Most authors don’t think much about marketing until after the book is finished.

They tend to see the entire process of publishing a book as being three linear steps:

1. Create the book
2. Make the book a product
3. Market (aka sell) the book

When they do think about marketing, they look at a very narrow piece of what marketing actually is. That piece is typically the specific actions designed to publicize the message that they have a book available for sale.

Basically, they equate marketing to selling. More specifically, they equate it to direct selling.

The reality is that marketing is an entire ecosystem and it works best when the ecosystem exists before the book is published.

This is why most marketing plans fail authors. In most cases, the marketing plan created by an author is only addressing a small segment of the entire marketing ecosystem, one book at a time. When pieces are missing from the ecosystem it creates gaps that directly contribute to the challenges authors face when trying to sell books. It’s not that authors are doing it wrong, it’s simply that they have gaps they need to fill.

When this ecosystem is well established, direct selling books becomes less important because a proper pipeline is established that creates a steady stream of attracting new readers whose interest is being nurtured to convert into readers who buy, read, and talk about the book. This pipeline then continues to grow and compound over time, increasing in size for each next release.

To help avoid confusion, I’ve named the entire marketing ecosystem the Growth process.

When the Growth process as a whole doesn’t exist, authors end up jumping straight from a finished book product to trying to sell the book with scattered approaches that rarely work.

This leads to authors becoming frustrated and believing that marketing doesn’t work.

The result of this is that authors either turn up the gas and try to do more and more, or they give up completely.

The approaches they try aren’t inherently wrong, they’re simply not supported.

And an interesting thing is that maintaining a proper Growth process is less work, less stressful, and less overwhelming than trying to direct sell one book at a time.

Teaching fiction authors about this Growth process is what I do. It’s the entire purpose of my Patreon membership.

But understanding what this Growth process is and how to develop it is challenging. It feels complicated and overwhelming, which prevents a lot of authors from digging into it.

In fairness, it is complicated in many ways. There’s a lot of industry terminology that makes sense to marketing professionals, but not to the indie author who just wants to get their book into the hands of readers.

It’s also challenging to summarize in a simplified way while trying to avoid the jargon, and while trying to overcome the additional complexity that the English language introduces by assigning multiple meanings and uses to the same words.

This is why, if you’re a returning reader, you may have noticed that this article has changed. After receiving some feedback, I realized that the original version wasn’t serving the purpose it was intended to. Hopefully this revision does a better job, but I encourage you to reach out if any parts of it create confusion rather than clarity. There are many ways to explain the different moving parts and how they work together. I chose one path, then changed that path, and I’m willing to make more changes.

What’s important to me is that this monster of a topic becomes something less scary and frustrating so that you can fill the necessary gaps to make selling books more enjoyable and effective.

You do not need to be a marketing professional, or have a marketing degree, or hire a marketing expert in order to set up a Growth process that works specifically for you.

First, I want to set the stage by clarifying the lifecycle of an author’s career. Authors aren’t far off when they think in terms of: Create → Produce → Sell. The issue is that selling the book is only one sliver of the Growth process, just like writing the first draft is one sliver of the Creation process. 

So first, let’s rename the steps:

1. Create the book = Creation process
2. Make the book a product = Production process
3. Market (aka sell) the book =  Growth process

The tricky thing with lists is they imply an order of operation. The reality is that the lifecycle of an author’s career isn’t always linear. Certain pieces are sequential, such as you can’t edit a manuscript that hasn’t been written, you can’t create the files for the retailers until the book is complete, and you can’t sell a book that doesn’t exist.

When we expand the idea of marketing/selling into the entire marketing ecosystem as the Growth process it becomes more clear as to why placing the Growth process as “step 3” starts to break down.

Because the Growth process as a whole doesn’t come after Creation and Production.

So next, let’s not number the processes, but let’s reorder them and define them a bit more clearly:

• Growth process (visibility, discoverability, connection, sales, etc.)
• Creation process (writing, editing, feedback, rewriting, etc.)
• Production process (formatting, cover, artwork, file creation, distribution, etc.)

While many of the tasks from Creation to Production are more linear in nature, Growth is the part of the lifecycle that happens in parallel to everything else. It doesn’t come after the Creation and Production processes are complete. The Growth process can begin as early as when you first start brainstorming your book ideas, and continues long after the Production process is finished. Which is why I’ve placed it at the beginning.

The purpose of the Growth process is to build a readership that results in book sales in order to develop an author career.

The key takeaways here are:

• Marketing is much more than selling. 
• Selling is one piece within the Growth process. 
• Effective selling relies on the existence of the entire Growth process.
• The Growth process starts as early as possible in the full lifecycle of an author’s career.

Now that we’ve laid this groundwork, let’s look at a high-level overview of what the Growth process is.

The Growth process has three parts: 

1. Build the foundation
2. Define the framework
3. Create the action plan

Each part of the Growth process is broken down into sections and subsections. You’re not expected to immediately know or understand every piece below. The purpose of this list is to show you a high-level summary of the pieces that contribute to the entire Growth process.

1. Building the foundation involves setting up the following:
   • Fundamentals
     • Establishing the right mindset
     • Setting realistic expectations
     • Gaining clarity on the topic of Your Ideal Reader
     • Learning how to effectively talk about your book
   • Digital Infrastructure
     • Creating a reader magnet
     • Developing an email list system
     • Building a website
   • Visibility Lanes
     • Evergreen content (formerly Owned content)
     • Social media
     • Partnerships & collaborations
     • Paid promos
2. Defining the framework involves understanding:
   • Marketing functions:
     • Owned media (media you control)
     • Earned media (media you earn)
     • Paid media (media you pay for)
   • Reader journey:
     • Awareness → Interest → Conversion
   • Book lifecycle:
     • Pre-launch
     • Launch
     • Post-launch
     • Backlist
3. Creating the action plan is a process of bringing it all together and mapping out the tasks that will integrate the foundation and framework together to create forward momentum.

Many authors starting out are looking for a structured outline of what steps to do and what order to do them in. However, much of the work within the Growth process is similar to the Creation process. You don’t have to write a book in order from start to finish, and you don’t have to learn or implement the pieces within the Growth process in a specific order.

I also don’t teach each of these pieces in the order above. Again this comes back to the order of operation a list implies. There are certain dependencies within the pieces of the Growth process that make completing certain things before others better, but it’s not required.

For example, gaining clarity on the topic of Your Ideal Reader and learning how to Talk About Your Book are important to tackle first because they shape everything else you do. But there’s nothing wrong with building a website before developing an email list system.

The order I teach the initial topics is:

• Your Ideal Reader
• Talk About Your Book
• Social Media Visibility
• Reader Magnet
• Email List Setup
• Evergreen Content
• Website Essentials

And the information on the Reader Journey and the Book Lifecycle is included in the topic of Talk About Your Book, whereas the information on the Marketing Functions comes later. When I teach the Reader Magnet topic I make it clear that you should not wait until you have a Reader Magnet before developing an Email List Setup, but I do teach about Reader Magnets before the Email List Setup. And pieces related to mindset and expectations are woven in throughout many different topics.

If you’re someone who learns best by having a guided sequence of steps, you’ll appreciate my approach in my Patreon. If you want to see the order I teach the steps, the Overview posts for each topic in my Patreon are public content.

The Pathfinder tier is a guided, implementation membership where all of the pieces of the Growth process are covered through one detailed topic per month. Pathfinders have access to all past and current content. Each topic is also available as a standalone collection if you’d rather work through just one topic without the commitment of a membership.

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever been given is that sometimes we need to go slow to go fast. 

Taking the time to learn these concepts, set up your foundation, and implement a plan that is more aligned with who you are as an author will make a world of difference in your experience of building the author career you want. You’ll have more confidence, you’ll be less overwhelmed, and you’ll work at a pace you can sustain that supports the compounding growth you want. 

After learning and implementing the materials I teach you’ll have established a visibility strategy that fits you and you’ll know what to spend your time on to actually drive book sales.

If you’re ready to take the next step to prioritize the Growth process segment of your author career lifecycle, become a Pathfinder today.

If you want to identify the gaps in your Growth process grab the Visibility Audit to find out.