Feeling overwhelmed by book marketing can lead authors to look for shortcuts. Shortcuts lead to expensive complications, which in turn lead to dead ends, which in turn lead to suffering. Yoda would call this “the path to the dark side.” 

Does this sound familiar? How do you escape this overwhelming cycle? 

Ten different stressors can lead to book-marketing overwhelm. Most authors face at least one, and if you are completely overwhelmed, you may be facing all of them. Let’s talk about each stressor and how to overcome it. 

Stressor #1: The Stakes

Some authors suspect the world is ending, and their book is the one thing that can turn things around. This belief may be an overstatement and is more likely to affect nonfiction authors, but many of us are writing to fix a wrong in the world. 

If this is you, realize you are, at best, a small part of the solution. If you feel that God has called you to write, realize that he is the one who will fix the problem, not you. He might use you as part of his solution, but you can’t change his plans. 

If you are overwhelmed by the stakes, here are some things to try:

• Turn off the news and write! News outlets have a financial incentive to keep you in a state of panic. Writing will make you feel in control. 
• Turn off your phone and take a walk in nature. 
• Get away from the city far enough to go stargazing. A sense of the enormity of the universe will make the stakes feel small. 
• Read old books.
• Meditate on the ancient virtue of humility. 

Stressor #2: The Money

While writing is cheap, publishing and marketing are expensive. Income from writing tends to be lumpy and inconsistent, especially at first. 

Getting an advance check for $5,000 from your publisher is fun, but for most traditional authors, that check will be the only income you earn from your book for the rest of the year. If you are an indie author, your $5,000 Kickstarter deposit is fun, but remember, your editor and cover designer need to get paid, and you still need to print those special edition hardbacks. 

So, how do you reduce money stress?

Get a Job 

Most people navigate financial stress by getting a job. The best place for an author to find a job is in the publishing industry. Working in the publishing industry or for another author allows you to earn while you learn.

If you are unemployed, even pizza delivery can help you reduce financial stress. Delivering pizzas is a great opportunity to listen to podcasts like this to increase your knowledge. 

Simplify Your Lifestyle to Reduce Debt 

Debt is often a symptom of decadence, which leads to stress. Resist decadence by living dramatically below your means. Move into a less expensive house so you have different neighbors to compare yourself to. Living below your means builds character and reduces financial stress. 

Save 

Having cash in the bank is key to navigating the income highs and lows a professional author often experiences. As an author, you might earn all your annual income in a single month, which means you’ll have money that you don’t spend for another 11 months. 

Budget 

Create a plan for where your money will go. Authors often need both a yearly and monthly budget. 

We have a lot of episodes to help you with budgeting:

• How to Publish on a Budget: Your First Five Years as an Author
• How to Launch Your Book on a Budget
• The Starving Author: How to Market Books When You Have No Money
• The Thriving Author: How to Market Books When You Have Money to Invest

Track Your Marketing 

Knowing where your money goes and what doesn’t work is key to reducing stress.

For more on this, see the following episodes:

• How to Track Your Book Promotion.
• How to Use Marketing Data To Sell More Books
• How to Get Good Website Stats

Stressor #3: Marketing Vocabulary

One writer on AuthorMedia.social said, “There are so many acronyms. How about a little dictionary of everything and a 1-10 list in order of priority?”

I get it. Jargon can make marketing overwhelming as all the letters make your head spin. PPC, SEO, POD, KDP, ARC, ACX, ROI, ISBN, EPUB, GDPR, just to name a few. 

If you find the vocabulary overwhelming, I have some good news! 

Listening to podcasts is a great way to increase your vocabulary. I am happy to tell you there is a podcast specifically about book marketing, and you have already found it! Each acronym above is linked to an episode and a blog post.

To increase your publishing vocabulary, listen to the episodes you don’t think you need to listen to. They will help you grow your knowledge and vocabulary. 

You can also become a patron of Novel Marketing to unlock access to AI Thomas. AI Thomas has ingested all Novel Marketing episodes and is great at defining words based on how I’ve used those words in the past. AI Thomas is for Novel Marketing Patrons. When you become a patron, you also get access to the monthly Patrons-Only Q&A episode, where you can come on camera and ask me questions live. 

Obscure No More students also have access to AI Thomas and a monthly office hours call where they can ask me questions.

However, there is a risk to learning about marketing.

Stressor #4: Conflicting Advice

As one person on AuthorMedia.social said, “There’s just so many things people say to do … I feel like everyone is trying to pull my limited time in different directions, and I want to know what is most effective and efficient.”

The proliferation of conflicting advice is a common problem, especially for new authors. They typically get overwhelmed because they surf the free content from marketing gurus around the web rather than going deep with a single teacher. Instead of picking a guru and following that person’s method, they sample the free stuff from a bunch of gurus. 

That strategy is akin to learning to dance by taking the free “Introduction to Waltz” class followed by the “Introduction to Swing.” The next week, you might take “Introduction to Tango” and finish by taking all the free introductory sessions on blues, ballet, and hip-hop. It’s a course to mediocrity and confusion. Each style of dance has similarities and differences. Even though the music is different, it is not totally different. You can swing dance to hip-hop music if you want to. 

If you feel overwhelmed by conflicting advice, the solution is simple. Choose one style of dance and pay for all the classes. Then practice until your technique improves and you can dance with a partner or perform. After you master one style of dance, you can move on to the next if you want. 

Authors need to choose a guru, go beyond the available free stuff, and pay for the courses, coaching, and training. For example, my course calledObscure No More is specifically designed to help you learn book marketing. You will learn to develop a marketing approach that will work for you and your book. Everything I teach on platform building is inside the course. If you are feeling obscure, stop surfing from free webinar to free webinar and go deep with Obscure No More. 

But knowing what to do is not enough. You have to put that knowledge to work, and the work can also be a stressor.

Stressor #5: The Work

All the marketing tasks that seem to require urgent attention now can feel very overwhelming.

When I asked, “What makes marketing feel overwhelming?’ on AuthorMedia.social, one person said, “Overwhelming number of options—things I’m supposed to be doing, things I could be doing, marketing fads I should get the jump on, who to trust.” 

The following tips will mitigate the overwhelm.

Create a Prioritized Plan 

A good plan can be an amazing stress reducer. Create a written list of tasks you need to do in the order they need to be done to complete the project.

The first sessions of Obscure No More help you identify which task you need to do next. Once you realize only one thing needs to happen right away, the work will get much less overwhelming as you focus on that one thing. 

Set a Sustainable Pace

My popular episode, The Tortoise Release Method: Why Slow and Steady Beats Rapid Release, provides a template and plan for setting a sustainable pace for your writing, publishing, and marketing. 

Stop Doing Things the Hard Way

Sometimes, the easiest way to reduce overwhelm is to stop doing things the hard way. Try learning about productivity from other productive authors. I have dozens of episodes on productivity that will help you.

• How to Write Faster and Better with Chris Fox
• How to Write More Productively with Angela Hunt
• Productivity Tips for Authors With Joanna Penn

Stressor #6: The Deadlines

Most authors fight procrastination and enervation with deadlines. But deadlines can also become a stressor. How do you use deadlines to motivate yourself without becoming overwhelmed by them? 

Set Detailed Deadlines

Vague deadlines are overwhelming. The clearer you are on the what, when, and why, the more motivating and less overwhelming your deadline becomes. 

Answer the following questions: 

• How many working days do I have to hit this deadline? 
• How many words per working day do I need to write to hit the deadline? 
• Are there enough rest days to realistically hit this deadline?
• Are there enough contingency days built into the plan? 

The earlier you answer these questions, the less overwhelming your project will be. But if you are still overwhelmed, you may need to proceed to stage two: pruning. 

Prune: Create a Stop-Doing List

Pruning involves cutting good and profitable activities so that you can dedicate more effort to what is most important to you and your project. 

The following episodes will help you determine what to prune and when:

1. Focus, Pruning, and Why Novel Marketing is About to Change
2. How to Prevent Writing Burnout
3. Trim to Win: Why Saying ‘No’ is Crucial for Publishing Success: A Pruning Story
4. When to Quit Writing

These episodes tell a story if you listen to them in order. 

Stressor #7: Publishing Decisions

When I asked what causes marketing overwhelm on AuthorMedia.social, one person said, “Identifying which tasks and pursuits work, which work for me, which are worth my time, and which are worth my money.”

First-time authors have no idea what they are getting into when they start writing a book. Perhaps that’s a good thing because if they knew how much work goes into writing and publishing a book, many would give up before they start.

Overwhelm for first-time authors can be particularly acute when they’re writing, publishing, and launching their first book all at the same time. Trying to learn writing, publishing, and marketing simultaneously is a recipe for overwhelm. Fortunately, there is an easy, albeit unpopular, fix.

Don’t Release Your Book 

The 9th Commandment of Book Marketing states, “Thou Shall Not Launch Thine First Book First.”

Your first book is not ready to sell to strangers. It’s a practice run to give you the experience you need to learn how to publish a book. 

After you write your first book, I recommend setting it aside and starting your second book. I also recommend publishing short stories and offering them as reader magnets on your website.

Practice with a Reader Magnet

As Larry Correia says, “This is the one industry where you are judged your whole life by the performance of your rookie season.” Practice out of the public eye with your reader magnet. 

Practicing the publishing process with a reader magnet will make things much less overwhelming when it is time to publish a book for real. For one, the stakes are very low. Few people will see your reader magnet, especially before you start promoting it. Additionally, everything about your reader magnet can be tweaked and improved over time. 

To get the most out of this pre-publication experience, make sure your reader magnet looks professional. Make sure you get the following:

• Professional Editing
• Professional Cover
• Professional Typesetting (This is a low-stakes chance to learn how to use Vellum or Atticus.)

In Obscure No More, I walk you through the process of publishing your first reader magnet. Check out the following free episodes on creating a great reader magnet.

• How to Create a Reader (Lead) Magnet
• How to Grow Your Email List Using Delicious Reader Magnets with Tammi Labrecque

You only get one chance to make a first impression, and a reader magnet is a safe place to get some experience before you go on the big stage. 

Practice Poorly

When I used to help start speech and debate clubs, we found that some clubs just kept learning and learning while others went on to compete in championships. The difference came down to one element: “Time until first speech.” The more you learn about giving a good speech, the more overwhelming public speaking becomes. 

To shorten the time between the first class and the first speech, we began having everyone speak on their first day. If you visited one of our clubs, you would have to stand up and introduce yourself to everyone on the first day. With that first speech out of the way, things got easier as students learned and practiced at the same time. 

The same is true with writing and marketing. If you don’t practice what you learn, your knowledge will become overwhelming. If something is worth doing, it is worth doing poorly at first.

But how do you reconcile the need to start doing things now with the fact that you are forever judged by your rookie performance? With reader magnets! A reader magnet allows you to practice marketing before you complete your book. 

Authors who have an edited, typeset, and professionally designed reader magnet feel much less overwhelmed than authors who thrash about trying to learn everything everywhere all at once. 

Stressor #8: Unrealistic Expectations

Every parent thinks their child is above average, and every author believes their book is destined to become a runaway bestseller. What makes this phenomenon worse is that most people in publishing make money by encouraging your delusional view of your book. They sell you by saying, “Yes, your book is amazing; just buy my editing, coaching, and marketing, and you will be a star.” 

Beware the flatterer, especially if he is trying to sell you something. 

Unrealistic expectations are overwhelming because they lead to a crushing and discouraging sense of failure. They also twist our thinking. We believe that since our book is so good, the publishing path will be easy. In reality, walking the difficult road is what makes your book good. 

So, how do you avoid setting unrealistic expectations? 

Set Goals Based on Your Own Progress

For example, if you have ten people on your email list, a goal that says, “Have 10,000 subscribers by the end of the year,” is unrealistic. Instead, set the goal of recruiting one stranger to sign up for your email list.  

Most authors start with friends and family on their email lists, so learning how to write and appeal to strangers is a huge step. Instead of trying to find 1,000 strangers, learn how to find just one interested reader you don’t know personally. Once you find your first stranger, you can set a new goal for more.  However, your new goal should be based on your own progress and not an expectation of easy success. 

Forsake Comparison

Stop looking at successful authors who seemingly find success overnight. Overnight success is a myth. You don’t see the years and often decades of hard work that lead up to their breakthrough moment. 

When you stand on the shore watching a duck glide across the water, you can’t see their feet below the water paddling like crazy. 

Comparing your progress to another author’s can lead to discouragement and envy. Envy is a sin that will poison your heart and overwhelm your mind. Repent of your wicked envy and pull the plank out of your own eye. Focus on improving your own writing, publishing, and marketing. Keep your eyes on the road ahead, and you will go far.  

Stressor #9: Distractions

One author said, “Many of us are working … in the tiny slivers of time left in the day.” The distractions of regular life can certainly contribute to marketing overwhelm. 

There are a million distractions keeping you from your book. Believe me, I get it. My wife is about to give birth to our fourth little distraction. 

So, how do you keep life’s distractions from becoming overwhelming? 

Put Your Phone Away 

Your phone is the biggest enemy of your productivity. Most authors spend more than three hours on their phones every day. If you can create a better relationship with your phone, your writing life will be much less overwhelming. 

Check out my episode on how to make your phone less distracting. It’s called Why Your Book is Still Unfinished (Hint: It’s Your Phone’s Fault).

Create a Distraction-Free Writing Environment 

I talked with Chris Fox about creating a distraction-free writing environment in the episode How to Write Faster and Better with Chris Fox. This could be as simple as getting a laptop with a good battery so you can get out of the house. Maybe you just need to clean your office. As you remove distractions from your writing environment, you will be less distracted. 

Practice Time Boxing 

Put your to-do list on your calendar. Decide ahead of time what needs to be done and when it needs to be done. While you are working on that thing, work only on that thing. Stop multitasking, and your focus and productivity will soar.  

Knowing that “Working on my website” is an August project means I don’t need to worry about it right now. It’s an unbelievably relaxing realization. 

Develop a Disciplined Lifestyle

I’ve worked with authors for over 15 years, which is long enough to see many of them retire from their day jobs. They hope they’ll have more time to write in retirement, but in most cases, most authors do not write more books in retirement. The author who wrote one book per year while working a day job often continues to publish one book per year after retiring. I’ve seen some authors write fewer books after retiring since many authors tend to travel in their retirement years.

The only exception to this I’ve seen is younger, hungrier authors who view “quitting their day job” not as retiring but as switching occupations. For these disciplined authors, quitting is a scary transition into writing full-time in order to pay the bills. 

Having more time will not solve the distraction problem, but cultivating a disciplined lifestyle will. For more on disciplined writing, find out How to Use the Ancient Power of Discipline to Accomplish Your Goals.

Stressor #10: Entitlement

As one person on AuthorMedia.social said, “Marketing, ugh….surely Jane Austen didn’t have to market.” 

Many people believe some of the best classic authors had it easy. Authors want marketing to be easy and will throw money at anyone who offers to take them down Easy Street. But writing has never had an easy street. 

Jane Austen had to write her books with a quill pen, with no spell checker and no whiteout. Every revision meant rewriting the entire page by hand. Could you write a book like that? I couldn’t. 

Plus, paper was so expensive that only the aristocracy could afford the paper needed to revise a book into a finished product. Writing was so difficult and costly that only the best authors could stick it out. Such a grueling path to publication meant that any book in a bookstore would attract readers. Nowadays, with word processors, spell checkers, and AI editors, writing is much easier. More books are published than ever before, which makes marketing harder. 

I see entitlement sneak into authors’ hearts in a few ways.

• Insisting that they are special and that the rules don’t apply.
• Insisting that their book is special and that the rules don’t apply.
• Insisting that their genre is special and that the rules don’t apply. 

Contrary to popular belief, the rules make publishing and marketing less overwhelming. Following the 10 Commandments of Book Marketing makes marketing easier. Those commandments are there to help you. If you insist that the rules don’t apply, suddenly, you are lost in the wilderness, not knowing what to do next.

Stop looking for the easy road. Scammers prey on authors seeking the easy road. Respect writing for the profession that it is. Embrace the reality that writing is a job that requires work. Then, do the work, one thing at a time. If you focus on the next step, you can walk a thousand miles. 

If something is worth doing, it is worth doing. Take the next step. 

Where to Find Help

If you need help figuring out your next step, I have three courses to help you.

If you are just starting, the 5-Year Plan walks you through what you should be doing in each quarter of the first five years of your author career. We call it a five-year plan to become an overnight success. This course focuses on developing the craft of writing the kind of novels readers will love.

The next course is Publishing A to Z, which teaches you about the indie and traditional publishing processes. If you are not sure which path to take, this course will teach you how to succeed on both paths. 

Finally, Obscure No More focuses on marketing and specifically on platform building. It is my biggest, most comprehensive course. It also comes with live Q&A office hours, which I host every month. Sometimes hearing the answer to your specific question is all you need to get unstuck.

Featured Patrons

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You can become a Novel Marketing Patron here.

Related Episodes

• The Starving Author: How to Market Books When You Have No Money
• How to Prevent Writing Burnout
• The Tortoise Release Method: Why Slow and Steady Beats Rapid Release