why I started steph moon co

Imagine spending a year or two researching, writing and then editing your book.  You turn in your manuscript to you editor and now have all this free time on your hands. What do you do? Turn your attention to the next project? Or create plans to promote your book? 

The answer I hope you picked was create plans to promote your book.  Writing your book is only half the process of creating a successful book. The second half is book promotion.  

When I worked in the marketing and publicity department of traditional publishers, I was surprised by just how many books each publisher worked on each season.  For example, I was the Marketing & Publicity Manager at one well-known publisher for one industry vertical.  What this means is that I was the only person working on books in this particular industry. I was doing both marketing and publicity for 30-40 titles a season which means that’s 60-80 titles a year.  Sure, I had support from people on the larger marketing team, but I was the only one actively marketing and pitching these books. 

The reason I tell you this is not to scare you. But to illustrate the picture that even though you are publishing with a traditional publisher, book promotion is still a HUGE part of helping you launch a successful book.  

I would work with so many authors who were so genuinely excited to get their book into readers hands but wouldn’t do much to promote the book. Authors would post two times on their social media and think they were done promoting their book.  It broke my heart to see time and time again that authors hesitated to promote their book regularly to their own communities.   

The authors wanted their books to reach so many readers, but their own promotion fell flat.  As I tried to explain to authors they should promote their books, many wanted to but just didn’t know how. By trade, they were writers and experts in their field…not marketers.  And secondly, they didn’t quite understand the best way to do it. 

Seeing this happen again and again is what inspired me to break out on my own and help authors get their marketing foundations in place so they could feel comfortable promoting their book.  The internet is filled with marketing advice and it can absolutely be overwhelming.  Who do I listen to? How do I do this? Is this important? There are so many questions that must run thru your mind.  

I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be hard. In fact it can be simple. Create a strong marketing foundation and everything else will fall into place. My favorite saying is that marketing isn’t doing one big thing well once. It’s about doing a lot of little things often.  

Are you ready to do one little thing today? And then one thing tomorrow?