Zoe York - Romance Your Plan

Photo: Regina Wamba

Zoe York is a thirteen-time USA Today bestselling author of contemporary romance, often with military heroes, and always with scorching heat between the pages. Between her two pen names (she also writes erotic romance as Ainsley Booth), she has published more than fifty books since her debut in 2013 with What Once Was Perfect. Notable hits include Prime Minister (USA Today bestseller twice, in 2016 and 2017), the SEALs of Summer anthologies (New York Times bestsellers in 2014 and 2015), and twenty books in the fan-favourite Canadian small town series, Pine Harbour and Wardham. She is a mouthy and proud member of Toronto Romance Writers.

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The title of this book really says it all. My goal here is to help you romance your plan, a little or a lot. This is not a step-by-step How to Market A Genre Fiction Book plan, because I dont think such a thing really exists beyond the following:

• Write a Book
• Package the Book
• Launch the Book
• Maintain Book Visibility Over Time (Periodically or Steadily)
• Write Another Similar Book, and then Another

The better you hit each of those points, the more success youll have. Thats the plan.

Your plan is going to be some variation on that, and it is your plan that needs to be romanced. I am the first person to talk about which of the Generally Good Ideas I struggle with (another similar book? But I want to write all the things! And cant they launch themselves?), so please know that this book is coming from a place of I get it.

But I think, if you picked up this book, its because you also want to advance your career and maybe make more money.

And in that pursuit (moving the needle for yourself), everything I talk about is going to be something you need to measure against where you were, and where you want to go.

As you read this book, always ask yourselfdoes this advice apply to my plan? If not, its still interesting information to consider. Oh, thats how someone else might do it. And file the suggestion away.

If it is meant to be part of your plan, it will come back to you at the right time.

Harder to absorb will be the beats that you definitely recognize as applying to your plan, but you have some essential pain around actually doing it. Yes this part applies to meand I dont like it.

I dont want to do this thing that I really know will work, is a thought I have regularly. Im not sure we talk enough in the book world about how authors are artists and artists are mercurial creatures with complicated mental health stuff. We are! And we often suffer from anxiety and depression at a higher rate than the rest of the world.

I dont want to pretend I have the best plan ever. I really dont. And the last thing I want this book to do is make anyone feel like book marketing is harder than they thought.

So please, be extraordinarily gentle on yourself. Nobody has their shit entirely together, nobody, and the more we talk about how were all just doing the best we can with what we have, the better well all be.

You might also hit some ouchy points where you think, I cant afford that.

I have been there. I have. When I started writing, my husband was going through a very deep, dark PTSD-fuelled depression, and it affected every part of our lives, including our income. I couldnt afford a BookBub featured deal until I was in a multi-author boxed set that did well enough to pay for that BookBub deal.

Barter what you need to. Put off the CPC adsthere, Ill say that up front in the foreword. Paying for ads out of pocket is a luxury, its optional, and most of this book is about romancing your plan without them.

Do everything else, and your business will start to generate more money. A business that generates more money can, in time, be a business that invests in things like Facebook ads.

Until then, youre going to focus on being a business that is singularly focused on promoting your brand through word of mouth on social media and zero-barrier-to-entry loss leaders.

And to do that, youre going to figure out (with my help) what needs to go, what definitely should stay, and which parts of your plan need to get sharper.

It occurs to me as I read this back that Im making a lot of assumptions about who is reading this. I think youre already published, and probably familiar with or already experienced with the indie side of genre fiction publishing. If you are not, if you grabbed this book for some other reason, I recommend pausing here and going to my YouTube videos, my blog, and my first book before continuing.

On that bossy note, lets get into it. We have books to promote!

This book is divided into three sections. The first section is the think-y part, where I lay out my philosophy about publishing and how book marketing works from my indie author perspective. Each of the five chapters in Part I has homework at the end of it, building on the chapter before it.

Part II is a reference section, breaking down individual marketing actions. Less homework, more bullet point lists. I do love a good list.

And Part III is where we get to the actual Plan Stuff, but please dont skip right there unless youre a read-out-of-order type of person, because the context around the marketing steps is really what makes an effective, move-the-needle kind of plan.