author marketing

For a long time, I treated my sales dashboard as a measure of how well I was doing—not just as an author, but as a person. A good day meant progress. A slow day meant doubt. It took stepping back to realise I was watching results instead of building the work that creates them.

Three covers, several expensive lessons. I look at what redesigning The Chic Crone taught me about book cover design, genre signalling, thumbnail readability, reader expectations, print colour, and the hidden costs of changing a published cover—including lost recognition, outdated promotional materials, and Goodreads complications.

Marketing before publication doesn’t mean shouting “My book is coming!” for two years. It means knowing your reader, giving them somewhere to find you and building familiarity before asking for a sale.

One of the most irritating pieces of advice given to me when I was starting out was that I should start marketing my book before I’d even finished writing it. I had no idea what that meant. How was I supposed to promote a book that didn’t exist?