#017: How to Market a Book While Writing a New Book

Welcome back to the hit splits and today I just wanted to share something that was asked in our Christian Book Academy group. One of our members says, does anyone have hints on how to balance marketing the book? I already have out and writing the next project. I spend so much time on marketing and it's so true. You know we can get just stuck in the weeds of marketing. Yes, there's so many things you can do. There's, it's endless. But, but if you really want to move forward and have more books, which that really is a great form of marketing because if they're similar then the readers you already have, the people who already love your work, they're probably going to buy your next book. And so you know that's, that's a great form of marketing. But it is so easy to get stuck and not move forward in writing the new book. So what I suggested to her and one idea I want you to know there's never a set in stone way of doing anything. We're all different, we all have different personalities. So do what works best for you. But one thing you could try is doing like a themed day or a themed week. So you would make a certain day each week dedicated to marketing or maybe you have one week each month dedicated to the marketing and then the other weeks dedicated to the writing. I mean you can spread, spread it out whatever you, however you want. You could do it 50, 50 if you want but you know, you would have then dedicated times. You're in the marketing brain space, right? You're in the marketing mode and then other times you're in the writing mode. And if you personally use social media or if you have an email list, we have some amazing templates for you that can help save you time in the mini marketing messages kits. So you get some prompts, you get some templates that you can post. You get a new template every month as a Christian Book Academy member. But we also have them in our shop if you want to check that out@bookmarketing shop.com so that can save you time on the marketing. And we also have templates for requesting reviews, getting booked on podcast and when you use systems and templates like that, it can really make the process so much quicker and then you can get more done in less time so you have more time left over for writing. Right? That's the plan. But you know, one of the things that I have done is I, you know, I do this full time with an online business now. I, I'm not a full time writer, but I am A full time business owner. And so I have found a schedule that works for me right now. But I will say I have changed it and I have edited it over the years and currently what I try to do doesn't always happen perfectly this way. But Mondays, you know, it's kind of like a catch up day anyways from the weekend and from everything. So I just make Mondays kind of an admin day and any kind of just little admin tasks that I need to do. I used to do my bookkeeping on Mondays, but hey, hallelujah, I have hired a bookkeeper that was a win for 2022 and she's doing pretty good so far. But so I do admins on Mondays and then I try to set aside Tuesdays and Wednesdays for deep work. So what is deep work? It's the book by Cal Newport and he talks about really turning off all of the notifications and, and, and I try not to do those little tiny tasks, you know, that could be done in just, you know, few minutes or more of the admin stuff. I try to keep that on Mondays and then I try to leave Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the bigger tasks, like if I'm putting together a new workshop, if I'm writing a book, if I'm writing emails or writing things for marketing. Yesterday I was writing emails for our upcoming promotion in January all about planning, planning and planet day 90 day goal setting, planning with sticky notes. We have a lot of different products that can help you to plan and so be looking for that the first week of January. But I was writing those emails and you know, that's what I try to do. So Tuesdays, Mondays is admin. Tuesdays and Wednesdays for me is deep work. And then I try to reserve Thursdays for live events. So these are the zoom calls. This is when I have my voxer office hours for cba and you know, if I do interviews, I try to do it on Thursdays. It doesn't always work out perfectly, especially if the other person has a different schedule. But for me, and especially being an introvert, highly sensitive empath, all of those things, if I'm doing live events every day, it just wears me out. Whereas if I just keep it on one day and I just limit those events to two or three for the day, I can manage that. And so you have to learn what works for you and manage what works for you with your work schedule, with your family life, with your church and other activities that you have with, you know, your kids or grandkids or family or what other responsibilities you have. Look at your schedule and say, okay, is, is maybe like, maybe the first week of the month is a great time to do my marketing, because then, you know, you can just get it done for the month, schedule things out, you know, figure out what you're doing, write everything that you need to write and just get it done. And then the rest of the month is going to be focusing on the writing. Or maybe there's a certain day of the week, maybe like a Monday. You decide, I'm going to be doing my marketing stuff on Mondays and, or on Fridays or whatever. Or maybe if you're in Christian book Academy of me, maybe you decide that you're going to really focus on getting a lot of your writing done on our virtual writing retreat. So that's usually the last Friday and Saturday of the month. It is different right now because of the holiday in December, but we have, you know, those every month. So you can say, I'm going to really block off that time and I'm going to make sure I come so that I know I have that dedicated writing time. Or you could use the virtual writing retreat to, to do the marketing tasks and then do your writing other times. I mean, there's so many options. But I do encourage you when you have at least two major different things going on, to try to block it out into either days or weeks because your brain gets in a flow and then you can stay in that flow instead of, you know, trying to write a little bit and then trying to do marketing a little bit and then not really getting much of anything done at the end of the day. But you know, somebody had commented when I, I shared this idea in our group, just marvelous idea. Time for a new habit. And so, yes, I hope that all of you were encouraged by this and, and honestly, just try, just try something and then you can see if you want to change it later. That's what I have done. I've just set things up and then I've adapted it as I go. So hope this was helpful and I will talk to you in the next hiit splits.