How To Promote Your Writing With Technology

This post, from C. Patrick Shulze, originally appeared on his Author of "Born to be Brothers" blog on 4/14/10.

The world of writing is about to roll over in the grave it doesn’t know it’s in yet. The writing industry is on fire and undergoing cataclysmic alterations to its landscape due to the advancement of technology. And everyone involved with writing, agents, publishers, book stores, readers and those who do the writing, are caught up in this technological conflagration.

[In] my opinion the landscape that emerges from this titanic struggle will look very different than the one with which we are now familiar. The industry will survive, no doubt, but in a vastly altered state from the one we see today. As to those who do the writing, I believe they will become business people who write, rather than writers who do business. In fact, this alteration has already begun in earnest as even traditionally published authors are now required to do their own marketing.

With this in mind, it becomes evident writers should embrace this technology if they wish to enhance their marketing efforts. Here’s some thoughts I garnered on how to do that.

As a writer, you should consider using podcasting and videocasting to promote your novel. Even Simon and Schuster said this was necessary. Here’s why.

First and foremost, people spend a lot of their time on the Internet which is already transportable. Even more, the future of the Internet is video. In fact, video search is growing in popularity at an astonishing speed.

If you’ve paid attention to how to market books in today’s environment, you know the new attitude toward sales is all about the human connection. This link builds trust between people and trust is a critical element in marketing. With this in mind, video is about as personal as we can get without being there.

The best aspect of video is it’s demographics. From Elites TV, you’ll find video demographics are “53% male/47% female. 55% urban with median income of $74K. Nearly 70 percent are college educated, 47% are married, median age is 33, 71 percent are employed.”

Pretty strong marketing core, wouldn’t you say? And best of all, these are the people who buy the books.
 

Read the rest of the post, which includes tips and resources for getting started with video, on C. Patrick Shulze‘s Author of "Born to be Brothers" blog.