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To establish a full-time living from your writing, it’s essential to learn basic marketing principles. There is something of a formula, and it looks like this:

The right message + the right words + the right audience = success!

Typically, the biggest missing piece for writers (and publishers too) is the right audience. While you may tune out market concerns during the creative process, once that process is over and it comes to the business of writing and publishing, there’s no way around the discussion of audience. If you can’t reach an audience, your career will stall.

While “word of mouth� plays a powerful role in making anyone’s work more visible, a strong marketing plan can be integral to sparking that word of mouth in the first place. Nearly all great work has to be thoughtfully marketed to gain visibility, and thoughtful marketing starts with understanding of audience.

The wealth of online information and social media means it’s easier than ever to develop a portrait of your audience: where they hang out, what types of media they consume, where they shop. To better understand your readers and how to reach them, here are some starting points:


Once you know who you are approaching and where you can reach them, that’s half the battle. The other half is communicating well: the right message and the right words. Your marketing communications will usually have one of two objectives:


Platform building is directed toward the second goal and is what most of your marketing communication consists of. It’s an ongoing effort to develop your audience and reach new readers. Big corporations participate in this type of communication as well, and it’s typically called brand building. When Coke runs an advertisement that says “Open happiness,� that’s not a sales-driven message; that’s a brand-building message. Conversely, when McDonald’s advertises a $1.99 McRib sandwich available only for the next two weeks, that’s a sales-driven message meant to directly affect the bottom line.

Sales-driven communications are typically tied to specific marketing campaigns, product launches, or short-term initiatives. This is where you would be most likely to measure your effectiveness, and look at cause-and-effect outcomes. For example: Did my promotional posts affect my email newsletter sign-ups? Did my discount affect book sales? But when you’re building relationships, you typically do not measure cause and effect, because making a sale isn’t the point. Building a conductive environment or making a connection that will lead to a sale later is the point. Be aware that if you emphasize sales-driven messages across all your marketing communications for extended periods, your community will tire of you.

Established, full-time writers know that a large online following doesn’t equate to a sustainable business model. Instead, and engaged audience that helps spread word of mouth leads to success. Use analytics to identify how and where you get the best engagement, and what tools help you find the right audience, rather than the biggest audience. Ultimately, this is the most powerful feature of digital media: its ability to find and reach just the right person, who enjoys your work or who can benefit from your service.

Excerpted with permission from The Business of Being a Writer by Jane Friedman © 2018 by Jane Friedman