Do you want to write a transformational book but you hate marketing?
Let me take you on a brief journey through language, meaning, and personal and cultural power.
Allow me to geek out about the magic of language change and meaning making
In Singapore English (aka Singlish), the word marketing means going to the market (usually wet market) to buy your groceries. It makes complete logical sense if you think about it. You got to the shops to do your shopping. Why wouldn’t you go to the market to do your marketing?!
You could argue that Singaporeans are wrong and that they speak an inferior version of the language. But being a language snob won’t stop them from doing their marketing. Personally, I see this change in meaning and it makes me excited. Language is so flexible and open to change. If the same word can mean completely different things in different contexts, what else might we be able to make it mean?!
Why am I telling you this? Because I’m a language geek and I love this stuff. But also because if you’re the kind of person who hates marketing, I’d like to offer you an alternative way to approach the topic. I’m going to start with a discussion of language and meaning.
Word themselves don’t carry the meaning, the stand in for the meaning we make
The meaning of words is not some static thing that exists in the word itself. The meaning exists within us as individuals and is constantly being negotiated through use in written and spoken forms. (Kory Stamper’s book Word by Word about how dictionaries are written, talks about this and how bent out of shape people can get when the meaning of words changes.)
As human cultures change, then the words used by members of those cultures change their meanings to reflect those new ways of thinking and understanding. When different cultures interact - as in Singapore - changes in the meaning of words are often more obvious, but we see this across generations, too.
Side note: My son doesn’t ask me to google things (a word that didn’t exist when I was a kid). He asks me to search it up. As his generation become adults, this could easily become the standard way to refer to an online search.
There is, of course, a line where meaning needs to be shared within specific cultural groups and contexts. We’re not all using unfamiliar words all the time, all meaning would completely breakdown if we did. But the margin for error is much wider than most of us realise. As humans, we misunderstand each other all the time!
Things are very commonly lost in translation!
Writing personal essays or a book, is a bit like learning a new language to convey the meaning you want to share
As an English as a foreign language teacher, I had to figure out what my students meant/ wanted to say and give them the right words to say it. As a creativity and writing coach, my job is to help you figure out what you mean and find the right language to say it clearly and effectively.
My Japanese students would happily see me as the expert English speaker and rarely question me even when I’d made a careless mistake. But working with competent adults who come to writing later in life, feedback on their writing can be intensely triggering. I experienced this too. I was making meaning all over the place with early essays and drafts, but I wasn’t in control of that meaning.
It was almost like going back to learn a foreign language again. The problem is that as adults, who use English every day we think the words we use are communicating one thing, but it turns out that we still have a lot of work to do if we want to communicate clearly. Have you ever heard (or said yourself) phrases like: “that’s not what I meant” or “I didn’t mean anything by it” when someone reacts to something you’ve written, or said?
That’s a sign there’s some work to do in order to make it as clear as humanely possible what you really meant! And if you didn’t really mean what you said, then don’t say it!
So what’s going on when writers aren’t fully owning their power to make meaning with the language they use?
Words have power. Yet sometimes we try to deny that power. Or perhaps we have ambivalent feelings towards power. Maybe we know words can be used to manipulate, persuade or coerce and we don’t want to be seen as someone who wields power in those ways!
This is one reason the work of being a writer is so hard. You have to take full responsibility for the meaning you are creating in your writing. While also allowing space for inevitable misunderstanding. You have to fully own and step into your power, any ambivalence about that will create resistance within you. (Kelly Diels has a great blog post about redefining power.)
And yes, part of the work of writing is to find your audience, i.e. the people who “speak your language” and who are predisposed to understanding you. But it’s not their job to do the work of understanding what you want to say.
When we argue for a fixed meaning of words, we place the meaning outside ourselves (we’re not aware of this, of course). The onus is on the other person to understand and if they don’t understand, then that’s their problem.
But more importantly, we are unable to fully step into our power as meaning makers.
We want our reader to do the work of understanding us. All while we resist the work of getting clear on what it is we want to say, who specifically we’re speaking to and how best to communicate our message. Again, this is not intentional, or something we’re likely aware of doing.
What’s all this got to do with marketing?
So bringing this back to marketing. Being an effective marketer and being a writer aren’t actually that different. Both require getting clear on our message and what we offer the world, knowing who we’re speaking to and knowing how best to communicate that message. Unless you want to write some obscure, avant-garde style of fiction, that is, but I’m assuming you don’t!
So yeah, as we’ve already seen, the cultural meaning of marketing in standard English is not intrinsic to the word itself. It is also not something that every speaker of standard English agrees about. But I have noticed a lot of aspiring writers, and I’m especially talking about women here, will say “I hate marketing.”
This was me too 7-8 years ago. I didn’t really know what marketing was, but I was sure it was something bad and I didn’t like it one bit. I learned early on that marketing was essential if I wanted to pursue the business of writing in the 21st century. So I got curious about this apparent contradiction.
If I wanted to be a writer, and becoming a writer requires learning to be an effective marketer, but I hate marketing, how could I reconcile these two things?
I also found people who saw the fact that online marketing is accessible to ordinary people as a tremendous opportunity. They saw it as something to be excited about, not something to do everything in your power to avoid! The meanings I’d formed around marketing were so static, and so negative, I couldn’t make sense of that point of view for a long time!
Why do you really want to outsource your marketing?
I also noticed it made little sense when writers said to me: “I want a traditional publishing deal because I don’t want to do the marketing. I hate marketing.”
Firstly, the modern publishing world doesn’t work that way. Publishers produce and distribute books, they don’t have much of a budget for book marketing. If you want your book to reach the hands of your readers, then marketing that book is down to you. Yes, you can outsource this work, but you’re still the face of your book.
Secondly, if somewhere in the back of your mind marketing is bad, and therefore marketers are sleazy, manipulative and corrupt individuals, why would you want to entrust your precious book baby to these evil beings?!
Finally, “I hate marketing” is a protective belief. Oh! Once I got to this realisation I was really onto something. It’s protecting you from visibility and vulnerability. Putting yourself and your ideas out there as a writer is inevitably inviting criticism, judgment and maybe even rejection. It’s hugely risky! Have you ever read 1 star reviews? Everyone’s a critic!
Not everyone is going to like the meaning you have to make, but that’s ok. If you’re not ok with that, then your work starts with being present to the feelings of rejection that come up for you. You don’t have to thicken your skin, but a sense of inner safety is important. You can learn to be secure in who you are and like yourself enough to not worry about other’s opinions! There may be lots of reasons this isn’t always easy, but it is possible!
Embracing marketing is stepping into your power as a writer
Even better than that, your writing and marketing efforts will connect you with others who think you’re pretty awesome too! Even if you’re the most misunderstood, “out of the box” thinker who’s family and friends have never got, the world is full of people who will love you for being you and will lap up the courageous writing you have to share.
So what if marketing doesn’t mean all the things we think it means? What if it simply means connecting with and build a bridge to the people who are going to love your book? And yes, that’s going to feel uncomfortable and stretchy, especially at first, but that’s where growth happens.
You don’t get to walk the creative path without growth and change along the way. The good news is that your ability to trust your creative vision and know what feels authentic and good to you will be strengthened by the journey.
You can’t change the world if you won’t engage with the marketing systems that currently exist
But here’s another way to think about it. Yes, many of the most successful marketing techniques are often pretty icky. The teachers and gurus represent our prevailing culture, and the worst of that culture is reflected in modern marketing. Lack of consent; psychological techniques which exploit our weaknesses; and sales processes which disproportionally favour the needs of the seller to make a lot of money over the buyer’s ability to make informed choices. To name a few.
If marketing is this fixed thing outside of you with a set of meanings you find distasteful, then you have no power to influence or define what modern marketing means. The humans who currently hold cultural power get to keep it. You’ve already counted yourself out of the game through your desire to disassociate from all the stuff you hate. The current norms of marketing stay as they are and you and I cast ourselves as innocent victims of an evil system. (See the Karpman triangle.)
The system doesn’t change when we stand outside of it and believe we’re separate from it. We are all a part of the system. It’s the same as with words. The meaning exists within the humans, not in the hands of the people who write the dictionaries or in academia or anywhere else. The system exists within the humans who interact within it. That’s you and me as much as it’s the people in positions of political, cultural or financial power.
Ironically, that sense of separation and distance from the system allows the status quo to function as it is. The system is doing its job of disenfranchising and disempowering you. If you believe you don’t have a seat at the table because you’re not a wealthy white man, then guess who gets to keep all the power?! You end up doing the work of the dominant culture for it.
Meanwhile, all those wonderful people who love you and want to read the books you’ll write are left without a way to connect to you.
I was talking about marketing, wasn’t I? Just because there are sleazy, high pressure, manipulative, coercive, etc. marketing methods, doesn’t mean you have to use them! But it requires some work to become aware of the tactics you want to avoid, more work than rejecting all of marketing outright. More and more people are developing ethical marketing frameworks, and you can be one of them too!
It really does all start with Creative Courage
I’m guessing you want to write a book because you have something to say that is culturally subversive. But you’re procrastinating or stuck in perfectionism. This likely makes you highly reactive and emotionally triggered when someone offers feedback on your writing. And you’re resisting the inner work of nurturing the robust sense of self-belief you need to pull this off.
Me too!
Therefore, everything has to start with cultivating courage and getting grounded in self-belief.
Because the opposite, i.e. self-doubt and the self-defeating behaviours which it creates in humans, acts like blinders. It leaves us stumbling along in the dark, unable to see how our cultural conditioning is influencing us. We’re unable to understand why we can’t get traction towards the things we want to achieve. We feel terrible, lacklustre, unmotivated and low in energy, and may conclude we don’t really want to write at all.
And no one wants that!
Calling BETA TESTERS!
I’m creating a short course called CREATIVE COURAGE 101. I’m looking for a small number of people to test drive the course for me. I’m hoping to have this ready for you by next Friday, before my family and I head to the UK for the summer.
Email me: kamsin@kamsinkaneko.com for more info.