-documentaries—a blend of fact and fiction—to showcase the worlds of my novels on my Exile Circus YouTube channel. I’m also very excited about other visual promotional ideas I have in the works.

Are these valid marketing methods? Will they work? I don’t know. I’m a writer.

But I enjoy this much better than querying people to read my novels.

And I’m building out my worlds visually.

I enjoy writing fiction and essays on Substack. It’s my joy. And I feel like I’m connecting with an audience that understands. People who are facing the same challenges as I am.

I enjoy creating my little videos, and with each one I get a little more proficient at it.

And that’s not nothing.

Because, let’s face it, after spending the millions of hours it takes writing a novel, rewriting it multiple times, then editing it over and over again, the last thing I want to do is sit on my computer for countless hours day after day writing unsolicited correspondences to gatekeepers of one sort or another.

I’m at my best when I’m creating.

I think that all authors who are publishing their own work should follow a marketing path that plays to their interests and strengths and lets them continue to be artists—not turn them into marketing executives.

I’ve included the latest episode of my Mindbender Micro-Doc series below.