I have been spending
more time lately trying to promote my business and generate more work. This has
been to the detriment of my writing, both the writing of my latest novel and
the writing of this blog. Trying to generate work is itself almost a full time
occupation. As with any new business, it is not easy breaking into the market.
I am trying to find my niche and to be innovative in my approach, while reaching
as wide an audience as possible. This sometimes takes me outside my comfort
zone. I would much rather just be writing or working on someone’s manuscript
than trying to generate work. Unfortunately, the latter is essential.
There is, of course,
all of the social networking to do. I am assured that this is essential and
somehow yields results, although the amount of time invested may not warrant
the return on that investment. The jury is still out, for me, on that one.
Quite how I will ever know whether it has paid off remains unclear to me. At
the moment I am searching through writers’ groups and organisations, contacting
them by email and, when the information is available, contacting individual
members by email or following them on Twitter. Does this make me a spammer? I
actually don’t think so. I am not indiscriminately mass emailing, in the hope
of getting the occasional “hit”. I am not sending out hundreds or even
thousands of emails at once to people on an emailing list. I don’t have such a
list, except the one that I keep to make sure I don’t email someone more than
once. I don’t use a “bot”, whatever exactly that is, to trawl through web pages
in search of email addresses. What I actually do is much slower, and quite a
lot of work!
The slight discomfort
I feel doing this “cold calling” is offset somewhat by the conviction that I am
actually offering a very useful service, although it will certainly never make
me rich.
Some people are
inevitably offended at having received an “unsolicited email”. On the other
hand, among those who do respond (and, let’s face it, many people will not see
the email because it will disappear into junk mail, or they will delete it
without reading it) there are more friendly and positive responses than
offended and unfriendly responses. Among those who are offended (and there
really aren’t many who take the time to inform me of the fact) the main source
of offence seems to be my audacity at thinking that they could possibly have any use for my services. Have I seen their credentials? Have I noticed how
important they are? Well, I simply remind them, and all who may be offended,
how easy the delete button is to find and operate.
In the meantime I am
trying to build up my Linked In profile. By all means join with me if you like, using this email
address if it prompts you for one: All-read-E@philipnewey.com. And if you have time, perhaps you could
endorse some of my skills. I would love to see you there.
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