Let me preface this with what was going on when I wrote this. I am taking the Ted Dekkar course on transformational writing. It is a great course and I have learned a lot. But the reality came crashing home when I reached this part of the course on marketing. The question was posed, to imagine your future self and that your future self has accomplished everything you set out to accomplish in writing. Tell us how you did it. Tell us how you kept your soul, tell us how you used the internet to market your book but didn’t get sucked into the internet and become a spam machine like everyone else.
What came out of me were things I already knew but hadn’t given much thought to when it came to marketing and writing. I am not saying I have anything to say that hasn’t been said already or that it is insightful beyond anything you have heard, but it might just be something for you to consider. Without further ado here is my answer to the question posed in the lesson.
This journey was fraught with perils. Self-doubt, the biggest challenge, battled me night and day. Am I good enough? That was always the burning question. But you have to let go of all that. You have to accept that you are good enough. But you most also realize that you can only ever compete with yourself. Are you a better writer than you were yesterday? Because there will always be a Stephen King or JRR Tolkien who is better than you. You cannot compete with them, only yourself. It was with this in mind that I set forth my plan to market myself. Because you see, you can market a book and that is all well and good but what are you really selling here? A story? Yes, but there are lots of stories. What you are selling is YOU. In order to sell YOU, you cannot be a fake. People can spot a fake a mile away. Authentic, that is what people crave. If you want to be in the Internet but not be OF the Internet, then you must always be authentic.
A good example is Epic Rap Battles of History. You can see the fun these guys are having, you can see the love of their work in what they do. They revel in it. You too must revel in it. You must love what you do and do what you do because you love it. Only then can you ever be considered among the greats like JRR Tolkien, Agatha Christie, Stephen King, Dean Koontz. That list goes on and on. They do what they do because they love doing it. And that is their reward. The money? That’s just icing for a true artist.
And so begins my quest, my journey, into marketing myself. Authentic you must be my inner Yoda tells me.
Here is an Epic Rap Battle of History of literary proportions! I found this one hilarious. Be warned, it is NSFW! 
