Doesn’t Have That Marketing “it” Factor
Never let anyone or anything define your value or limit your dream.
~ Judy Sheindlin
Aging in Place
It May Lack an “it” but it Does Have a “Why”
I’d like to get real for a moment. I’m an artist first, Nurse and Gerontologist second (someone who studies aging), and not a marketer, salesperson, or savvy technological strategist for that matter. I have written a book, my first, for and about you. The title is Women, Aging & Myths: 10 Steps to Loving Your Long Life.
It took me many years of working with older adults, professional nursing, informal caregiving, and formal study to be able to put together a book worth your investment in the two most valuable assets, time and money–I so want to acknowledge and honor that.
The book is just an extension of my long 35-plus years in a female-dominated caring profession, I have always dedicated myself to coming from a place of contribution. I designed and created it to help you live your best life.
The women who have read it, have been influenced just as I’d hoped they would be–inspired, informed, and looking forward to the future. Bless them for taking the initiative to read and share it with other females in their lives. The challenge is, their numbers are small. So how to spread the word? I made all the rookie mistakes, I don’t have a big marketing budget, or a large social media following, or a rich benefactor…Just me and a desire to do good.
So I searched “book marketing” and was soon drinking from a firehose!!! I wasted hours, money, and peace of mind trying to find help marketing my book. Finally, I decided YouTube would be the place to get help. Well, that also lead down some rabbit holes. So, I bit the preverbal bullet and decided to contact a top YouTuber in the book marketing business. She contacted me after she read aspects of my book–then followed up with feedback.
Her points were essentially these:
- A heavy lift for a man to be writing about women and aging (esp. now).
- Too academic in parts.
- “It’s not that it’s bad, but it doesn’t have that marketing ‘it’ factor that we know will help it stand out.”
- “You have some wonderful ideas and really brilliant concepts for aging women, and we just want to make them pop off from the page!”
She knows more about marketing books than I do, I trust her expert opinion and can’t argue with any of her points. It’s been said that people would rather be entertained than informed–I can’t disagree and have seen evidence for it time and time again. However, I respect my potential women readers, and making it “less academic” (aka dumbing down), intuitively doesn’t feel right to me.For certain, Women, Aging & Myths: 10 Steps to Loving Your Long Life, isn’t for everyone, and the marketing expert may be right–adding a 4-letter expletive in the title, or candy-colored covers with inspirational sayings, might be the way to the best-seller list. But at the end of the day, I know I’ve added lasting value to the lives of my readers, whatever the number may be. And to me, that is my “why.”
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The Book is Available Now
Last thought: Writing this book has been like my nursing career, I will never regret it and in the end, I will never have a crisis of meaning–it was baked in…