Promotion and marketing are ongoing tasks for writers. What’s the difference between them? I’m not a marketing major, but I’ve been doing my own marketing and promotion for years. I have my own way of defining them.

I promote my books. I market my author name/brand to build my platform.

For me, marketing is the overall strategy of building my platform. Promotion, on the other hand, is the overall strategy of selling a particular book.

There isn’t anything technically accurate about this definition. It’s just the way I separate the two in my mind.

There are things I do on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis that I call maintenance marketing for writers.

The goal of these tasks is to provide content to my platform on a regular basis as well as attract new readers to find and follow me. Then, when I’m promoting a new book, the additional book-centric content is a natural continuation of what I’m already doing.