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Can you learn to love doing promotions?

Feb 15, 2026

It isn’t just indie authors who have to do it all for themselves these days - most traditional publishers expect authors to do their own promotions too. But what if you’re a writer who hates the idea of having to promote yourself and your books?

When I started writing, over thirty years ago, even the thought of going to London to meet agents and publishers felt daunting. The first time I was invited to meet an agent, I walked into her office and burst into tears.

Amazingly, she signed me, and a few weeks later Michael Morpurgo sent me a card saying he was also on Gina Pollinger’s list and how lovely, we could travel up from the Westcountry for meetings and socials together.

To my lasting shame and regret, I never replied; I was overwhelmed. It had not occurred to me that if I was published, I might be required to go to meetings and socials. All I wanted to do was sit in my Plotting Shed and write.

For a couple of years, I retreated into the blessed anonymity of writing for educational publishers, only coming back into the mainstream because I wanted some new and different writing challenges.

I messed up promotional opportunities set up by my new publishers because I was shy and private and felt out of my depth with big-shot journalists and major festivals and for a long time, I stopped even trying.

But when I went indie with books that publishers deemed ‘too niche to achieve bulk sales,’ I didn’t have any choice, and finding my own way actually proved much easier, because I could take it in my own time and do it in my own way.

I used the step-by-step approach to confidence-building that Susan Jeffers describes in her book, ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’- it’s all in the title.

Fear is a gateway to confidence - this was an epiphany for me in my 40s

If you’re pushed right outside your comfort zone all in one go, you are likely to fail, but starting with things that feel just a little alarming and building up to bigger ones means your comfort zone gradually grows. Feeling nervous is a doorway; feeling terrified, a wall.

I started by setting up talks in libraries and book shops, in front of a dozen people at most, then small local book fairs with a few dozen more, and to my surprise I found I enjoyed it. Conferences, festivals, arts organisations… soon I was up for anything.

Instead of plunging straight into whole classes and even assemblies, like the school visits one of my early publishers organised for me, I dipped the toe first with an after-school writing club for ten kids in my local primary and built up to school visits from there.

Besides going at my own pace, I realised that going it alone meant I could choose the kind of promotional activities that played to my strengths. I’d never been a teacher or performer so although I learnt that I could do talks and school visits that wasn’t where I focused most of my energy.

I love writing, so pitching articles in support of my books was a no-brainer, and I’ve written well over a hundred now for writing magazines, professional journals and local glossies.

An article publicising *70 Ways to Bully-proof Yourself* in Cornwall Today. My free-range writing column in Writing Magazine came out of a feature I wrote for them when *Free-Range Writing* was first published

This has led directly to sales, with my first three indie published books being Writing Magazine’s offer to new subscribers and two subsequent ones featuring in Christmas promotions.

Another way I promote my work is through this Substack and newsletter, a writing task I look forward to every month.

I love teaching adults, so I pitch workshops rather than just talks when I have a new book coming out. With Free-Range Writing I did a ‘Free-Range Writing Round the UK’ tour, which just meant booking a room in a library or arts centre wherever I happened to be for family visits and holidays and offering a workshop there.

I had a batch of posters printed and filled them in as and when I chose a venue

I’m a sociable person, but for years I didn’t do book launches because I thought they had to be big and splashy to get publicity and sales. Now it seems to me that if you prefer small gatherings like I do, why not have lots of little launches instead?

This one was fun - in a friend’s art gallery. I’ve had launches in my village pub, library, open air theatre, cafe and a local litfest. My latest one was in zoom when I was no fixed abode.

Same with social media. Because publishers wanted to know how many followers I had, I got the idea it was a numbers game until I read somewhere that there was no point in having loads of followers who don’t engage, when a hundred ‘superfans’ can make a bestseller. This was great news for me because small communities that do engage, in the virtual as well as the real world, is exactly what I enjoy.

In common with many new authors, I think my early experiences of being published were bruising to my confidence and self-esteem, and I wish I had understood then that just because I couldn’t do promotion straight in like a pro did not mean I would never be able to do it at all.

Learning to love promoting my work by building up to it bit by bit and focusing on what I enjoy got me out of the Plotting Shed and that wasn’t just good for my books – it was also really good for me, because the strengths you have to develop in service to the work of writing are strengths for the work of living too. I could walk into anyone’s office now, guaranteed tears-free.

If you hate the idea of doing promotions, could you reframe that? Could you see it as an opportunity and, as gently as you like at first, start to push open the door?

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