I've been very fortunate to have found a wonderful publisher to reissue my first epic fantasy series,
The Best Job in the World
Last year I was hired by Musa Publishing to work as a Book Promotions Specialist focused primarily on expanding the reach of our speculative fiction. I had done social media marketing for a variety of small businesses, but I always daydreamed about working with books.
I've known I wanted to be an author since I was eight years old, and working in the publishing industry seemed like a natural extension of that. So I jumped at the opportunity and started working with some great authors right away.
Five months later I'm pretty confident that was the best decision I've ever made. Here are some of the reasons why:
The people I work with are fantastic. Everyone I work with is passionate about the same thing I am: books. Some like different genres and authors than I do, but they still love books. This means we have plenty to talk about and that nerdy references can often be expected during our conversations.
Quite a few of the people I work with have also shown interest in my own writing and their support and encouragement has helped me make leaps and bounds towards achieving "published author" status myself.
I feel a deep sense of pride when one of my authors gets a good review. I know the books I work with are fantastic—I've never read a Musa book I didn't like, and I've been reading them since the company opened its doors—but it's even better when I see somebody we don't work with talking about how much they enjoyed one of our novels.
Getting reviews on big book blogs can be difficult, but every time I've managed to get a spot on a big blog, the blogger happened to love the book. Seeing a 4 or 5 star rating tells me all my hard work paid off—and that I'm not just supporting great people, I'm supporting great books.
We all learn from each other. Everybody I work with has a different skill set. Some of my authors have only published their first novel in the last month—and others have their first release date coming up soon. Some of the Promotions Specialists I work with have been working in the publishing industry for years. I've been studying social media marketing actively for the last five years and got my first social media job in 2012.
I've been in a pretty constant state of learning since Musa hired me, and it's incredible. I know so much more about book marketing than I did five months ago, and a huge part of what I do is simply pass that information along to authors as I learn it.
Musa is constantly growing. Individual book sales might show only increase slightly from month to month, but Musa is growing all the time. We are actively looking for new staff and new authors, and book sales are steadily increasing.
Being part of a company that's in a constant state of growth and change means two things: I can clearly see my influence on the company's growth, and there's endless opportunity for me to advance my career. There's room for me to grow with Musa, to build a solid career with a company I've truly come to love.
Book promotion isn't easy, but most of the time it's incredible fun. The week before a release might be insane and sometimes you really feel like you're shouting into the wind, but it's all worth it. I wouldn't trade my job for anything in the world.
Dianna Gunn is a freelance writer and Book Promotions Specialist who's working hard to add published author to that list of titles. She also happens to love cats, photography and Scotland.
You can find her at The Dabbler or on The Darkside Codex blog every Tuesday. Tuesday.
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