I used to hate marketing but upon realizing that it is a necessary evil I grew to accept it and tried to learn more about it and get better at it. I’ve had some success but I’m still not very good at. Now if I could truly love it and dive into it 100% I might just eventually make the New York Times bestseller list. Of course, then I would have very little time left for actual writing.

Back a few years ago I decided to market the hell out of one of my novels. It was the best novel I had ever written and I really wanted it to succeed. So I quit writing and spent 100% of my time, energy and money marketing that novel over the course of 2–3 months. (I spent a few thousand dollars marketing it.) And guess what? It didn’t move at all. Zero, nada, zilch. It sold worse than any of my previous novels.

So I completely quit marketing and I went back to writing full time on my next novel. I spent the next 6 months doing ZERO marketing for the previous novel and it was towards the end of those six months that the novel finally started to move all on its own with no help from me. I think my marketing did more harm than good. That’s how good of a marketer I am.

I’ve decided to just focus on my writing. That’s where the joy is for me. I’ve finally learned that joy is far more important than money or some list in a New York newspaper. Except for throwing a few links here and there, I do extremely little marketing. I’ve turned the marketing over to the universe. I’m still waiting for the universe to prove its marketing skills but at least I have more time for writing and that’s what matters to me.