While writing my first book, I did absolutely nothing to promote it. After, yes. But during the writing, nothing.
No Goodreads profile, no pre-orders, no email list. I skipped the entire promotional playbook because writing already felt like a huge thing. I'd never done it before. Better to focus on just that.
I told myself promotion would come later. But I just couldn’t handle thinking about that back then.
And to be honest, I wasn't taking the whole thing seriously. Publishing it would be a victory in itself already. Everything else was bonus.
So I treated promotion like an afterthought. Something you bolt on once the real work is done. It feels impossible to view promotion as a separate thing now. When we treat it as separate, our book downloads will likely suffer.
Both things work beautifully together, the writing and the reaching. We might tell ourselves we're not ready for that yet. That we need to finish first, then figure out the rest. But they’ve always been just one thing.
Taking it seriously means taking all of it seriously AND playfully.
🤹♂️🧐✍️👌