One of the most frequently asked questions we hear is, “How can I successfully market my memoir?” We get it! One of the main hurdles in learning how to market your book is that it can be difficult to move out of that writer’s mindset and into the promotional mindset. That’s why today I wanted to bring on book marketing badass, Susan Friedmann to talk about how she works with authors to help them organically and authentically get their memoirs out to the people who need them.
Watch the conversation below or scroll down for the transcript.
Before we get into today’s post, we wanted to ask—do you have a plan for actually finishing your memoir? If not, we know you aren’t making the progress you hoped for. That’s why we developed The Memoir Method Checklist. This free guide (and video training!) will take you through every single step you need from idea to published marketable book. Grab it now at https://pageandpodium.com/checklist
Amanda: I am so excited to dive into this conversation with Susan Friedmann. Let me tell you a little bit about her, but I know you are going to learn so much from this interview. Susan Friedmann, CSP, is a badass in nonfiction book marketing. With 30-plus years of experience, her company, Aviva Publishing, helps authors sell books in bulk and thrive in their niche.
She’s an international bestselling author of 18 books, 18, and her first book sold 500,000 copies. It’s amazing. She also hosts the excellent podcast, Book Marketing Mentors, which I have personally been on. It was such a great time. Check out that episode. Her podcast is award-winning. It is a weekly podcast in its ninth year, and it ranks in the top 1.5% of podcasts worldwide. After you listen to this episode, bop over and binge her podcast, you will learn so much. For now, welcome, Susan. I’m so happy to have you on this show.
Susan: I’m so thrilled to be here, Amanda. Yes, your episode was probably one of the most listened to that I had. Yes, pat yourself on the back.
Amanda: Oh, go on.
[laughter]
Susan: We’ll put the link in the show notes so people can listen to your brilliance too.
Amanda: Oh, well, thank you so much. I’m excited to talk a little bit about some of the specifics that people bring up. Before we get to that, share a little bit about what’s your passion. What’s the core of what you do for folks?
Build it and They Will Come?
Susan: I love to guide, and I emphasize that word “guide” authors on their author marketing journey. Because so often the book, they have the book, they’ve given birth to this baby, and then they think that’s it. Somehow it’s the field of dreams, build it and they will come. Unfortunately, that is not the case. [laughs]
Amanda: No, that’s right. Any business owner will tell you that. We all come in thinking, “We’ll build it, and they will come.” It’s an understandable mistake, of course-
Susan: It is. It is.
Amanda: -but I’ve never seen it work.
Susan: Unless you’re a celebrity, and then the book sells itself just because of your name. However, most of us are not in that elite crowd. In the interim, we have to do some promotional work.
Amanda: Yes, that’s right. If only we had a time machine to be born to someone rich and famous, [laughs] it would be so much easier.
Susan: They love it. They think, as I say, field of dreams, “I want to be rich and famous.” When authors come to me, I ask them two questions, Amanda. That is, number one, what do you want your book to do for you? Number two is, who is your target audience? These are two really poignant questions. The answers that I get tell me a lot about the author and where they’re coming from, and if they even know who their book is for. I’m sure you’ve had this, “Well, my book is for everyone.” It’s a tough job to market to everyone, not even Procter & Gamble tries that. [chuckles]
Amanda: That’s right. Oh, that’s such a good point. It sounds like you’re getting into one of my favorite questions to ask guests, which is what’s the biggest mistake that you see people making coming into this process?
Susan: I think one of the biggest mistakes is that they want somebody else to market the book for them. They want to give up, “Yes, I wrote it. Now my work is done. Now you take it from here and make me rich and famous, make me a celebrity,” et cetera. Yes, you can pay people. You can pay people a lot of money to do that, but it’s a one and done. I know people who’ve been on national TV and got nowhere.
Amanda: Same, actually.
Susan: They paid a lot of money to do that. In fact, one of my closest friend was on the Oprah Show many years ago, and she sold that many books, zero, zero books. Why? She was not a good fit for the Oprah Show.
Amanda: Oh, my gosh. That’s so interesting. Can you say more about that example? Because so many people want to be on Oprah-
Susan: The Oprah Show.
Amanda: -to sell all the books.
Susan: Exactly. Exactly. Her subject was leadership, and Oprah doesn’t talk about leadership in corporations. She is soft and emotional. She gets into different things that just we want personally, our marriage, our relationships. She doesn’t get into business stuff, or if she does, very, very rarely, even though she’s an extraordinarily a business woman in her own right, but she doesn’t get into that on the show.
I actually interviewed a woman who was a post-production involved with the Oprah Show, and she said how sometimes, if it’s the wrong fit, the post-production people get hit with that. They don’t become very popular.
Amanda: Oh, that’s interesting. Of course, and that is so well aligned too with what you were saying earlier about your audience, because if you think it’s everyone, everybody knows Oprah, but it really isn’t everyone.
Susan: It isn’t.
Amanda: Say a little more about that. How should people think about that?
Think Niche
Susan: Thank you. That’s exactly where I was going, was looking at– my favorite subject is niche marketing. That is finding your peeps and going after that because there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit there. People are missing out because, as you say, they’ve got this mindset that, “My book is for everyone. How can I get it out to everyone? If I put it on Amazon, then that’s all I have to do, or I have to do social media.”
No, that doesn’t work. Yes, your friends and family, great. You’ll sell a few books. If you really want to sell books in bulk, you need to look at the market who would be interested in your book. I know memoir actually is a little more challenging just because it’s your story. Now who does your story appeal to? Hopefully within that memoir you’ve got lessons that you learned that you can share with your target audience. Those are the most valuable memoir.
Amanda: Oh, you are speaking my language. I’ll give a quick plug. If you have not checked out The Memoir Method group program, you can head over to pageandpodium.com/memoir-method because we help people bake the message in because it is so important.
Susan: It is.
Amanda: If you have that in mind at the beginning, you don’t have to try to go back through with the finished manuscript and put in the stuff that’s going to be interesting for promotion. It’s there already.
Susan: Exactly. I’ve had a few memoir clients, not too many. It’s not that I specialize in memoir. However, one is coming to mind, Diane, and she wrote a book that was very place oriented. She grew up in a certain place. She was inspired by a woman in that location. Her target audience were really people who related to that environment. It was actually a small town in Maine.
I can’t remember the name, but that’s beside the point. It’s like, go after that crowd. Go to that environment. They’ll love you there because they know that maybe you highlighted some areas that people recognize, shops, people, events that happened or happen.
Amanda: One of the very first books I worked on in my career actually, it was a memoir, but he’s from Chicago and wove in all the ’80s and ’90s and 2000s events, and that is rich. I think sometimes people think, and especially you’re talking about a small town. I think sometimes people think, “I want to sell more than Chicago.” That’s a lot. It is a built-in. You have a built-in, as you’re saying, group of people that already want that topic.
Susan: I mean, Chicago.
Amanda: I have to leverage it. Oh, I love Chicago.
Susan: That’s huge. It’s huge. Especially things like historical society, if you’re talking about something that dates back in time. There are many different options of opportunities out there. You can do speaking events to promote your book. I think speaking, coaching, training, those are the three pillars where authors can make money with their book. Books don’t make you money. This is always a hard one.
Authors say, “I want to get rich. I want to sell a million copies.” I’m like, “Yes, and you aren’t necessarily going to get rich on that book. However, you can get paid very nicely through speaking, training, coaching, all of those.” You’re looking for those kinds of opportunities. It doesn’t have to be keynote speaking.
For instance, I’ve been a trainer pretty much all my life when I was in the training business, which is about 35 years. That’s my aspect of speaking. I know many people think keynote speaking, to be honest with you, I don’t care for keynote speaking. That’s not my thing. Give me three hours rather than 30 minutes.
Maximizing Your Return on Investment
Amanda: I love that you’re saying that, too, because I do find that sometimes that I think just the pressure of I’ve got to promote this, I’ve got to make my money back whatever it might be, I think people feel resolved to having to do something they don’t want to do. I hear this with social media a lot. I don’t want to be on Facebook. I don’t want to be on Instagram, all of the politics that are happening. That’s so understandable.
People feel like that’s how you market is social media. I have to do social media, or I have to do keynotes. I love what you’re saying because, no, you don’t. In my experience, if you try to do a whole strategy based on something you don’t like to do–
Susan: You won’t do it.
Amanda: No, it’s not going to work because you won’t be consistent.
Susan: Exactly. You got to find what makes you tick. You started off asking me, what is my passion? What am I passionate about? That’s exactly what I asked my authors. What is your passion? You don’t want to speak if you’re an introvert. Maybe coaching or training, teaching people how to write your memoir. I know you work with them, but your people always want the behind-the-scenes. How did you do that?
If I was to write a memoir, what are some of the things that I would need to do? Your book is so full of articles, lessons, opportunities, tips. There are all sorts of things that always look at how can you cut, dice, and slice a book? [laughs]
Amanda: Absolutely.
Susan: Use it. Yes, social media is one of those, you got to find– do a little bit. I resist it. I really do. I’m not on social media a lot. I’ve picked LinkedIn as my platform of choice. You find a platform where your target audience hangs out. It’s no good in memoir being on LinkedIn if it isn’t relating to business people, for instance, because that’s really where a lot of business people hang out. Maybe Facebook might be more of a thing for you. Instagram.
Amanda: That’s exactly right. Say a little bit more about thinking about how we can match up our audience and really make sure we’re speaking to them, because that’s so core to all of these things that you’re sharing today.
Susan: One of the things that you said earlier is that that’s something that, when you’re working with an author, you look to establish right up front before they start writing the memoir is like, who are you talking to? Who’s the person that would want to learn more about your experience? We’ve just published a book. The author is a chiropractor, and she wrote a memoir. She had a lot of medical issues, and her memoir is all about her struggle with that.
At the same time, there are a lot of lessons that she learned. Her book actually speaks quite a bit to the medical community as well, practitioners, because she tried all the prescribed way of doing things and nothing worked for her.
Amanda: Oh, that is a hot, hot market. I think that gets at something I’ve observed in that question that I want to ask you, which is I hear from a lot of people who will say, “Okay, but I’m not a doctor. I’m not a chiropractor. I just healed from this thing in that case,” or, “I just went through this.” I heard from someone recently like, “I am not an adoption expert. I just adopted a child.” I think you are an adoption expert if you adopted a child.
Susan: Exactly.
Amanda: It’s just a particular type of expertise.
Susan: Correct.
Amanda: Is that something that you work with people to see where they can really contribute to the conversation?
Susan: Very much so. For instance, one of my clients wrote a book about dementia, Taming the Chaos of Dementia. She was a caretaker for her husband for two years while he went through dementia until he passed. She wrote a book about it. Now she’s reaching out to other caregivers who are in the same situation that she was in. This isn’t exactly a memoir.
However, the notes she took of the process that she went through, the fact that every time somebody came in to just look after her husband for a few hours, she had to give him medication, what medication, what does he like, what he doesn’t like, all sorts of things. The list goes on. She wrote all about this. Now she’s doing that for other caregivers. It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful.
Amanda: Oh, it’s amazing. I think that’s such a great example, too, because if you are caring– if you are a full-time caregiver for a family member, you know what you are not wanting? More doctors to tell you what to do. There are plenty of doctors.
Susan: They don’t know.
Amanda: They don’t. What you want is somebody to tell you how to survive yourself while you’re caring for this other person. Doctors aren’t an expert on that.
Susan: Exactly
Amanda: That has to be someone that lived it.
Susan: Yes. They’re giving you the prescription. “Take this drug. This is going to help,” et cetera. In her book, Barbara talks about the technology, things that she found that were very helpful. These are the kinds of ideas that she’s passing on to others, things that others may not have done the kind of research that she did. Where someone writing a memoir, I’m assuming they’ve done a lot of research. Other people may not have done that kind of research, so in and of itself that they can teach about how they went about doing the research.
Amanda: I have a PhD, and one of the things that people misunderstand about a degree, like a PhD or any research degree, is really what you’re doing is taking a pretty narrow topic and just thinking about it for a million hours. You know who does that? Memoirists. It’s your life. It’s your experiences. But to even get that book to the point that you can even start writing, you have thought more about those experiences than 99% of people that have been through it.
To me, but this is one of the things I think, a lot of women, it feels so scary to say, “I’m an expert in this,” because what if somebody else that has credentials comes after you or something. I think that is a really scary thing. I think it is something that holds a lot of people back. I think social media feels very scary. What if people come for me? I think even speaking, what if I mess up? What kinds of tips do you have for people who are feeling just really a lot of anxiety about putting themselves out in front of people?
Be Yourself
Susan: Just be you. Just be you. You and I are being who we are. The other day, I was on the phone with somebody who is an avid listener of my podcast. I always talk about, and I’m going to offer your listeners too, a 20-minute consult to do a book marketing brainstorm. He took me up on this, and he was gushing, “Oh my goodness, I listen to you every week. Oh, I’m actually on the phone with you.” I’m like, “Mm-hmm.” I’m exactly who you here listen to. [laughs] This is me. I’m not trying to be anybody else. I tried that, and it didn’t work.
Amanda: I think we all try that, right?
Susan: I think we do.
Amanda: Especially, I’ll be really stuffy. Well, everyone wants to listen to that. People want you to be, exactly right, authentic and you. I think one of the things for memoirists is keep in mind that you already actually are putting your authentic self out there.
Susan: Oh, without any shadow of a doubt. I would be really nervous to write a memoir. However, I did want to write a book, “How I survived a PhD, married to someone who was doing a PhD.” That is the other side of your journey.
Amanda: Oh my gosh. I am grateful to have not been married when I was doing my PhD, actually. Mostly, I feel like I just got up, went to school, came home, and went to bed.
Susan: Well, that was not the case with me. I had two children, and the PhD became like a mistress to my husband. It was all-encompassing. It was tough. In fact, I had a girlfriend once who said to me, she said, “If your marriage can survive a PhD, it can survive anything.”
Amanda: I think that’s right. I sometimes think we might say that about marketing and writing your book, too, actually.
Don’t Be Afraid of Imperfection
Susan: Yes. Yes. You know what? You’re going to make mistakes. I know that people’s biggest fear is speaking, but you know, I don’t know anybody who’s died of speaking yet.
Amanda: I don’t either. Well, and even when you start doing it, ’cause I think a lot of listeners probably have not quite gotten started. We both had to start somewhere, and, at first, I was so nervous. It had to be perfect, and I started on video. You can make it pretty perfect if you want to take the time, but as I’ve done it for a long time. There are videos on this channel, I’m not going to tell you which [laughter], but there are videos where I went back and watched it later, and there was some edit that I missed. It’s like pretty obvious, and no one’s ever written to me and said, “Oh, you idiot.”
Susan: Exactly. I think it takes so much guts to put yourself out there in whatever form. There’s always somebody in the audience who will say, “Wow, I wish I could do what you do.” You’re saying, “I’m like shaking in my shoes doing this,” but the fact is you’re doing it, and you will make mistakes, and you’ll survive and you’ll learn from your mistakes because that’s how we do.
Amanda: Absolutely.
Susan: Look at a baby, how they learn to walk. They get up, they fall down, they get up, they fall down to the point that they can take one step and then another, and it keeps going.
Amanda: I love it. I’m stealing this from someone, and I don’t remember who it was. I saw that somebody had said something recently. Why do we say baby steps, meaning safe little movements forward? Baby steps are not that. Baby steps are frantic, lurching movements into the abyss.
Susan: Exactly.
Amanda: Baby steps are actually quite scary, but we have to– aren’t we all glad we took baby steps?
Susan: We all did. I still feel sometimes that I am. To me, social media, the fact that you’re doing video, as you know, my podcast is audio only. Why? Because sometimes I feel like a little camera phobic. I was like, “Okay.” It’s funny because I feel very comfortable doing this, but if I was to do it for me and on my podcast, I’m like, “No, I like the NPR version. Audio only.”
Amanda: I’ll tell you, sometimes when I’m styling my hair for the third way in a day, I’m like, “Oh man, I should have done audio.” Well, I want to make sure that we leave our listeners and viewers and readers with some practical ways forward. We have talked about you’ve got to figure out who your audience is. You need to know why you wrote the book, and then you need to figure out where the audience is. What is the next baby step? What do you suggest people do as a small movement forward?
Susan: I think looking at what do you feel comfortable doing, if yes, we’re going to, just because of how we are working, find a platform, a social media platform that you feel comfortable with, or you could learn to feel comfortable with and where your audience hangs out. Even let’s say it’s Facebook, start a small Facebook group, invite people to join. Then it’s a smaller group of people that get to know you, you get to know them. Start small. Start small, however it is.
When you’re speaking, for instance, you’ll speak for free for a few times, and that’s okay. That’s the practice. You need to practice. Speaking is one of those things, whether it’s tea, whether it’s training or speaking, you’ve got to practice. Practice, practice, practice. It’s not something that you can take a book, read, and learn how to do.
Amanda: Exactly right.
Susan: You’ve just got to get out there, and just– I’ve got some horror stories of workshops that I did around the country. I worked for a seminar company for many years. Oh my goodness, you got a taste of all different kinds of audiences that way. Try different things. See what works, see what you like, see what you don’t like. Keep the things that you like, toss the things you don’t like.
Amanda: That’s exactly right. Transparently, I passed out during a talk once. I got so nervous, and my blood pressure went down, and I also went down. Anyway, people still told me that they liked parts of the talk before.
Susan: Oh, I had an instance where,– in the good old days, I wore a skirt to present him. That’s not something that I would do these days. It was a straight skirt. I move, and I did this movement where I just took my leg a little bit further than the actual skirt went, and it tore the whole back of the skirt. I still had to continue training.
Amanda: Oh, my gosh. That builds your resilience so much. See, we’re still standing. We’re still doing the same stuff that we were doing when we– It’s like that isn’t even– I actually hadn’t thought about that example in a really long time. You just move on.
Susan: Well, that spurs on other stories that– oh, my goodness. I could make your audience really laugh, but I know we might run out of time with those kinds of stories. [laughs]
Amanda: That’s right.
Susan: You’ll have those stories. That’s fine. You’ll live through them.
Amanda: That’s exactly right. They’re good for you, actually.
Susan: They are. They actually are.
Baby Steps to Get Started
Amanda: Get out there, folks. I mean, today, just make a little brainstorm. What would feel good? What would feel terrible? Make yourself a couple of buckets. Make yourself some– Think about this. Figure out what is that little thing. Speaking for free, staring a– those are great suggestions and things that you really could start thinking about doing today.
Susan: Go to your library. The library, love that kind of thing. Your local library. You’re a celebrity in your own town, or you could be if they knew that you wrote this memoir.
Amanda: Oh, that. Do not hide it because you feel like it’s small-timey to be in your local library.
Susan: Absolutely. No.
Amanda: You just need a couple of big-mouth fans. From there it goes. It’s just that you’ve got to get to where you’re finding those big mouths.
Susan: The media. The media will pick you up locally. Maybe the national media aren’t interested in you, but locally, you could definitely be a celebrity in your own town, except we always think we have to go out of town to be that celebrity.
Amanda: Yes. It’s way harder. You probably don’t have as many contacts. I think that’s a great point.
Susan: I remember a colleague, a speaker colleague of mine, I was living in Cincinnati at the time, and he came to Cincinnati. He was hired to do what I do. I was like, “How come you were hired, and I’m in town?” He said, “You’re always a celebrity when you come in from out of town.”
Amanda: That’s right. That’s right. Well, this has been so, so informative. I know many of our listeners are going to want to take you up on that consult. If folks want to learn more about you, follow your work, what should they do? Where should they go?
Connecting with Susan
Susan: Well, for the consult, definitely go to Bookmarketingbrainstorm.com, and that will take you to just a quick form to find out more about you and then to my schedule. I’m always delighted just to brainstorm some ideas, some of the kinds of things that you and I were talking about now. Find out what’s right for them.
Amanda: Excellent.
Susan: Yes, I think that’s the best way to start. Of course, go listen to the podcast, Book Marketing Mentors. [laughs]
Amanda: Oh, it’s so good.
Susan: Book Marketing Brainstorm, and then Book Marketing Mentors.
Amanda: Excellent. We’ll put those links in the show notes too, so that you can access them.
Susan: Excellent. Thank you.
Amanda: Well, this has been such a great, fun conversation. Thank you so much for joining us, Susan.
Susan: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.
Amanda: All right, y’all, get out there, promote your book, and I’ll talk to you soon. Happy writing.
PS. Searching the internet for writing, publishing, and book marketing advice can be exhausting to say the least! If you’re ready for hands on, one-on-one support for your memoir, check out The Memoir Method. We’d love to welcome you into this nine-month group program specially designed for women writing their first memoirs. And don’t forget, if you’d like to chat with Amanda about the program (or any other services we offer), you can book a free consult any time!
