Marketing for Fledgling Authors
You’re on your own kid, mostly.
If there’s one theme that keeps rearing its head in my 2026 debut group chat, it’s how best to market our books. From the initial surprise of finding how little guidance authors are so often given, to the shock of contrasts (some authors have a lot more financial backing and thus, more easily find themselves in newspapers and magazines). On the lesser end of the spectrum, debut authors flail around in near darkness, squinting towards imagined landmarks of success – a podcast here, a dash of social media self-promotion there. Reader, I was kindly gifted a microphone, one of those you can clip to your person or hold by its delightfully fuzzy head. I took it out of its box, felt a surge of intimidation at the sight of it, then swiftly popped it away. The promise I have made to myself is that when my finished copies arrive I will confront the little fuzzy fiend and make it work for me.
There are ample examples of authors who have cracked the self-promotion thing. Sara van Os of Decomposition Book fame is doing a terrific job of building a brand. She is gorgeous and vibrant before the camera, even when she is experiencing the worst of her chronic illness. It’s not that she’s doing anything absurdly time-consuming. She’s just turning up. In her stories she offers little pieces of herself to her audience: a playful peephole into her life and humour that has endeared readers to her.
It’s not like I’m so much of an introvert that I cannot turn up at all. As a teacher, friends keep reminding me that I do this all the time – speak to an audience. In response, I mostly scoff and say, ‘well yes, but they are children, and as children, they take what I say as gospel.’ To them, I’m the Big Grown Adult, wise and whip smart (let’s ignore the ones who, on occasion, see through this farce). But adults – adults know better.
Last week I spoke on stage at Dead Ink’s 10 year anniversary showcase and nearly, but did not, expire. My nerves were so obvious to me: frequent face touching; a tightening jaw; a dry as hell throat I had to keep drinking to stave off. And yet… the response from the audience seemed to be that no one knew that inside I was counting down the seconds, bartering with myself to stay a moment longer, and another and another. When I read from my book I felt surprisingly confident, it was the waiting to speak that had my stomach in knots. I did it though. I got on stage and I used my voice and made people laugh. This kind of marketing felt accidental and authentic. I was there to celebrate my publisher, but in doing so, was offered an invaluable platform authors would kill for.
So, what else can I, a fledging author, do to move the needle without compromising my dignity? The grumpy cynic that parasitically attaches itself to me in times of triumph likes to say that nothing I do will change things. Sure, my Substack has just over one-hundred followers and is unlikely to garner the same accreditation or fame as someone like Lena Dunham, who has made this platform her bitch. But instead of deciding to bin it off, I’ve started to see it as a home for low-pressure self-expression that isn’t the main work.
If we stop seeing what we’re doing as a dichotomy of success vs failure we might find joy. Any sales that come from this are a happy side-effect of a state of being we enjoy irrespective. The same might be said for something like Instagram. I’ve always used it, preferring it over Twitter (RIP) or Facebook, which is exclusively filled with old school acquaintances doing nuclear family shit and click bait tabloid stories I don’t care to consume (horrible tragedies mostly, rendered in unsympathetic detail). On Instagram, there still seems to be a community of readers and writers posting about their craft. For now, I’m quite happy supporting other authors by sharing my favourite reads, posting enthusiastic reviews and bits and bobs about my debut. It works because I am showing up authentically and not trying to force a brand that isn’t real.
Helpful too are the relationships I have made along the way which endorse me as a not awful person and therefore, sometimes see people coming to me with opportunities. Just last week, a writer messaged me about appearing on her podcast – the fifth I have been invited on. As someone navigating the limited energy of chronic illness, podcasts are great. I can do them from home, only partly dressed for pubic consideration, and timetable them for my day off from teaching. They take no longer than an hour, require very little preparation and cost nothing.
Pitching articles to publications is another accessible option. Outside of any marketing support you might receive from your team, lots of publications accept pitches from the author themselves (Mslexia, for example). Magazines too, who publish short stories are wonderful for marketing your fiction. I was recently published in Extra Teeth which was a brilliant experience and in its own way, counts as the kind of marketing you can enjoy and not feel overwhelmed by.
My biggest advice though? Don’t lose sleep over it. At the end of the day, show up in the ways that feel real. The cynic has a lot of rubbish to say, but in this instance is unfortunately correct. I won’t be able to massively move the needle, but the kinds of marketing I’m comfortable with are enriching experiences in their own right that establish new connections with authors and writers. Market through the community, not beyond it.
It’s only apt I end this article with the pre-order links to ‘A Healthy Appetite’ - why not eh?
Pre-order direct from Dead Ink here.
Screen Saver 🎬
What I’m Watching
No Other Choice (Dir: Park Chan-wook, 2025)
In 2026 we like to think we’ve made progress towards annihilating the patriarchal breadwinner mythos. And yet, the nuclear family in many cultures (including modern day Korea), still very much exists. In fact, in 2022, after a previous period of progressive voting among young men, the Korean presidential election saw a right-wing swing towards conservative candidate Yoon Suk-yeol, who had garnered traction with the help of a not-at-all-subtle anti-feminist campaign. Sexism is still alive, it’s just wearing a modern tailored suit.
Although the election win was by a tight margin, it’s a stark reminder that our victories for gender equality are not always permanent ones. It reminds me of 1980’s American under Regan, when he vowed to turn back the clocks on women’s rights to protect the ‘home’ and the ‘integrity’ of the nuclear family’s gender roles. I could go on, but this is a movie review, after all.
Some of these tensions between men and women find a spotlight in No Other Choice which, in the opening scene, sees father and husband You Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) man a barbeque. The choice is an obvious yet apt nod to masculine symbols and pastimes: his special gloves; the pride with which he presents his family with a grilled eel gifted by the American owners of the paper factory he has presided over for years; even the rugby-like huddle he insists his family partake in, all of it, a striking tableau of masculine confidence and domestic control. You Man-su isn’t a bastard. He loves his family, including the two gorgeous blonde Labradors that live in their own mini houses outside. The problem is, like the wires that hold the arms of his bonsai tree in place, his happiness is tightly bound to his self-image as the breadwinner. This motif, of tight control, continues throughout, culminating in a grotesque act of body contortion I won’t spoil for you.
The catalyst for the breakdown of this well managed regime comes when You Man-su is let go as part of a mass redundancy. My sister and best friend have recently faced redundancy. No one is underestimating the devastation of losing your security, least of all me. But No Other Choice plays out as it is titled – pairing the loss of the status quo with the crippling inability of the breadwinner to emote, to communicate his grief. Instead, feeling there are no other options, he begins the laborious and dangerous mission of finding another job – one as symbolically powerful as his last role to make up for the knock to his manhood. You Man-su will do anything to eliminate the competition, including mass murder.
I enjoyed the black comedy, the sub-plots we get from the competitors he chooses to target, and the character development given to his wife, Miri (Son Ye-jin), who seems just as exhausted by his breadwinner antics as he must surely be. There’s a hell of a lot to unpack, more than I want to give away here. The ending was satisfying, apt, but above all, a bleak reminder of how deeply ingrained the patriarchy is – that is victims are everyone, not least the men bound by its rituals.
Current Reads 📚
Permanence by Sophie Mackintosh, out now with Hamish Hamilton
‘But they didn’t commit crimes against each other every day, not even crimes too minor to cross the threshold. Long periods of settled time could pass, or they seemed long anyway, in the fragile stretch of this new and common devotion.’
Sophie Mackintosh is an automatic buy author for me, but that doesn’t mean I approach each new offering with automatic adoration. And yet, how she earns it!
In her forth novel, Mackintosh takes on the thorny matter of an affair, rendering it in startling beauty and violence. No one writes a review of her work without mentioning the prose - lush as it is seductive, but beyond this, there is so much to study. ‘Permanence’ is a novel deserving several re reads to get to it’s juicy core.
Clara and Francis find themselves in the City of Impermanence (a character in it’s own right - fluid and knowing). At first, it offers them a rich tapestry of delights: a space to indulge in their love, unfettered. Then, with each little violence, the cracks start to appear, and paradise turns nasty, dirty, vengeful.
I love the role the central fictional artwork plays in the narrative. It’s themes of the fragility of human connection, of the beauty and ugliness found in the ephemerality of the human condition, all of it, expertly rendered.
As always, I finished reading this with the itch to write, as I owe the very first attempts at novel writing to Sophie’s debut novel too ♡
This is so helpful, Katie, thank you! As a fellow introvert, and a chronically ill one at that, it's encouraging to know how much you've been able to do at home. Will also take a look at Sara van Os! x