Hello Everyone,

We’re back with the third segment in our four part online bookstore series. In this installment, we talk about how to determine which hats you’re supposed to wear as an author…and which hats will crush you.

Lesson 3: Author or Stock Clerk, You Make the Call

I’ll never forget a conversation I had with an author several years ago. She was exhausted. As a type-A doer, she’d taken major responsibility for promoting her books, and was doing everything she could to build her readership. Book signings, appearances, interviews, newsletters, the list went on.

Then the marketing team at her publishing house told her she also needed to start a blog. And not just a simple blog, but a high-octane, high-maintenance, high-reader-interactivity blog that would require hours of her time each week.

Panic filled her voice as she told me about this new task. “I’m doing so much already I can’t find any time to write! I’m so tired! I have manuscript deadlines pressing, responsibilities as a wife and mom, and now this!” She was nearly in tears.

If , at that point, I had told her she also needed to be responsible for book sales on her site, I think she would have had a psychotic break right then and there. So would many authors.

Which is why the “expert” advice I mentioned in Part 1 troubles me so much.

Authors wear many hats: writer, self-editor, parent, spouse, friend, speaker, church member, coach, marketer, researcher, boss, radio personality, house cleaner, grandparent, chauffeur, mentor, the list goes on.

Finding the time to create thoughtful, quality prose is already a battle. So authors must choose very, very carefully where they invest their time and stamina.

Unless adding a sales clerk hat to your pile is a God-given mandate, it will simply become one more distraction. One more obligation. One more thing leeching away your energy, and thereby robbing your readers of a better book.

If you’d like more information about the reasons selling books from your web site could work against you, click here to read part 4 of our series!

And, in the meantime, remember:

Sell your work…not your soul

Posted on December 6th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: Web Wisdom