Marina Oliver on Publishing and Promoting Your Romance Novel 

Part Two of a two-part interview

While you are writing your wine coaster idea of a romance novel it is key to remember, acknowledge and recognize that this is the first leg of your journey to successful sales. You must accept that the majority of marketing and publicizing your book will fall squarely on your lap. In that as you are writing your book you should also be learning how to market it. “There are two aspects to selling—promoting to an agent and publisher to get published in the first place, and after publication, promoting the book to readers through interviews and personal appearances,” says Oliver. “Today authors are expected to put as much effort into promoting their work once published as they do writing it,” Oliver adds, “Some very prominent writers have complained that they are required to do so much in the way of publicity tours and appearances they are left with not time to do what made them famous in the first place.”

Oliver agrees that this might be the time for Universities and other writing programs to begin including the concept of book promoting alongside learning how to write a novel. “I'm told that many of these courses in the UK barely mention selling work to publishers, hence some students emerge thinking all they have to do is write a novel.”
The only books Oliver says she has self-published are non-fiction where someone else has provided the money, with a guaranteed market/audience. “For instance, I wrote a history of my old school which we knew past and present pupils would buy.” Because Oliver teaches many courses and attends conferences she can print off her “How To” books on a POD basis.

One of the tips Oliver mentions on her website is to continually study your market. Some writers might consider this commercialization or selling out and Oliver has run across some who feel this way. “I do find people like this who say ‘write what you want’, don’t bother with the market. It can work, but I suspect with just a few people who write well, and who hit the market at the right time,” says Oliver with this additional bit of reality, “It doesn’t work for the vast majority of writers, especially when they are first starting out.”

Pushing the envelope of publicity isn’t really Oliver’s style. “I’ve been conventional, partly because I much prefer writing to tramping round bookshops trying to sell a few copies,” says Oliver adding, “The Royalties are less than the cost of travel!” She says she sends out press releases when the publisher isn’t doing much and it has paid off for her. “With books set in a particular locality, where the bookshops and media had not been notified by the publisher that I was a local author and the books were set in their area. I got far more radio and newspaper coverage by myself than I did through the publisher.”

Though some of her writer friends find that running blogs has boosted sales, it’s not her thing. Oliver finds that being an active member RNA has done a great job of raising her profile.