[Chip MacGregor is one of the best known personalities in Christian publishing. The ace agent, former publisher, writer, teacher, is now a conference director. He and Jim Rubart will lead conferences in how to market fiction, something of interest to every novelist. I met Jim at a conference in Florida. I don't impress easily, but Jim managed to do it. He has worked in marketing for years and his first novel comes out soon. Marketing fiction is tough, and since novelists are, well, novelists and not marketing experts, the task is even more difficult. Chip posted the following on his blog (http://chipmacgregor.com). I asked permission to run it here. --AG]
Interested in Marketing Your Fiction?
[Get ready. I'm going to offer a commercial. At the end, I might even offer you a Ginsu knife. You've been warned.]
I've long been bugged by the fact that most marketing books you read about in publishing are focused on non-fiction. They tell authors to create websites that give away content, or to go on a speaking circuit and talk about your topic, but most of the ideas are really best for non-fiction. What do you do if you're a novelist?
I've been talking about that a lot in recent months -- how novelists can create a readership, build a following, establish a presence as a novelist. Several of my recent blog posts have been focused on things like social media, and establishing an author brand, and the importance of social media. So, working with longtime marketing specialist Jim Rubart, we've put together a two-day seminar on marketing your fiction. This is aimed at writers who have a book coming out sometime in the next year, and want to be able to create their own marketing plan. In fact, the goal of this seminar is to make sure, at the end of our weekend together, each novelist walks away with a unique marketing plan for their upcoming book.
Okay, so we're not going to include a bunch of hype, or motivational you-can-do-it speeches, and there won't be any pie-in-the-sky, "maybe this could work" type of ideas. We're not going to sell you any products. Instead, here are a few things we're going to cover:
- What a novelist’s brand is, how to, discover it, and how to establish it
Most importantly, we'll show you how to create and implement your own, personalized marketing paln to make your novel stand out in a crowded marketplace. And we'll cover the philosophy behind WHY to do certain things. We'll get you thinking like a marketer.
Jim and I have already beta-tested this material, and found it to be really helpful to authors. We are going to do this next month -- November 20-21, in Dallas. Then we're going to repeat it December 4-5 in Indianapolis. We'll be meeting at a hotel conference room close to the airport, so you can either stay at the hotel, or drive in if you're local. (We plan to do this again next spring in Nashville and Chicago.) We're going to keep these small, so that there will be lots of one-on-one time for each author, and it'll be very hands-on. You'll be creating the plan, not just talking about it.
Okay, so the cost is normally $499. We decided to charge $399 for these first two, just as an inducement to get people involved. But then I had a bunch of readers of this blog ask about participating, so... tell you what. If you go to the website (www.themasterseminars.com) and mention this blog, you can come for $300. And yeah, space is limited. There's just two of us, and we can only work with a small group.
Can this sort of focused marketing really work with fiction? Well, I've been working with novelists for years now, and have a good track record of helping them move forward in their careers. So if you really want to figure out what to do in order to market your fiction effectively, plan to come join us. I'd love to meet you there. Thanks for letting me offer you a commercial.
(Yes, I should have worked for Ronco -- "And, if you order before midnight tonight, we'll send you this lovely set of cheese straightners for FREE!")
Chip

