C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

I had a fun chat with an author friend who started publishing about the same time I did. We’ve both been in independent publishing for a decade or so. Many aspects have changed in that time. Way back when, pretty much the only marketing advice was to write good books, write more, and hope to get a BookBub. The best way to advertise your book was to write another. For a while, that was true. It’s not enough and hasn’t been enough for a long time. “Organic” alone isn’t going to get you juice.

As the industry matured. savvy gurus encouraged us to fire up newsletters, gather subscriber emails, and create autoresponder sequences. Full disclosure: Little of that interested me much. I didn’t want to market books. I did that kind of thing when I worked in traditional publishing. I’ve always been more interested in the craft. Marketing can be creative, but it’s never as creative as building a novel.

Visibility Then

For a time, I had a higher profile in the indie community. Through this blog I made friends with some heavy hitters and that got me on Simon Whistler’s podcast. From there, I appeared on one of Armand Rosamilia’s pods, was a regular on the sadly defunct Author Strong podcast, and became a co-host on the Self-Publishing Roundtable. I also had several podcasts of my own. NaNoWriMo asked me to provide one of those encouraging how-to, you-go-girl posts. Perhaps most helpful was publishing my best-known trilogy, This Plague of Days.

Then…well…what did happen exactly?

My Disappearance

My friend said, “I had no idea how many books you’d written! It seemed like you disappeared, and all of a sudden you’ve written over 30 books!”

I burst out laughing at “all of a sudden” and she joined me. Of course, it took a while. That’s 30+ books over 10 years, plus all those under pen names and projects where I served as a book doctor. Whether I was working full-time or part-time at my day job, I was always writing something. Passion, consistency, a dedicated space to write, and a closed door are keys to productivity.

However, I did not do a few things that would have helped me. I pulled back on writing this blog daily. I had a day job then and, frankly, some stuff was going on behind the scenes that knocked me flat. I experienced a lot of frustration and several anxiety attacks before I left all that nonsense behind for good. (My good. Writing has been my full-time job for a few years now.) As the pandemic progressed, I didn’t write fast, but I was always writing.

Other mistakes? I wrote (and write) in more than one genre. I did several stand-alone books rather than writing in long series. I have no regrets, but I defied several tropes of my genres. Artistically, those choices made sense. From a business point of view, less so. It also didn’t help that I held back on publishing anything under my name for a long time. Our Zombie Hours and Endemic are just out, but before that? The Night Man came out at Christmas, 2019. Even with some success, if you don’t publish regularly, it’s easy to be forgotten by readers.

Visibility Now

I’m happy to say I will be getting back into podcasting soon. I’ll announce two new podcasts, one fiction and the other non-fiction when the time comes. I mention this because a survey came out a while ago noting that many of the most successful authors are also into podcasting. Correlation or causation? Not sure. Who cares? I have a background in radio and love podcasting, so I’m in.

Speaking with my author friend, it came to me why, despite all my productivity, I seemed to disappear from her horizon. The answer: No advertising budget. I coasted on sales of my backlist. Without the budget to advertise, we disappear from view.

There are plenty of ways to stay in touch with readers. Newsletters, podcasts, blog tours, promotional platforms (like Freebooksy and Bookbub), Facebook ads, Amazon ads etc.,… Some are more expensive than others. Ours is a competitive environment. Like any business, we have to advertise to maintain visibility and viability. If you can’t invest money to remain visible, you’ll have to invest a lot of time and try to leverage that.

The gold rush died out a long time ago. I don’t like it, but the game is pay-to-play, now more than ever.

Hey, here’s an ad because I love to entertain readers, but I also like to buy groceries!

I was a nail. I am a hammer.

As the United States falls to disease, killers and thieves rule New York. Bookish, neurotic, and nerdy, Ovid Fairweather finds herself trapped in the struggle for survival. 

Bullied by her father, haunted by her dead therapist, and hunted by marauders, Ovid is forced to fight.

With only the voices in her head as her guides, a former book editor will become a queen.

~ I’m Robert Chazz Chute. Check out my killer crime thrillers and apocalyptic epics on my author site, AllThatChazz.com.

Filed under: book marketing, books by Robert Chazz Chute, Endemic, how to advertise books, how to become invisible, How to sell books, Our Zombie Hours, Robert Chazz Chute, The Night Man