[evangow]

I'm the indie developer of a marketing tool/community (https://storyoriginapp.com/) for self-published authors like the ones mentioned in this article.

Not necessarily related to the article, but for other interested in the learning more about the self-publishing world.

Courses and training for authors on how to use Amazon ads, Facebook ads, build an email list, etc. has become incredibly easy to find. Some of the bigger names in the space are Mark Dawson, Nick Stephenson, Joanna Penn, Derek Murphy, and the 20BookTo50K community.

Authors are now essentially internet marketers who also happen to write books.

[GuiA]

> Authors are now essentially internet marketers who also happen to write books.

For better (anyone can get started from their bedroom with just a laptop and an internet connection) and worse (less time spent on actual writing, likely no correlation between being a good marketer and a good artist), isn’t that true of all creative endeavors nowadays?

[yesenadam]

Absolutely not! What an appalling and ridiculous thing to say. Even just to say it of writers. Let alone "all creative endeavors" (Maybe you didn't mean to cast such a wide net there. Maybe you just meant to include...the people who market themselves on the internet.)

That word 'essentially' is vague to the point of unfalsifiability - whatever I could say against that, you could say, "Yeah, but essentially.." - the word sounds objective but means 'whatever I think is the most important/central/defining feature'.

The artists/musicians/writers/etc who are good at getting work for themselves has always been very different from those who are good at the art. And the people at the top of whatever charts (pop music etc) would be the first to admit they're not the greatest.

[Vinnl]

Are you not saying a similar thing? Those are the top of whatever charts are simply good marketers who happen to create whatever media the chart is about.

I think you're primarily appalled at the user of the word "authors" to only refer to those people. Which I can understand, but in the context of the point being made I'd argue that's mostly just semantics.

[yesenadam]

Sorry for not being clearer, I was just responding to the parent and GP saying "Authors are now essentially internet marketers who also happen to write books."

I'm appalled at the use of the word 'authors' to only refer to those people? um. I didn't realize anyone used 'authors' only meaning that, so, no, it wasn't that. Or maybe I don't know what they were talking about, who knows.

[TeMPOraL]

Disagree. I'd even say creatives are late to the party. Almost all products and services are now driven by marketing, which has little correlation with quality.

[yesenadam]

At the risk of being downvoted again (and I don't know why; they didn't say. Maybe for finding something appalling and saying so?), I didn't understand any of those 3 sentences. (1. What do you disagree with? 2. Not sure what that means. It seems more to support what I was saying. ...They're not internet marketers but should be, should realize their 'essential' selves? 3. 'Almost all products and services' is again a very wide net, which it seems you're including all the output of the arts in. Depends what you mean 'driven'; and the 2nd half was I think what I said.)

Maybe it's mainly a different of perspective; mine is a musician/artist/writer perspective, I feel like I'm talking to people in marketing. (Who else would describe everything turning to internet marketing as a party, even metaphorically..)

[disclosure: musician/artist who's 100% failed at self-marketing]

[SyneRyder]

> Who else would describe everything turning to internet marketing as a party

I think you've misunderstood - "late to the party" is a common English phrase, where late is the more important word, not so much party. Imagine arriving when everyone else has already gone home. The meaning here is that promoting your work online was profitable a decade ago, but authors & musicians are only discovering that now, when it has stopped being profitable.

People here agree with you - we want quality music and quality art! But we also need to hear about it & be inspired enough to even try listening to it. A musician or author has to learn "marketing" to be able to build an audience (unless they just want to make music for themselves, and that's fine too).

Don't think of it as "marketing", think of it as trying to find & make 1,000 friends. A lot of the music I buy is because the singer is actually a friend or someone I could email with a question. Marketing can also be writing about how you make your music, or being creative in how you distribute it (like Nine Inch Nails mailing their CDs out in bags of dirt that were stuck in customs, that gets people talking about it).

All people are saying here is that writing is important (it's the product being sold!), but if a writer wants to be profitable, finding an audience who will buy it now takes much more work & effort & time than the writing itself. And that's why authors are now marketers first, writers second. A bad song that people have heard about is more likely to get bought than an excellent song no one has heard.

(And for what it's worth, it's the same for indie software developers - I only spend a small part of my time making the software, most of my time is spent on customer support & talking to customers, accounting & tax compliance, administration and marketing.)