When you tell others that you are a writer, one image appears in their mind: you crowded over a dusty desk, scattered papers all around with empty cups of Starbucks coffee abounding, as you pound away on a old typewriter like a mad scientist.
If you’re lucky, you’ve experienced a few crazed moment of a creative rush like this. However, you likely also know that being a writer requires much more than crafting fancy sentences.
The modern writer, if she wants to be even marginally successful, must wear many different hats.
Here are a few hats the writer must wear:
- Social media expert
- Website designer
- SEO analyst
- E-mail marketing guru
- Graphic designer
- Copywriter
- Editor
- Launch and Campaign strategist
- Speaker
- Amazon specialist
- Boss (making sure you stick to deadlines)
- Manager (making sure you maintain your health and happiness)
These are just a few roles the author must play to be successful. This isn’t even covering the freelance aspect that many authors take on to supplement their writing income.
Whether you are self-published or traditionally published, you need to have a basic understanding of these aspects of the author’s life to optimize your book’s sales.
Who Am I? And Why Am I Talking To You About This?
I’m just an author like you. With no team and little resources, I’ve researched all these various aspects of the author life, and have managed to push my first novel into the Amazon Bestsellers list. I’ve also been able to live off my book’s revenue, and if you focus on all these roles as well, I think you can too.
I want to help distill the things I’ve learned so that you can become an expert in some of these fields, or you can look to a freelancer like myself or the others on A3 to help you if your efforts are better used elsewhere.
Buckle up and dust off your favorite hats, cause we’re going to be trying them all on!
Vincent B. Davis II is an author, entrepreneur, speaker, and soldier. His first novel The Man with Two Names was published in July 2017 and has since become an Amazon International Best Seller. He is passionate about helping authors improve their brand and platform. He works with publishing companies and individual clients to help them sell more books in the modern publishing environment. Vincent is also the Senior Editor for blueridgeconference.com. If you are interested in contributing a blog for the site, or have any other queries, you can reach him at Vincent@thirteenthpress.com
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Vincent, Thank you for the poignant article. My head is spinning with all the hats I must wear.