Short story writer Anna Maconochie was born in London where she now lives and works. She has been published in the Erotic Review, Prole Books, The Wells Street Journal, The Dublin Review, storgy.com and The Bitter Oleander. She has also had a story selected as part of the anthology Desire: 100 of Literature’s Sexiest Stories, edited by Mariella Frostrup & the Erotic Review. Her first short story collection Only the Visible Can Vanish was published by Cultured Llama Publishing in 2016. Her website is here. Anna also has an interview on The Short Story website, which you can find here.
I read Only the Visible Can Vanish earlier this year. I really loved the strong characterisation and the unusual situations the characters found themselves in, even though Anna is at least in part writing about everyday life, with its mundanities and its repetitiveness. I also liked the sense of fairy-tale throughout – not only in the contemporary retelling of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ – there was a sense of the fairy-tale in other characters too, perhaps because they seemed conscious of (and sometimes out of place in) the places they inhabited. The collection manages to explore difficult themes, such as duplicity, identity, superficiality, alienation, love, loneliness and sex, but with a lighthearted, humorous touch.
I asked Anna my ten questions about marketing. Her answers are below.
Can you tell us a bit about you and your work? What are you working on at the moment?
I am working on a play (co-writing with another writer) and a novel. That’s all I can say for now.
How do you approach marketing your work, on a practical level? For instance, do you schedule it for a particular day of the week, or use a different desk, or make time for it every afternoon?
When my first book was ready to come out I had a day job (and still do) so it was a matter of fitting it in as and when. I broke it up into tasks with deadlines and put them in a Gantt chart as some tasks had a clear deadline (i.e. plan launch party) and others didn’t (i.e. send book to influential bloggers and vloggers).
Some creative people treat marketing as if it’s creation’s evil twin. Is there a way of making friends with it?
Marketing is absolutely your friend! Why wouldn’t you want to sell as many books as possible? It wasn’t ever an issue for me.
Do you think about marketing before, during, or after writing, or is it ongoing?
I thought about it on and off during the writing process but my main concern was getting the work done. I had a vague idea of what I would do to get the book out there.
How do you tend to market your work? For instance, do you use social media? Do you blog?
I don’t blog but I used Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and my website to market my work. I also got people with large followings to tweet or post about it. My book launch sold the first hundred copies so I would suggest having lots of friends who you can guilt trip into buying it! I did an informal house to house book tour where I read and did a Q&A at friends’ houses and brought a bit of wine and sold some copies. I did a couple of events in public spaces and bookshops too.
I also wrote to bloggers, reviewers and vloggers with a bit of success, as in my work got reviewed a few times. I asked everyone I could to write reviews on Amazon or Goodreads which they did although I’m not sure how much of a difference that made. I also went round many bookshops to place my book there on a sale and return basis with some success. And I got the book into Foyles as I had a contact there.
Would you spend a substantial amount of time on a piece even if you knew you wouldn’t or couldn’t publish and sell it?
No.
Do you use any of these for marketing purposes: school visits, workshops, readings, video book trailers, seeking press coverage?
Yes: seeking press coverage and readings.
I once heard someone dismiss a career in book marketing by saying ‘he might as well go and sell fridges’ – is selling books really the same as selling fridges?
No. A fridge is something most people need.
There’s a lot of marketing jargon around, such as ‘find your niche’, ‘create a sales funnel’, ‘engage with your audience’, ‘create a platform’ – do beginning writers need to engage with it from the start? Has that changed since you started writing?
I don’t care about jargon but it’s useful to know who will read your book and engage with those people. I knew that I was the sort of person who would buy my book and I acted accordingly.
Any examples of book marketing you think worked really well?
I was pleased to be included in this blog post: Under the Reader’s radar – celebrating the quiet novel