When I published my first book, I thought the hard part was over.
I was wrong.
Writing a book is difficult, but at least it's a relatively straightforward problem.
Sit down.
Write words.
Repeat for several months while questioning your life choices.
Marketing, however, is an entirely different beast.
Suddenly you're expected to become a content creator, social media manager, graphic designer, data analyst, and salesperson.
I did what I suspect most authors do.
I started trying to market harder.
I posted more often.
I joined Facebook groups.
I shared Amazon links.
I created images.
I announced sales.
I wrote updates.
I started thinking:
I just need to do more.
But after a while, I realised something.
I wasn't lacking marketing.
I was lacking information.
I had no idea what was working
I'd make a Facebook post announcing a Kindle sale.
People would react to it.
There'd be comments.
Maybe a few shares.
That felt good.
For approximately three minutes.
Then I'd immediately hit a wall.
Did anybody buy the book?
Did anybody even click the link?
Were they from the UK?
The US?
Did they arrive and then leave because I accidentally shared an Amazon UK link?
I had absolutely no idea.
I wasn't measuring anything.
I was simply throwing links into the void and hoping they eventually landed somewhere useful.
The internet trains us to chase the wrong metrics
Social media platforms are very good at showing us numbers.
Likes.
Comments.
Shares.
Impressions.
Reach.
The problem is that most of those numbers aren't particularly useful to an author.
Because none of them answer the question we actually care about.
Did somebody become interested enough to try and buy my book?
That's a completely different metric.
And strangely, it's often one of the hardest ones to answer.
I realised I was treating all marketing the same
I was also doing something else wrong.
Every single marketing effort used the exact same Amazon link.
Newsletter?
Same link.
Facebook?
Same link.
Website?
Same link.
If I put a QR code on a bookmark tomorrow, it'd be the same link again.
Which means every marketing channel effectively merged together into one giant bucket.
Even if something worked, I had no way of knowing what it was.
It would be like opening a shop, allowing customers in through five different doors, and then never bothering to find out which door anybody used.
Humans are surprisingly willing to accept this level of chaos when books are involved.
Then I discovered another problem
I live in the UK.
Naturally, I'd copy Amazon UK links.
But readers aren't necessarily in the UK.
A reader in the US could click my link and suddenly their journey became more awkward than it needed to be.
Every extra step matters.
Every additional bit of friction is another opportunity for someone to simply decide not to bother.
As authors, we're already asking readers to invest their time and money into something we've created.
We shouldn't accidentally make that process harder.
Eventually I realised I didn't need more marketing
I needed better feedback.
Marketing isn't really about broadcasting messages.
It's about running experiments.
You try something.
You observe the result.
Then you adjust.
The problem was that I couldn't observe anything.
I was effectively marketing blind.
And once I realised that, the solution became obvious.
I needed to build something that gave me the missing information.
That's why I built Tutarium
I built Tutarium to solve the problems I was encountering myself.
Not because I wanted another generic URL shortener.
Because I wanted answers.
I wanted to know:
- Which marketing efforts generated clicks
- Which countries readers were coming from
- Which campaigns were performing best
- How to create one durable link for a book
- How to stop repeatedly copying retailer URLs around the internet
Today, Tutarium gives authors book landing pages, campaign links, regional Amazon routing, and analytics designed specifically around books rather than generic links. It's built around books, editions, reader-facing pages, campaign attribution, and tracked outbound store clicks rather than simply shortening URLs.
But honestly, the tool itself isn't really the point.
The lesson was bigger than that.
Sometimes the answer isn't more effort
When something isn't working, our instinct is usually to increase output.
More posts.
More groups.
More platforms.
More content.
More work.
Sometimes that's correct.
But sometimes you're simply missing information.
You can't optimise what you can't see.
The biggest shift for me wasn't becoming a better marketer.
It was realising that I needed to become a better observer.
Because once you understand what's actually working, marketing suddenly becomes much less overwhelming.
And much more interesting.
If you're an author and you're sharing the same retailer link everywhere, there's a good chance you're solving the wrong problem too.
I certainly was.