So You Want To Sell Your Self-Published Poetry…

To sell anything, you need two things: a product people want and the awareness of its existence. To sell your self-published poetry is no different.

Your muse may balk at the suggestion, but your book is a product like everything else. So, if you want people beyond just your close friends and family to purchase it, you need to reconcile that fact.

Success will come when you learn how to move people’s emotions.

Good poetry moves people, it makes them feel, it takes them on a journey, it helps them to connect.

Good advertising moves people, it makes them feel, it makes them want, it plants a seed that grows and an itch that can only be scratched via purchase.

Good products move people, they make them feel, they solve a problem, they make life smoother, and they answer questions with solutions.

To write a best seller you need to move people, not just with the force of your writing, but also with good editing and promotion.

To do this well, you need to become three people…

The Business Of Writing

1) ‘Writer You’ - this person puts words onto the page without thought, filter, care for audience or outcome.

This is the part of you that you are likely most connected to and engaged with. It is the part that consumes art and expresses itself in response. It is the muse, the flow, it is the reason you love the process.

Potential pitfalls for Writer You: inviting the other parts of you (see below) into the creative process.
Solution: remind Writer You that they need not concern themselves with editing or promotion – that will be handled later, by a different part of you. All Writer You needs to do is write.

2) ‘Editor You’ – after Writer You puts down the pen, Editor You comes along and kills your darlings. They change, delete, edit, add and alter whatever is necessary to make the piece pop.

For some writers, Editor You is on overdrive, always butting heads with Writer You and stifling all creativity by offering premature fixes and advice.

For others, Editor You is non-existent. These writers either never release their work, or if they do, it lacks the polish necessary to effectively move people to purchase.

Potential pitfalls for Editor You: out of balance, either overactive or underactive.
Solution: drop your ego and detach from the work. Take more time between the writing and editing and frame the project as you not self-critiquing or berating or self-hating but polishing. Editor You’s job is to help the innate brilliance of Writer You shine.

3) ‘Entrepreneur You’ – This person seeks and accepts feedback from external editors and other experts and accepts it. They promote the book and focuses on the business side of things, easily accepting the ego cut and boosts that can come with sales and positive reviews, or a lack of, because they did not write the work themselves. They are first and foremost businesspeople whose activities enable Writer You to have the food, shelter and stuff necessary to write.

Potential pitfalls for Entrepreneur You: a hyper fixation on numbers moving in the right direction and promotional activities blocking time and energy from Writer You.
Solution: find balance – this will look different for everyone, but it may involve allocation of times each day to each task, or to days in which you’re the writer one day and the entrepreneur the next. Try different options and keep what works.

An Integrated Approach To Writing

All three of these people need to work in harmony together, simultaneously and sequentially creating, fixing and selling, in this way, we will move ever closer to living off our writing.

You know you are out of balance if you are not writing, reviewing, sharing, or selling. Make sure that you are doing all these tasks regularly and that you are reviewing the process to track if one of the above ‘You’s’ are taking up too much space and thus need to be put in their place, and if necessary, add a fourth person to the mix, ‘Manager You’ to ensure that the different parts of you best work with one another.

Entrepreneur Me, would like to let you know that if you read this far, you would probably appreciate grabbing a copy of my book ‘How To Write Evocative Poetry’, it will help you to improve your writing, editing and selling of your work, regardless of genre.

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Read more:
- Write What You Know, Not What You Think Will Sell
- How To Write Poetry That Moves People
- Why I Write Erotica

Read another chapter from How To Write Evocative Poetry. Download a free copy here, or purchase as a Paperback, eBook, Hardcover or Audiobook.

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