The 'Lazy' Author's Guide to Marketing (That Actually works)

Let me introduce the Choose One, Take One method...

I was chatting to an author friend this week and I’m paraphrasing here, but she said something like, ‘I’m stopping social media. It’s such a time drag, I’m only doing Insta and Facebook.’

My response was complete silence and then spluttering over my words to say, ‘Only doing what? What platforms are you doing now?’

Turns out, she was doing everything.

Throwing spaghetti at the wall like her life depended on it. Posting on X, LinkedIn, TikTok, Threads, Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram. And here’s the thing, she was making unique content for each one.

My head nearly fell off.

No wonder it was such a time drag.

If you’re trying to sell a book via social media, you might be doing the same. And if you are, take a nap, have a glass of wine and some chocolate and for love of everything that’s good, stop doing that.

Because here’s the thing that most authors don’t seem to get: Posting wildly on social media everywhere and anywhere will not increase your book sales significantly.

Having an email list will.

According to this survey, authors with over 15000 on their email list sold twenty times more books than authors with an email list of under 100.

So you don’t need more followers, likes or shares, you need more email subscribers. Use social media to get email subscribers, not book sales and you’re onto a winner.

If you’ve been trying to juggle allllll the social media platforms, stop that right now and do what I’m about to tell you instead.

Here is a plan you can start today that will be much more effective and I’m giving it a catchy title:

THE CHOOSE ONE, TAKE ONE METHOD