A writing career involves more than just writing. It’s also about promoting. You need to promote yourself as well as your work, but a lot of time and effort go into it. After all, even if you’re traditionally published, there’s only so much promoting your agent, your editors, and your publishers can do. So, what can you do to promote your writing? Check out the list below!
An Author Site
Having an author site is vital for any writer, no matter what stage of your career you’re at. Not only can you create a portfolio where all your work shows up in the same place, but you can also include all your socials, contact forms, and ways to reach your audience. Also, if you do a few other things on this list, you can post them there as well.
I just finished redoing my author site, so check it out here as an example!
Social Media
Besides an author site, you have tons of different social media channels to promote yourself. There’s Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, and more. To keep yourself from being overwhelmed, however, pick one channel and stick with it, networking with other authors and putting yourself out there.
Interviews
Another way to promote yourself is to promote other writers as well. This falls under networking, which any writer can do at any stage of their career. How do you promote other writers? For one, ask them to do an interview with you! Talk to other writers who are in the same place as you and ask them some questions about their work and their writing. You might try posting the interviews on your author site or even on a YouTube channel.
As an example, check out one of my latest interviews on this blog here.
Guest Posts
With your author site, you might want to try guest posts as well. Guest posts not only promote your writing but also get you noticed by other writers. It also gets more of your work out there to the people of the Internet. I used to write guest posts for Ryan Lanz, an author who also writes on the blog A Writer’s Path. Check out his site here, as well as one of my guest posts!
Commenting
If you have an author site or even a blog, another way to promote yourself and your writing is to comment on other author blogs and websites. Once again, you not only promote yourself and get your blog noticed by more eyes, but you also lift other writers up with helpful and insightful comments. Leave encouraging notes congratulating other people’s accomplishments, ask them questions about their work, and offer helpful tips if they seek any advice.
Promote Your Published Work
Of course, the more your work gets out there, the more you get noticed. Imagine you already have an author site. What information about yourself do you put on it? Your portfolio! If you have books you have published, put them all on your site to promote them and sell more. If you publish in literary journals, paste a link to them on your site so your portfolio is up to date. No matter what stage of your writing career or what path you’ve taken, you can be proud of what you’ve done. You should show it off!
Offering Free Stuff!
Lastly, I know a lot of authors who promote their work by offering something like a free short story or even a free book with an added incentive. A lot of others do this to get more people subscribed to their newsletter and author site, while others use it as a way for more people to know about their work. I included a couple of examples below!
Obviously, promotion takes time. You’ll likely need to try a ton of different things and find where you’re most comfortable. But don’t let the ups and downs discourage you. Keep pursuing the avenues that work best for you and notice how things change over time.
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