6.1 Relationship chemistry
Want readers?
Most of us do. So how do we get them? There are tons of marketing techniques and lots of people teaching them.
But the best thing you can do is…
Midwife a heart-to-heart connection between your readers and your work.
In conventional marketing, this is called positioning. And it’s a good place to start.
In 1981, Al Ries and Jack Trout published Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. In it they explain that to “position” a product or service in the marketplace means…
You find a desire already in your prospect’s mind and you speak to that.
Instead of trying to put something new into the mind of your prospect, you make use of what’s there, which is a whole lot easier than “educating” your prospect.
Let’s say you’re the one who first came up with the idea of an ice-cream cake. Well, your potential customers already have a desire for ice cream and a desire for cake. Putting the two together is something unfamiliar, but you’re triggering familiar desires.
You’re not asking your prospect to do the hard work of grasping a new idea they’ve got no prior connection with.
So how can writers use positioning? Say you’re writing a mystery and you want to attract readers who love mysteries. You’re going to use familiar tropes. You’re going to drop hidden clues along the way. You’re going to have fun with surprising twists. And the design of your book cover will announce to the world, “This is a mystery.”
Some readers just want to escape into a very familiar kind of story. They’re not looking for a challenge. It’s like the print version of comfort food.
Then there are readers who want the expected but infused with the unexpected. They want the security of the familiar combined with the excitement of novelty.
No matter who you’ve decided to write for, you want your marketing riffs to speak in a direct way to the desires of your intended readers. And you want the substance of your book to fulfill those desires. After all…
You’re making a match.
That’s positioning.
You show prospects that what you’re offering matches what they want.
But what if readers want something they don’t yet know they want? You’re going to have to work a bit harder at your positioning.
Think about personal computers. Before they were invented, people didn’t have a desire for them. But once they were made available and people understood what they could do, demand exploded.
Or think about the wave of TV shows that arrived with “Breaking Bad” and “The Sopranos.” No one was asking for shows like that, but once they were broadcast, there were suddenly giant, committed audiences for them.
It’s a fact that sometimes people want something they don’t know they want till they can have it…
Or imagine it.
Luckily you’re a writer, you’re a creative, so you can help people imagine their way into their desire for something new that you’re offering.
Recommendation
On the day you decide to write your book, I recommend you open these four files on your computer…
1. Amazon description
2. Proposal development
3. Title and cover
4. Blurbs and comments
Why on day one? Because then you can…
Play with your positioning.
Instead of waiting to the last moment. Which an awful lot of authors do. They don’t like marketing. They don’t like the language of it or the style of it or the feel of it. So they put it off until they’re done writing.
So now they’ve got a completed manuscript, but instead of relaxing and celebrating, they have to get back to work and draft marketing materials under pressure.
Of course some publishers are really good with marketing and you can turn it entirely over to them.
But I don’t recommend that, because…
You’re the one who is deep in with your book.
You understand dimensions and nuances that a publisher might miss because they don’t have a lot of time to spend with each book they release.
Even if the publisher is an ace at marketing, I still recommend that you give them something to work with. And that you show them exactly how you’ve been thinking about your relationship with your reader and…
How you’ve been writing your way into that relationship.
Here’s something that can happen. I was struggling with a chapter in my first book. I’m talking months of coming at it from different angles. One morning I decide I had the wrong title. It was choking me. I changed it and suddenly I understood what the chapter was about. And I had a deeper understanding of what the book was about.
Now what if you finish your book, and then start working on your marketing message, and you talk to potential readers to get their responses, and you come up with something really good. In fact, it captures what your book is about better than anything you’ve written to date.
But now your title doesn’t match your messaging, so you’re going to have to change it. Which means working through the book from beginning to end to bring everything into alignment with your new title and positioning.
This might only take a bit of time or it might take a whole lot of time, but in either case, if from day one you keep thinking about how you’re going to talk with potential readers about the book, that can help you get clear and stay clear about the essence of what you’re writing.
This is not the same thing as “chasing the market.” This is about…
Playing your way deeper into your relationship with your reader and the heart of your writing.
