Blogging A to Z Challenge: M is for Marketing

The A to Z challenge is a challenge in which bloggers post every day during the entire month, and each day has a post starting with a different letter of the alphabet. The first day, the post features “A”, the second day “B”, and so on. It’s much better explained on the Blogging from A to Z website, so I’ll just refer you there.

Hands down the toughest part of being an author is marketing. I hate it. Coming from someone who spends most her free time helping other authors market their book, that might be strange. But while I love marketing other people’s books, and I don’t mind tweeting about their books, or showing the world how great they are, or helping them with book tours and the likes, I just can’t do the same thing for my own books.

I don’t know why. I do mention them occasionally, but I don’t want to bombard people with posts about my books.

Truth is, I get shy promoting my own books. I don’t have a lot of inspiration when it comes to finding creative marketing techniques for my own books either, whereas I have no trouble developing marketing strategies for others.

And then there’s how most of my books are children’s books, and marketing children’s books online is tough. Most children can’t spend money on the internet, so they can’t buy my book. So my target audience is children, but the audience I actually have to reach are parents. Not always an easy task.

So, do you dread marketing too? Have you used any techniques that worked?