I had a weird case of overwhelmed paralysis yesterday, where there were about three things of equal importance vying for attention in my brain, which meant I had a hard time making any progress on any of them. It was like the work equivalent of when you start to head to one room to get or do something, but then you think of something else you need to do in another room and you find yourself standing still as you try to go both places at once, putting your weight on one foot to head one direction, then shifting your weight to the other foot to head the other direction. Eventually, you have to pick a direction and go. But when that’s happening when you’re writing, even when you pick one, the other ones pop up in your head to distract you while you’re working on that thing.

Yesterday, I had three books shouting for attention, plus there’s that vacation planning thing that got complicated by figuring out how to actually redeem that voucher. Meanwhile, I started thinking about what I need to do about marketing because my book sales are down a bit.

There’s a marketing workshop on Sunday that I was pondering, but I suspect I know what they’d tell me to do, and the problem is that I won’t want to do any of it, and I’m not entirely convinced that it would work. They’re going to tell us to have a mailing list and do social media, maybe get a “street team” and possibly Facebook ads.

I’m not sure that addresses my particular issue, which is that the people who know about me love my books and buy them, but I’m almost entirely unknown outside that small group. Almost any bit of marketing I can do is preaching to the choir, reaching people who’ve already bought everything. A mailing list might be nice for reminding people when I have something new out, but it’s not going to bring in new readers. I’m not even sure how effective it would be when everyone and their dog has a mailing list. You can’t visit a web site these days without getting one of those “sign up for my mailing list” pop-ups. I suspect most people run screaming at the thought of another mailing list.

I haven’t managed to get 600 Twitter followers in three years. Facebook doesn’t even spread your posts to the people who’ve actively asked to see them. And, again, preaching to the choir.

I need to figure out some ways to get beyond my loyal fans and make new loyal fans, or at least get new people to give my books a shot. That’s tricky when everything right now qualifies as backlist, with nothing new in a while. Yeah, that shouldn’t matter for new people, but it’s hard to get any kind of attention for a 13-year-old book. I guess I need to come up with a brilliantly viral tweet, or something.

For once, I have a Saturday and Sunday without plans (unless I do that workshop), so I may devote some time to thinking about this and coming up with a specific plan. Until then, it may keep begging for attention, along with all the other things. I need brain blinders.