Book marketing and rediscovering my why

My publisher didn’t pick up Christina’s Portrait. They had a limited number of slots, and they needed to allocate them for books with a greater potential of sales. That’s fair. My book sales have been flat. I haven’t paid attention to marketing because I’ve been focusing on writing (and my family, job, and well, just living my life). But now, I need to buckle down and focus on book marketing.

I know the fundamentals. I was in public relations at the start of my computer industry career. I know about advertising, channels, funnels, and promotions. There are also the “make or buy” decisions. (Are these tasks I can do myself or should I hire someone to do them for me?) More importantly, I know about return on investment. Do I want to spend $5,000 just to make an extra $50 on royalties? Plenty of companies promise to make you a seven-figure author who gets on the New York Times Bestseller List. But you wind up spending a fortune and getting nothing in return. I might as well join an MLM.

Before I can decide how to market, I had to determine what it is I’m marketing. It was time to revisit my why. Here’s what I wrote back in 2013:

I believe my writing can educate people, spark their passions, and inspire them to work towards a more just and humane world. I write about characters who struggle to free themselves from their…