C is for Content Creation

C is for Content Creation. Without the big publishing’s marketing teams … and even with them, it is on the authors to create social engagement through content creation. This is on top of writing the books and the blurbs. On top of reading to learn the trade (nonfiction) and reading to find where the trade presently is in one’s genre (fiction). Now one has to figure out a way to engage an audience.

What works for you might not work for someone else. In fact, it might not continue to work for you. I have seen friends swear by Facebook ads … and then the ads stop working when FB changes their algorithm. Another friend mastered twitter with the perfect drop schedule to push people to buy books, until it became X. Others have done brisk business because of TikTok and its shop, until it became a “when will they actually shut it down”. Basically every two to three years you have to reinvent your marketing scheme in this industry. Kindle Unlimited right now is in a failing spiral as Amazon keeps paying their creators less and less.

Now my colleagues are exploring Discord, Substack, and Patreon for additional income generation. Others continue to have success through Instagram and the good-old-fashion email’ed Newsletter.

Once a platform is found, the engagement can be behind-the-scenes, how-to-do what I do, fan art, or advance materials. All of this takes away from making the actual books and the day-job to put food on the table.

What do I do?

1. Well, I am participating in A-to-Z. This often creates additional material for my blog, especially for my monthly segment to point people to other blogs that I found interesting.
2. Maintain a blog. I try to produce three pieces of work every week: something book review related, something editing/writing related, and a flash.
3. I create material for my YouTube. I tried putting editing rants up, and might do so again if TikTok goes away. I enjoy them but I only have so much content creation time. Until then, I’ve been dropping TikTok videos on my YouTube channel: @erinpenn7745
4. Even with the on-and-off again TikTok has been going through, I drop regular BookQuotes over there. They are about 15 seconds long and feature a bookquote of something I or one of my friends or followers have read. I waste way too much time making them (hence nothing new on YouTube for the editing rants), but I am having fun. My TikTok is: @erinpennbooks
5. I make memes based on bookquotes as well – you can see some of them below. I also make…made (sign, it shall be missed)…memes for NaNoWritMo, specifically to make more “You should be writing” memes featuring women and people of color. I regularly post them here, and on my Pintrest: https://www.pinterest.com/ErinPenn1/
   1. Recent NaNoWritMo & “You should be writing” memes on my site: Memes: Write Something (Five) – if you like stuff like this, I highly recommend you follow me on Pinterest for the writing folder I have over there.
6. I recently became active on Discord. I am still working that out, but I participate in Falstaff Books discord channel (I am one of their editors). If you would like to join me there, drop me a comment below asking for the channel details and I will email you.
7. Of course I have the old stand-by, an author’s page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ErinPennBooks/
8. As a book reviewer, I am active on both Goodreads and Storygraph.
9. Things I am thinking of making a substack newsletter or reactivating my patreon account. Should I set up a personal discord channel or do a private email newsletter. I really need to set up something that can be monetized but when to find the time?

Yes, that is a whole lot of stuff and all of it takes away for writing. But all of it is CREATION, which is very satisfying.