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July 4, 2011

How do you divide your time between writing and marketing? [Discussion]

Photo: alancleaver_2000 | Flickr

Whether it’s the fast-paced nature of modern life, the fact that most of us are part-time authors or even just the distraction of the latest marathon of Deadliest Catch, it seems the amount of time the we have to devote to writing and marketing is less than ever.

For today’s discussion, we want to address this problem by finding out how you divide your time between writing activities (writing, outlining, planning, brainstorming, editing, revising, etc) and marketing activities (blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, begging for reviews, visiting bookstores, networking, etc) and what you do to make most efficient use of your time. We want to know:

  • What percentage of your time do you spend on writing and marketing? How do you think this will change as you move through the lifecycle of your current book?
  • Do you plan time to work on your writing and marketing individually or do you just work on both simultaneously whenever you can find the time?
  • If you could invent any tool to make your writing and marketing time easier, what would it be?
  • What tips would you give to other authors on how to most efficiently utilize the time devoted to their writing career?

Please leave a comment below addressing any (or all) of the above questions. Also, please send the discussion along to your friends whether they’re authors or not — we’d love to get a varied input.

We’ll use some of your responses to guide upcoming Duolit resources and tools, so be sure to share your perspective.

What do you think?

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  • Right now it’s about 90% writing, 10% marketing. It will probably change drastically as soon as the book is complete, however.

  • Same as Martine .. 90% Writing, 10% Marketing .. Not counting my day job obviously. I wish there was someone who could do the marketing for me! .. I would much much much rather spend my time writing than worrying about my marketing :)

    IMO, marketing is best done by writing. In the world of blogging, what better than posting your work online and let it speak for itself. Also, I find that writing about writing brings writers closer and helps with my networking.

  • My time was 80% writing 20% marketing until I published “Enchantment.” Now it’s about 50-50. If not for my publicist, I’d be spending 80% of my time marketing. I wish I could spend ALL of my time writing, but when a reader (or another writer) takes the time to post a comment on my blog, email me, or write a review, I want to respond personally. And that takes time.

  • Well before I started blogging I spent all of my time writing but there are so many things to do now. I only started actively marketing about 2 weeks ago so unfortunately about 70% of my time is spent on my blog, making book covers, creating book trailers etc…I’m hoping that once everything is back to normal I can swap so that I’m doing writing for about 70-80% of my time.
    I’m thinking of creating a schedule so that I can manage my time better but you’re right as a part time writer with a full time job, there is NEVER enough time.

  • Toni

    Thanks for the great comments, everyone! I can understand that, as authors, you’d love to spend most of your time writing — we’ll definitely try to work on some resources to make marketing less of a burden. What part of marketing do you like the most? What part of it do you like the least? Just wondering!

  • Great questions …

    I’m about 80 percent writing / 20 percent marketing while in first draft process, but that switches to 50/50 during revisions and then 25/75 by the time the book is out. … My biggest tip to new authors would be to set deadlines for certain benchmarks (i.e. word count or chapters), otherwise you’ll always be an aspiring author. Hunting and pecking here and there whenever you have time won’t get it done unless you have certain goals. Good writing takes serious commitment, no matter whether it’s a hobby or what pays the bills.

  • I don’t have a book out yet, but I’m trying to raise my profile. I am also a freelance writer. I think I spend about 5% of my time on marketing. It’s really not enough. I try to let some of my marketing do itself via scheduled tweets in Hootsuite. I need to focus on real world strategies though because some people will always want to deal in person and in paperback, not just the e-book. Thanks for this question!

  • I think it probably ought to be around a 70/30 ratio of writing to marketing. But I find that hard because I really need to climb in my bathysphere and descend 20,000 fathoms into the undercurrents of the story, and one meeting or interview really throws my concentration out for the whole day. It’s not that I mind the promo side (though I don’t love it) but as writers we have to protect our immersion in the story process, and that’s hard when you’ve got these other things demanding your time.