Marketing for Introverts

It's very hard to be both a writer and promoter, the two don't generally sit comfortably together. Writing is an insular activity suited to introverts, and promotion is more suited to extroverts. So what do you do when you need to switch roles? One way is to create promotional material that focuses on the book (or creative work) rather than yourself.  In other words, you tell a story about the story. To promote my novel The Mune on social media, I achieved this by using stop motion films.

Below are some stills taken from the first short film I created using draft pages from my manuscript The Mune, my iPhone (an old SE), a small tripod and an App called Stop Motion Studio.  The tripod was an addition I found necessary after discovering how difficult it was to keep the camera still when moving pieces of paper for each shot - the egg box just didn't cut it. Even though it took hours to complete, I enjoyed the process much more than standing in front of a camera

Using an App like Stop Motion Studio made the whole process easier and, as I mentioned, you don't need the latest phone to achieve good results, just a willingness to make mistakes. You also need a lot of Blu Tack! My whole spend was under £10 because I used objects I already had, such as a shoebox painted black for the staging. 

If this feels too difficult, you could consider creating a reel. You could choose photographs related to your work and record yourself speaking. Most social media platforms have this function but if, like me, you want more control, you could use PowerPoint slides and insert the audio (then export it into a MP3 file) to achieve good results.

Even in our current Celebrity Culture there are options. Story-based marketing works well to grab scrollers attention and also prepares you for interviews - highlighting key aspects of your novel .