I’m a Writer. Must I Market?

The short answer is yes. Yes, you must.

Accurate stock photo of a guy writing in the middle of nowhere. Alone.

Well, folks, Andrés Cruciani of Toho Publishing once again, and while there are a number of things I could talk about, what I really want to answer is this question:

As a writer, do I need to market?

or, put another way:

I hate marketing. Do I have to?

The sentiment among writers that all you need to do is write (something spectacular) — and then the publishing deal will come and the book will do amazingly and you’ll be on shelves everywhere — is super common. I know it particularly well because I too suffered from this DELUSION.

While it’s certainly true that you might write something amazing and the book become an overnight success (it could happen), you’re essentially banking on a lottery ticket. Of course, everyone who holds on to this pernicious DELUSION — that their book will be one to skyrocket because, well, their book is just so damn good — they think they’re not deluded because, in fact, they hold the winning ticket.

Again, I very much understand the sentiment. But if there’s one thing I want to do for my fellow writers, it’s to shatter this mindset. To shatter it completely. To get that DELUSION out of all our brains. As writers, as explorers of the imagination, we tend to glorify and romanticize our illusions (our characters, our writings, our stories, our notions about the world). But these illusions become DELUSIONS, and then we suffer by them.

I recently heard one writer say that actually writing a book is only 25% of the work. That’s right. Some of us spend eight years on one book (me), eight years on another (me), and we’re only doing 25% of the work. At this point, I’ve heard over and over again that even if you get a publisher, they don’t do much. That’s right: even if you get traditionally published, these days, you STILL have to do more work. There are, of course, the lottery winners (somebody has to win that hundred million) who can simply focus on craft and ride their popularity to their deaths with only having to do ONE interview (this person is Cormac McCarthy), but who would ever base their entire lives on winning the lottery?

What many authors think getting their book published will be like.

If you love the process of writing, the act itself, and could care less about whether others read your work, then kudos to you. You are truly a rare breed. And it’s possible that you’ve achieved some deeper understanding of life than I have. Very possible. And I grant you that.

But most writers, if they’re honest, want others to read their work. To communicate something or to share some art or to arouse some emotion. After all, the whole point of words is to communicate with other human beings. So, if you’re not the Dalai Lama of writing (which is 99% of us), you need to give up first the DELUSION that you don’t care (oh, I’ll become posthumously famous — that’s enough for me!) and then the DELUSION that just writing something great is enough.

It’s not.

What publication day is actually like for many writers.

And the reason is that there are so many people on this planet (we’re approaching EIGHT BILLION) that there are thousands upon thousands (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands) of extraordinary works of art being created every single day. The competition is monumental. So, if perhaps making something great was once enough, it no longer is because everyone else is making something great too. And your great book is competing not with the amateur and bad but with the other great books out there. Think about it. Which books will find their readers? What is the other 75% of the work?

If you want your book to find eyeballs, if you want to share something you have created with your fellow human beings, you will need to market.

You will need to engage with social media and you will need to do readings and you will need to teach classes and — yes — write blog posts. You will need to fight your introverted nature, and you will need to smash your DELUSIONS: that your work is greater than what’s out there, that your words are more important, that your book will do the work.

Let them go.

And if you really don’t care if anyone ever reads your work. If you simply enjoy the act of writing in and of itself, then like the Buddhists who make their giant, intricate mandalas from sand and then, upon completion, blow them away, we challenge you to do the same:

Burn your writing.

Delete your files.

If you can’t, perhaps you’re lying to yourself.

Toho Publishing is publishing Andrés Cruciani’s first novel. Join us (and him) on all the things: Facebook, Twitter, Medium, YouTube, and Instagram.