Why Marketing Feels So Hard and How to Make It Feel Human Again

For many indie creators — writers, artists, small publishers — marketing isn’t just difficult. It feels wrong.

Not because we don’t understand the mechanics. But because the language of marketing often clashes with the reasons we create in the first place.

We write to explore, to remember, to make sense of things.
Marketing asks us to perform, to optimize, to repeat ourselves loudly.
No wonder it feels heavy.

The Quiet Resistance to “Selling Yourself”

Marketing is supposed to be about visibility. But for many creatives, visibility feels uncomfortably close to exposure.

There’s a fear underneath the resistance:
What if I talk about my work and it sounds arrogant?
What if I simplify something that took years to make?
What if the work is dismissed before it’s truly seen?

So we delay.
We post half-heartedly.
We disappear for weeks, then feel guilty for not being “consistent.”

This isn’t laziness. It’s a mismatch of values.

When Marketing Becomes a Mask

Most marketing advice pushes toward polish and certainty:

- Speak confidently.
- Position yourself clearly.
- Repeat the same message again and again

But creative work is rarely neat. It’s exploratory, uncertain, full of edges.

When marketing asks us to sound finished while we still feel in progress, it creates friction. The result? Marketing starts to feel like wearing a mask that doesn’t quite fit.

Reframing Marketing as Conversation

What if marketing didn’t mean convincing?
What if it simply meant inviting?

At its most human, marketing is not persuasion. It’s context.
It’s saying:

Here’s what I’m working through.
Here’s what this piece came from.
Here’s why this story mattered to me.

When framed this way, marketing becomes closer to storytelling, not separate from it.

Sharing Process, Not Just Outcomes

Readers don’t connect only with finished books. They connect with the questions behind them.

Instead of:
“Buy my book.”

Try:
“This story came from a fear I didn’t know how to name.”
“I rewrote this chapter twelve times before it finally felt honest.”
“This book exists because I couldn’t stop thinking about this one moment.”

Process builds trust. Perfection creates distance.

Letting Smallness Be Enough

Another reason marketing feels hard? We’re taught to think in terms of scale.

More followers.
More reach.
More conversions.

But meaningful work doesn’t need mass attention to matter.
A small, engaged circle — people who read closely, respond thoughtfully, return — is not a failure of marketing. It’s often a sign of alignment.
Human marketing values resonance over reach.

Making Marketing Feel Human Again

Marketing starts to feel lighter when:

You speak the way you’d speak to one attentive reader.
You allow uncertainty instead of pretending mastery.
You share fragments, not slogans.
You show up regularly, but imperfectly.

It doesn’t have to be loud. It doesn’t have to be constant. It doesn’t have to feel like a performance. It only needs to feel true.

A Different Measure of Success

Instead of asking:
Did this post perform well?

Try asking:
Did this sound like me?
Did it create recognition rather than pressure?
Did it invite someone in, rather than shout at them?

When marketing aligns with your values, it stops draining you. It starts sustaining you.
And slowly, quietly, it becomes what it was meant to be all along: A bridge between the work you make and the people it’s meant for.