Wow! This will be the second week in a row that Writer’s Digest Magazine has recognized this blog for excellence. I am truly and deeply terrified…honored. I meant honored. Yes, honored. So thank you Jane Friedman for working your tail off to give writers the tools they need to succeed. And thank you, thank you, a million thanks for considering this blog to be one of those tools.
Deep breath. Ok.
Originally I was going to blog this week about Facebook—profile pages versus fan pages. But apparently Jane Friedman has better writer spies than I do, and she beat me to it (link to her blog at the end). I’ll do that another week. So what are we going to talk about?
MySpace.
Bet you didn’t expect that one. Maybe the title gave you a teensy hint. MySpace. Ha ha! It actually isn’t dead. In fact over 60 million active users as of March 2010 say MySpace is alive and well despite some setbacks. Will it fade away eventually? Probably. But Twitter and Facebook likely will as well.
Blasphemy, Kristen!
Yes, I am sorry to tell you that Twitter is not timeless. It has a shelf life. Hopefully, for us addicts, it will be a very long shelf life, but we do tend to forget our loyalty when lured by the new shiny thing. That is why a lot of what I teach has less to do with technology and more to do with application. Technology will eventually face obsolescence, but application is timeless. Branding your name (last week’s blog) was smart back when everything was done by snail mail and it was smart when Friendster was big and it is smart now with Facebook.
Back to MySpace. Until it blows up or is taken off-line for good, it is going to be a super-powerful tool to help you succeed. I hear too many authors say, "MySpace is so yesterday. I'm on Facebook." Well, okay, but you are shelving a very powerful tool for promotion, and we aren't on there for fun, we are there to build a brand.
Every writer should have a MySpace page, especially a new writer. GASP! Yes you read correctly. I do believe I am unique in teaching this technique that I am about to pass on to you. And there is more about this topic in my upcoming book, We Are Not Alone—Writers and Social Media Marketing.
Kristen! Why on earth do you want us to mess with MySpace? We can barely keep up with FB and Twitter for goodness sakes!
Well, first of all, my book teaches a method that will help you dominate the domains and command all the digital real estate you can. It takes a lot of work at first, but if done correctly, it will take minimal time to maintain. I recommend a presence on all three major platforms—MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. To what degree you participate in any of them is up to you. But that is a discussion for another time.
MySpace is one of your greatest assets, and more writers should take advantage. Why?
How many of you already have a customized, fancy, interactive website? If not, then…
How many of you have $10,000 to go drop on a customized, fancy, interactive website?
How many of you have $1000 or $500 for a regular, not-so-impressive web site?
How many of you, especially new writers, barely have money to eat, let alone THINK of building a web site?
How many of you want to pay some web guy every time you want to put up something new or change something?
I highly, highly, highly recommend MySpace pages as a web site. Why?
They are free.
They are easy to build. If you can right click, cut and paste, then you can build a killer MySpace page. MySpace is the friend of the technology-challenged writer who doesn’t have the cash to pay someone to build a fancy web site.
MySpace pages are free, quick, and easy to modify (upload new pictures, blogs, links, etc). In fact, you can change the look of the entire page in 20 seconds.
It is easy to post blogs.
It is easy to link to your Twitter (embedded widget)
Regularly updated MySpace pages score very highly with search engines. In English that means your name (brand) will rank higher on a Google search much quicker than you will with a static site.
MySpace makes it easy to separate your personal life from your professional (without the awkwardness of multiple FB identities).
Can be easily synced to Twitter. Update Twitter, and it will auto-update MySpace.
Is a great transition to a Facebook fan page. Face it. If you are an unpublished writer who isn’t even sure of what genre you want to write, you DO NOT need a fan page (yet).
Unlike a static web page, MySpace pages are already integrated into an existing network thus making it easier to gain a following. There are some die-hard MySpacers who could be potential readers. Why alienate them? This is why I assert that ALL authors can benefit from having a MySpace page.
I taught this technique on Saturday to a group of Rotarians. Rotary is 105 years old. Like many service organizations, they must get plugged in and become relevant or face declining numbers. I built a MySpace page for my club and we use it for recruiting. It looks cool, has embedded music and video and best of all…it was FREE!!!!! And it took all of two hours to do and takes only minutes to maintain.
Now when I meet someone and they say, “What is Rotary?” I can send them to our MySpace and feel confident that it portrays the best about who we are and what we do.
Our club didn’t have to hope that some Rotarian in our club was a computer geek who would build a site for free (or at least give us a price break). We didn’t need to raise funds to hire a web master to build a nice looking web site. We didn’t have to allocate funds for web hosting.
MySpace allows us to get all the benefits of a webpage without the hassle and expense of a web page.
http://www.myspace.com/swfwrotary
If you aren’t already on MySpace, I recommend getting a MySpace page (using the name you wish to brand). It will save you time and money better spent focusing on improving you and your writing skills. When you get business cards, print the MySpace domain on your card just like a web site (or along with your existing web site). Put your MySpace domain in your information section of your bios on Facebook and Twitter just like you would a regular web site.
You don’t have to do your socializing on MySpace if you don’t want to. MySpace might be annoyed at me for saying that, but it is their job to make interaction more fun and exciting than Facebook, not ours. They benefit off us being users who post regular content. Thus, they still profit when we use them for a free web site (we are sending traffic their way).
My MySpace page, I think, looks great, and it has had well over 30,000 hits (even though I was once dumb and went under texaswriterchik). My MySpace page has the links to my blog, my static site and even a nifty button to help visitors follow me on Twitter. Sounds a lot like a web page, right? Only this didn’t cost me anything but time.
And I know all the Facebook loyalists are groaning, but human nature is to be impressed with the shiny thing, and cool backgrounds trump uncool backgrounds any day of the week. If you love Facebook, feel free to invite visitors to socialize with you on your Facebook site. It isn’t social media infidelity if you do. MySpace will get over it. I am sure they would rather have you on their platform some of the time instead of none of the time.
I recommend MySpace or Yours for awesome free backgrounds. For those on Twitter, they also offer some amazing free Twitter backgrounds (even to match your MySpace background if you like). Freesourcecode.com is also a great place for amazing free backgrounds (particularly for fantasy writers). This site also has ways of helping you create a customized background with you photo or logo. You will have to mess with some pop ups, but I have always used both of these sites, and, in the past four years, have had no problems.
I recommend saving the code in individual Word documents and labeling what they are…Killer Dragon MySpace Background, Awesome Fairy Background, etc. This will make it easier to change backgrounds regularly and you won’t have to start over looking for a good background. You will be able to change the entire look of your page in the time it takes to highlight, delete, copy, paste, and save. DONE!
Some tips…
If you load music, make it appropriate and even neutral. We are there to build a brand, not upload every song we’ve liked since high school. We might love Hip-Hop or Norwegian Death Metal, but others might not.
Limit adding flash. Photo slide shows are pretty, but they will slow down the loading time of your MySpace page and frustrate visitors.
Keep it simple. Think of this like your web site. Bio, contact info (on all other social media sites) and your blog (feel free to use it to send people to your Wordpress or Blogger). That’s all. Photo albums are extra. Games and Mafia Wars are for regular people, not professionals.
Update regularly. Make an effort to log in and at least send out a status update at least once a day. Just comment on someone's page or add a friend or two. Just have activity. It takes 5 minutes and will help you score higher with search engines.
Make your page open to the public like a web site (cuz, well, it is like your web site). Make it easy for us to visit. Solving CAPTCHAs and making us cough up your personal e-mail, your real last name and the name of your first pet is annoying. We are lazy. We will go elsewhere and find friends who are not so high-maintenance.
Most of all HAVE FUN! MySpace is a great way to express your creative side and all that money you would have spend building a fancy website can now pay for you to attend a conference to make you a better writer.
Happy writing!
Until next time…
******************************************************
Invest in your career.
I recommend you stop by Jane Friedman’s blog “There Are No Rules.” Check out all the other links that Editor Jane listed for their quality information. She works hard to gather the best of the best to make us the best, so take full advantage
http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules/
I also recommend Bob Mayer’s Warrior Writer Workshop. This blog would have never happened had it not been for Bob and his Warrior Writer training. Bob works extremely hard to help writers be successful. Sign up for a WW Workshop near you or join his on-line Warrior Writer Workshop at www.bobmayer.org.
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Monday, May 31, 2010
Is it a Good Idea to Post Chapters of Your Novel On-Line to Build a Fan Base?
As many of you might already know, I teach Social Media for Writers and I am also finishing a book designed to teach writers how to use social media to market and build a platform. I am all about helping writers get content up on the web and teaching you how to use that content to gather a following of readers. The largest component to building a Web presence is that you must post regular content that is informative, entertaining, and ideally, engaging. At this past conference, the question I got more than almost any other was, “Is it a good idea to post my writing on-line?”
My answer was, “Depends on what you’re posting. Most everything yes, in limited quantity. Chapters of a novel? No. No. Definitely…um, no.”
Yesterday, I ran across a blog post from Jane Friedman, a prominent member of the publishing community. “Stop being afraid to post your work on-line!” she claims. Ms. Friedman’s blog was excellent and made some really informative points, but I think there were a number of caveats that should have been included, which we will discuss.
Ms. Freidman cited all kinds of successes, blog-to-book deals and self-published books that landed contracts and success, but not one of them was a novel. She also cited the popularity of cell phone novels in Japan, but here I feel we have three large problems 1) totally different medium (text messaging) 2) likely a different format than a traditional novel and 3) could possibly be a Japanese idiosyncrasy.
I agree with Ms. Friedman that posting your work on-line is helpful for certain kinds of writing and it certainly worked for “Stuff White People Like” and “Julia & Julia”, but what about novels?
Well, fiction does tend to always be the sticky wicket where the rules don’t apply the same way. Ms. Friedman kept using the generic terms work and manuscript, but the successes she cited were all non-fiction, How-To, observational humor, etc . . . but, again, no novels (Japanese text novels being the strange exception).
Ms. Friedman’s blog is fantastic, and has great advice for all kinds of writers. Non-fiction and humor lend themselves to making good blogs and building an Internet following. But, for novels, many of the benefits of posting pieces of your book break down, and I’ll explain why.
Test marketing. Ms. Friedman asserts that posting your work on-line is a great way to test market.
Fair enough. But before you get too excited, there are certain inherent problems with doing any kind of accurate test marketing for fiction.
First and foremost, are you certain that you are getting an accurate statistical sampling when you post chapters of your book on your blog? Most of us cannot accomplish this.
In my experience, the majority of new writers do not have a statistically large following on their blog or even on social media.
Because chapters of a novel are a piece of a larger whole, they are extremely difficult to gain the following and fan base like “Fail Nation—A Visual Romp Through the World of Epic Fails.” In fact, “Stuff White People Like” had a Facebook following in the tens of thousands so it was easy to glean that it was popular and well-received. But chapters from an unknown, unpublished author? Tougher to duplicate these kind of numbers. Way tougher.
Thus, any posted comments about your chapters are a hard way to gain any genuine insight because of this huge problem of numbers (or lack thereof). The smaller the group sampled, the less accurate the Bell Curve. Ten or even twenty people who take time to comment, positively or negatively is in no way an accurate litmus test as to how well your story is being received.
Additionally, the individuals who are most likely to follow or comment on the writer’s work are generally a member of that writer’s peer group—friends, family, fellow writers. Thus, it seems to me that this is the digital equivalent of telling an agent, “All my friends and family just love my book!”
Can you test market fiction by posting on-line? Sure. Anything is possible. But I think it is a lot tougher to do than it seems, and requires a very large and diverse following to get an accurate idea of how good your novel really is. Not to mention that a writer’s work could look perfect and lovely when viewed in small snippets, but the novel as a whole, could be a disaster. I think there are better uses of a new writer’s time and better content to use for platform-building than sections of a novel.
Getting feedback on your work. Ms. Freidman is definitely correct on this point. Feedback makes us better writers. But again, I think this is one of those ideas that are way better in theory than in practice.
Sort of like, in theory I want my husband to tell me if I am gaining weight, but in practice?
The plain truth is that we have feelings and we all care deeply about our writing.
My issue with posting on-line is that it is a tough way to get accurate feedback for a number of reasons. When you get critique in your writing group, you know whose opinion is valuable and whose isn’t. When an agent critiques your work, you know that is a valid critique whether you agree with it or not. But when you open yourself up to the worldwide web, who knows if that person commenting knows a protagonist from a potato?
Additionally (this ties in to my earlier point), if you have a network comprised of mainly friends, colleagues and family (which most people do), do you really believe they are going to be brutally honest and comment publicly that your writing was awful? They won’t, because they aren’t jerks. They are your friends and do not want to hurt your feelings.
It is one thing to ask for our brutal feedback in person, discussed over a table in a local library during critique group. It is a whole other ball of wax entirely when you want us to post that same feedback on the Internet publicly and in writing. Most of us just aren’t going to do that to another writer, even when it comes to mild critique. If the writing isn’t that great, most of us just won’t say anything. And is that helpful to the writer for the purposes of feedback? Probably not.
But what about those who don’t care about your feelings, who aren’t personally vested in you?
Before you post anything, ask yourself one important question. Can I take someone eviscerating my work in a very public forum? Anonymity does weird things to people. Most of the time readers will be nice and kind and helpful, but sometimes they can be just plain horrible. If they tear apart a blog, that is one thing. That’s 500-1000 words. But with your novel? All it takes are a couple of negative remarks to crater your self-confidence and send even the best of us scurrying back to our laptops to rewrite our entire plot (and there might not be anything wrong).
I remember a couple years ago I posted a humorous piece for public critique on my MySpace blog. I must have had 20 people who told me is was awesome and hysterical. But I had one huge jerk who posted a really hurtful mean comment, and I am still not over it to this day. I never felt the same joy about that article, and all it took was one person’s nastiness to crush it. Was my response logical? No. But it was common. Humans are emotional creatures, and when you look up “Emotional Creature” in the encyclopedia, I think it says, “See Writers.”
Even published authors have a tough time when someone posts a nasty comment about their work in a public forum. But there is a difference. They have a published book, professional validation, and sales figures to ease their pain. The rest of us can just end up feeling like we are trapped in Hell's Dunking Booth.
My professional opinion is that for all other kinds of writing, go read Jane Friedman’s blog. The link is posted at the end. But for those who desire to be successful, published novelists, chapters of your novel are not the best choice for content on your blog or your web page. I recommend my blog from two weeks ago, “Where are All the Readers?—Social Media & the Writer’s Revolution” for some ideas of what makes good content (instead of chapters of your novel).
Happy writing! Until next time…
Jane Friedman’s blog
http://writerunboxed.com/
(specifically) http://writerunboxed.com/2010/04/23/stop-being-afraid-of-posting-your-work-online/
To learn how more about the publishing business, I highly, highly recommend Bob Mayer's Warrior Writer book and workshops (now on-line, so no excuses). Sign up today at www.bobmayer.org.
My answer was, “Depends on what you’re posting. Most everything yes, in limited quantity. Chapters of a novel? No. No. Definitely…um, no.”
Yesterday, I ran across a blog post from Jane Friedman, a prominent member of the publishing community. “Stop being afraid to post your work on-line!” she claims. Ms. Friedman’s blog was excellent and made some really informative points, but I think there were a number of caveats that should have been included, which we will discuss.
Ms. Freidman cited all kinds of successes, blog-to-book deals and self-published books that landed contracts and success, but not one of them was a novel. She also cited the popularity of cell phone novels in Japan, but here I feel we have three large problems 1) totally different medium (text messaging) 2) likely a different format than a traditional novel and 3) could possibly be a Japanese idiosyncrasy.
I agree with Ms. Friedman that posting your work on-line is helpful for certain kinds of writing and it certainly worked for “Stuff White People Like” and “Julia & Julia”, but what about novels?
Well, fiction does tend to always be the sticky wicket where the rules don’t apply the same way. Ms. Friedman kept using the generic terms work and manuscript, but the successes she cited were all non-fiction, How-To, observational humor, etc . . . but, again, no novels (Japanese text novels being the strange exception).
Ms. Friedman’s blog is fantastic, and has great advice for all kinds of writers. Non-fiction and humor lend themselves to making good blogs and building an Internet following. But, for novels, many of the benefits of posting pieces of your book break down, and I’ll explain why.
Test marketing. Ms. Friedman asserts that posting your work on-line is a great way to test market.
Fair enough. But before you get too excited, there are certain inherent problems with doing any kind of accurate test marketing for fiction.
First and foremost, are you certain that you are getting an accurate statistical sampling when you post chapters of your book on your blog? Most of us cannot accomplish this.
In my experience, the majority of new writers do not have a statistically large following on their blog or even on social media.
Because chapters of a novel are a piece of a larger whole, they are extremely difficult to gain the following and fan base like “Fail Nation—A Visual Romp Through the World of Epic Fails.” In fact, “Stuff White People Like” had a Facebook following in the tens of thousands so it was easy to glean that it was popular and well-received. But chapters from an unknown, unpublished author? Tougher to duplicate these kind of numbers. Way tougher.
Thus, any posted comments about your chapters are a hard way to gain any genuine insight because of this huge problem of numbers (or lack thereof). The smaller the group sampled, the less accurate the Bell Curve. Ten or even twenty people who take time to comment, positively or negatively is in no way an accurate litmus test as to how well your story is being received.
Additionally, the individuals who are most likely to follow or comment on the writer’s work are generally a member of that writer’s peer group—friends, family, fellow writers. Thus, it seems to me that this is the digital equivalent of telling an agent, “All my friends and family just love my book!”
Can you test market fiction by posting on-line? Sure. Anything is possible. But I think it is a lot tougher to do than it seems, and requires a very large and diverse following to get an accurate idea of how good your novel really is. Not to mention that a writer’s work could look perfect and lovely when viewed in small snippets, but the novel as a whole, could be a disaster. I think there are better uses of a new writer’s time and better content to use for platform-building than sections of a novel.
Getting feedback on your work. Ms. Freidman is definitely correct on this point. Feedback makes us better writers. But again, I think this is one of those ideas that are way better in theory than in practice.
Sort of like, in theory I want my husband to tell me if I am gaining weight, but in practice?
The plain truth is that we have feelings and we all care deeply about our writing.
My issue with posting on-line is that it is a tough way to get accurate feedback for a number of reasons. When you get critique in your writing group, you know whose opinion is valuable and whose isn’t. When an agent critiques your work, you know that is a valid critique whether you agree with it or not. But when you open yourself up to the worldwide web, who knows if that person commenting knows a protagonist from a potato?
Additionally (this ties in to my earlier point), if you have a network comprised of mainly friends, colleagues and family (which most people do), do you really believe they are going to be brutally honest and comment publicly that your writing was awful? They won’t, because they aren’t jerks. They are your friends and do not want to hurt your feelings.
It is one thing to ask for our brutal feedback in person, discussed over a table in a local library during critique group. It is a whole other ball of wax entirely when you want us to post that same feedback on the Internet publicly and in writing. Most of us just aren’t going to do that to another writer, even when it comes to mild critique. If the writing isn’t that great, most of us just won’t say anything. And is that helpful to the writer for the purposes of feedback? Probably not.
But what about those who don’t care about your feelings, who aren’t personally vested in you?
Before you post anything, ask yourself one important question. Can I take someone eviscerating my work in a very public forum? Anonymity does weird things to people. Most of the time readers will be nice and kind and helpful, but sometimes they can be just plain horrible. If they tear apart a blog, that is one thing. That’s 500-1000 words. But with your novel? All it takes are a couple of negative remarks to crater your self-confidence and send even the best of us scurrying back to our laptops to rewrite our entire plot (and there might not be anything wrong).
I remember a couple years ago I posted a humorous piece for public critique on my MySpace blog. I must have had 20 people who told me is was awesome and hysterical. But I had one huge jerk who posted a really hurtful mean comment, and I am still not over it to this day. I never felt the same joy about that article, and all it took was one person’s nastiness to crush it. Was my response logical? No. But it was common. Humans are emotional creatures, and when you look up “Emotional Creature” in the encyclopedia, I think it says, “See Writers.”
Even published authors have a tough time when someone posts a nasty comment about their work in a public forum. But there is a difference. They have a published book, professional validation, and sales figures to ease their pain. The rest of us can just end up feeling like we are trapped in Hell's Dunking Booth.
My professional opinion is that for all other kinds of writing, go read Jane Friedman’s blog. The link is posted at the end. But for those who desire to be successful, published novelists, chapters of your novel are not the best choice for content on your blog or your web page. I recommend my blog from two weeks ago, “Where are All the Readers?—Social Media & the Writer’s Revolution” for some ideas of what makes good content (instead of chapters of your novel).
Happy writing! Until next time…
Jane Friedman’s blog
http://writerunboxed.com/
(specifically) http://writerunboxed.com/2010/04/23/stop-being-afraid-of-posting-your-work-online/
To learn how more about the publishing business, I highly, highly recommend Bob Mayer's Warrior Writer book and workshops (now on-line, so no excuses). Sign up today at www.bobmayer.org.
Where are All the Readers? Blogging to Build a Fan Base
I recently had an experience that made me relate to the poor kid who was dumb enough to point out that the emperor was naked. More on that in a minute.
Now I admit that I do tend to get excited and then I forget to qualify statements and phrase in ways that make it clear that I am not picking on anyone. Because I really am not. I feel like the world’s biggest cheerleader when it comes to helping writers succeed. I love writers. Heck, I AM a writer! I swear I would have pom-poms at my desk if I didn’t think they would be a shiny distraction…..ooh—POM POMS!
Writers say they have a hard time connecting to readers. Okay. Well, let’s back up.
This past weekend I was amazingly blessed to be able to help writers succeed in doing what they love….being creative. Yet, now that everything is gearing toward the Internet and social media is popular, writers are staring down the barrel of having to self-promote.
Ack!
We hate sales. We ran away from Corporate America so we never had to use that dirty word…and now it is staring us right in the eye. And if we don't get good at it we will never be able to quit our day job.
The problem as I see it is that writers seem to lose all creativity and common sense when it comes to marketing, sales and platform building.
This past weekend I taught three social media classes at a big conference. Writers get told they need to be on social media, so they join FB and twitter and then they do what? Hang out with writers. They get told they need to blog, so what do they blog about?
WRITING
One gal in my class, I asked, "What do you write?"
"Paranormal romance."
"Do you blog?"
"Yes. About my experience as a writer."
My question to her was, "If you write about the paranormal and you want to sell books to people who are fascinated with the paranormal, then why aren't you blogging about the paranormal? About cold spots and ghosts and things that go bump in the night?"
Not that blogging about writing is bad. It is great. It is emotionally cathartic and can help us improve in our craft and expand our network in our industry…but it isn’t the place to find readers.
My suggestion? If you write paranormal it must interest you enough to write a book about it. Join groups of people who watch "Ghost Hunters" and like scary movies. Profile the reader. What demographic are you selling? Be creative.
So you run a search on Twitter for "reader.” You and every uncreative author trying to hawk a book. Profile your reader with the intention of making a connection, not selling a book. I guarantee the people in those groups are likely to be people a lot like us, people we would like to hang out with.
Jodi Thomas is a best-selling romance author whom I had the honor of helping with Tweet Deck this past weekend. I can attest that Jodi loves her fellow women and cares about their marriages and children and grandchildren. She cares about quilting and holding onto a lineage and being inspired by frilly cards with inspirational quotes. Will it diminish her in any way to congregate with #quilting on Twitter? She likes quilting and uses it in her books. She likes those kinds of people and I would even bet that those women would like her, even the ones who don’t know her....yet.
If you sell romance, what is your demographic? 31-49 year old women in a relationship (per RWA’s site). What do 31-49 year old women do with their day when they aren't reading your romance novel?
They love Oprah, and Ellen and soap operas and knitting and scrap booking and gardening and parenting and American Idol and Dancing with the Stars. They diet and deal with stress and take care of elderly parents. This “other life” is part of what makes them long to read. They desire to escape, to be reminded that heroes triumph and love conquers all. Congregate with them. Care. Interact.
How many other authors are doing that? Yet how many authors only (key word ONLY) blog about themselves, their books, their upcoming books, their ideas...you get the picture.
If you write fantasy and sci-fi, what do your fans do? Well, being a professional nerd for many years, I feel I can speak for my people.
We go to Trekkie conventions and argue about whether or not it is possible to go faster than the speed of light (actual argument I had on the way to a Trekkie convention---swear to God). We play X Box, World of Warcraft, PS3 and Dungeons and Dragons. We love comics, cult movies, and X-Men and Star Wars and quote Monty Python.
So if you desire to connect with your readers, go to their favorite watering holes.
“Fantasy reader” is not creative, and I guarantee the group will be mostly authors. If you are on social media, join “World of Warcraft Moon Elves Unite” or start a group like that. Be truly creative. Engage the demographic that likes to read fantasy. I promise you might even have fun.
If you’re selling books on UFOs and origin theory, your fans love "Mystery Quest” and “The Nostradamus Effect.” Run searches for Atlantis, Nasca lines, Easter Island, Big Foot, Nessie, Prophesy, Apocalypse, Devil’s Bible. Join those groups on Myspace, FB, Twitter. Get plugged into groups who like to argue about what season of X Files was best. Who is hotter, Scully or Xena? What is better, Star Trek or Star Wars? Who was better? Kirk or Picard? Who was right? The North or the South? What is the best romance movie of all time? Top Gun or Casa Blanca?
When we start thinking like a fan and not a writer...THEN we will find our readers. Get creative. The more creative the better. Think about what all other writers are out there doing…then do it differently.
Think about the reader. We tend to forget that we (fiction authors) are in the service industry. We provide a wonderful escape from day-to-day life. We remind people that life is still magical and worth living.
Blog about what readers find interesting (other than you and your book). I guarantee you my mother, who loves to read and buys more books than she can read, really does not care about finding an agent.
Care about others. It will set you apart from all the other authors who can only think of selling books. It will connect you to your readership. It will push you out of your comfort zone. It will bond you to people who might know more about your subject than you do. You can learn and be enriched. What can your fans offer you? I guarantee you will be pleasantly surprised.
All I am asking is that we be mindful to think of others. Have a servant’s heart.
All of us need to remember to pan the camera back and think of what we post from the reader's perspective. Forget us. Forget our writer buddies. What would our readers like to spend their precious time reading about? The publishing industry? Plotting? Character development? Sure. Readers who also want to be writers…but what percentage is that?
Do readers want to learn about e-books and how the electronic medium is changing the industry?
Or would they rather read about the subjects that make them passionate enough to part with their hard-earned cash and their limited time? Would they rather read about love or triumph or who really built the pyramids? Wouldn’t they like an opportunity to contribute too? When was the last time a big author asked a fan to write their blog?
I guarantee you there are fans out there who know more about the author’s books than the author. Fans who have thought on a totally different level about our work. Fans who would DIE at a chance to post their insight and opinion about a book or character.
Yet when was the last time an author asked a fan to write their blog? That they gave them that honor? Heck, ask the ones who post positive stuff on your existing blog and who can string an interesting sentence together. This isn’t as hard as we make it. Honest.
Writers often panic when it comes to social media. And what they do is they congregate and they befriend zillions of people and they lose sight of the most important thing....the relationship with the reader.
If you write fantasy, I guarantee you that you will like the people in those groups I suggested you search.
If you love history enough to write a 100,000 words about it, I’d wager you will enjoy being stimulated and challenged by people in the #jackson or the #gettysburgh or #alamo column. You will have to be careful not to lose entire days in those groups on FB and MySpace and other social media sites. It is a self-discipline thing like anything else.
But say you lose hours chatting and having fun. Isn’t that better spent in a group of people who like your topic rather than in a group talking about writing? Aren’t you then taking time to relate to and network with and forge relationships with people who love the topic you write about?
I just want to impress the importance of relationship when it comes to social media. It is important to be in relationship with other writers. They make us angry, call us on our drama, cheer us when we triumph and are there when we cry.
But we need to permit readers into our lives as well. If all our actions tell readers to “Keep Out”--that this is a “Writers Only” group, then we can't be shocked when we fail to connect.
Make the reader feel like you care. I know you all do. Writers are among the most amazing, generous, kind people I am blessed enough to know.
I am not here to embarass or villify anyone. I am here to make you better and to point out that too many of us are running around naked and clueless why people have a hard time making eye contact.
If you can connect, if you can network and forge relationships beyond your comfort zone, then you will finally be able to appreciate what social media is all about...not how many friends you can collect or how many people you can blitz with the title of your book or your latest blog using the latest gimmick or app. Social media isn’t about technology.
It is about people.
Now I admit that I do tend to get excited and then I forget to qualify statements and phrase in ways that make it clear that I am not picking on anyone. Because I really am not. I feel like the world’s biggest cheerleader when it comes to helping writers succeed. I love writers. Heck, I AM a writer! I swear I would have pom-poms at my desk if I didn’t think they would be a shiny distraction…..ooh—POM POMS!
Writers say they have a hard time connecting to readers. Okay. Well, let’s back up.
This past weekend I was amazingly blessed to be able to help writers succeed in doing what they love….being creative. Yet, now that everything is gearing toward the Internet and social media is popular, writers are staring down the barrel of having to self-promote.
Ack!
We hate sales. We ran away from Corporate America so we never had to use that dirty word…and now it is staring us right in the eye. And if we don't get good at it we will never be able to quit our day job.
The problem as I see it is that writers seem to lose all creativity and common sense when it comes to marketing, sales and platform building.
This past weekend I taught three social media classes at a big conference. Writers get told they need to be on social media, so they join FB and twitter and then they do what? Hang out with writers. They get told they need to blog, so what do they blog about?
WRITING
One gal in my class, I asked, "What do you write?"
"Paranormal romance."
"Do you blog?"
"Yes. About my experience as a writer."
My question to her was, "If you write about the paranormal and you want to sell books to people who are fascinated with the paranormal, then why aren't you blogging about the paranormal? About cold spots and ghosts and things that go bump in the night?"
Not that blogging about writing is bad. It is great. It is emotionally cathartic and can help us improve in our craft and expand our network in our industry…but it isn’t the place to find readers.
My suggestion? If you write paranormal it must interest you enough to write a book about it. Join groups of people who watch "Ghost Hunters" and like scary movies. Profile the reader. What demographic are you selling? Be creative.
So you run a search on Twitter for "reader.” You and every uncreative author trying to hawk a book. Profile your reader with the intention of making a connection, not selling a book. I guarantee the people in those groups are likely to be people a lot like us, people we would like to hang out with.
Jodi Thomas is a best-selling romance author whom I had the honor of helping with Tweet Deck this past weekend. I can attest that Jodi loves her fellow women and cares about their marriages and children and grandchildren. She cares about quilting and holding onto a lineage and being inspired by frilly cards with inspirational quotes. Will it diminish her in any way to congregate with #quilting on Twitter? She likes quilting and uses it in her books. She likes those kinds of people and I would even bet that those women would like her, even the ones who don’t know her....yet.
If you sell romance, what is your demographic? 31-49 year old women in a relationship (per RWA’s site). What do 31-49 year old women do with their day when they aren't reading your romance novel?
They love Oprah, and Ellen and soap operas and knitting and scrap booking and gardening and parenting and American Idol and Dancing with the Stars. They diet and deal with stress and take care of elderly parents. This “other life” is part of what makes them long to read. They desire to escape, to be reminded that heroes triumph and love conquers all. Congregate with them. Care. Interact.
How many other authors are doing that? Yet how many authors only (key word ONLY) blog about themselves, their books, their upcoming books, their ideas...you get the picture.
If you write fantasy and sci-fi, what do your fans do? Well, being a professional nerd for many years, I feel I can speak for my people.
We go to Trekkie conventions and argue about whether or not it is possible to go faster than the speed of light (actual argument I had on the way to a Trekkie convention---swear to God). We play X Box, World of Warcraft, PS3 and Dungeons and Dragons. We love comics, cult movies, and X-Men and Star Wars and quote Monty Python.
So if you desire to connect with your readers, go to their favorite watering holes.
“Fantasy reader” is not creative, and I guarantee the group will be mostly authors. If you are on social media, join “World of Warcraft Moon Elves Unite” or start a group like that. Be truly creative. Engage the demographic that likes to read fantasy. I promise you might even have fun.
If you’re selling books on UFOs and origin theory, your fans love "Mystery Quest” and “The Nostradamus Effect.” Run searches for Atlantis, Nasca lines, Easter Island, Big Foot, Nessie, Prophesy, Apocalypse, Devil’s Bible. Join those groups on Myspace, FB, Twitter. Get plugged into groups who like to argue about what season of X Files was best. Who is hotter, Scully or Xena? What is better, Star Trek or Star Wars? Who was better? Kirk or Picard? Who was right? The North or the South? What is the best romance movie of all time? Top Gun or Casa Blanca?
When we start thinking like a fan and not a writer...THEN we will find our readers. Get creative. The more creative the better. Think about what all other writers are out there doing…then do it differently.
Think about the reader. We tend to forget that we (fiction authors) are in the service industry. We provide a wonderful escape from day-to-day life. We remind people that life is still magical and worth living.
Blog about what readers find interesting (other than you and your book). I guarantee you my mother, who loves to read and buys more books than she can read, really does not care about finding an agent.
Care about others. It will set you apart from all the other authors who can only think of selling books. It will connect you to your readership. It will push you out of your comfort zone. It will bond you to people who might know more about your subject than you do. You can learn and be enriched. What can your fans offer you? I guarantee you will be pleasantly surprised.
All I am asking is that we be mindful to think of others. Have a servant’s heart.
All of us need to remember to pan the camera back and think of what we post from the reader's perspective. Forget us. Forget our writer buddies. What would our readers like to spend their precious time reading about? The publishing industry? Plotting? Character development? Sure. Readers who also want to be writers…but what percentage is that?
Do readers want to learn about e-books and how the electronic medium is changing the industry?
Or would they rather read about the subjects that make them passionate enough to part with their hard-earned cash and their limited time? Would they rather read about love or triumph or who really built the pyramids? Wouldn’t they like an opportunity to contribute too? When was the last time a big author asked a fan to write their blog?
I guarantee you there are fans out there who know more about the author’s books than the author. Fans who have thought on a totally different level about our work. Fans who would DIE at a chance to post their insight and opinion about a book or character.
Yet when was the last time an author asked a fan to write their blog? That they gave them that honor? Heck, ask the ones who post positive stuff on your existing blog and who can string an interesting sentence together. This isn’t as hard as we make it. Honest.
Writers often panic when it comes to social media. And what they do is they congregate and they befriend zillions of people and they lose sight of the most important thing....the relationship with the reader.
If you write fantasy, I guarantee you that you will like the people in those groups I suggested you search.
If you love history enough to write a 100,000 words about it, I’d wager you will enjoy being stimulated and challenged by people in the #jackson or the #gettysburgh or #alamo column. You will have to be careful not to lose entire days in those groups on FB and MySpace and other social media sites. It is a self-discipline thing like anything else.
But say you lose hours chatting and having fun. Isn’t that better spent in a group of people who like your topic rather than in a group talking about writing? Aren’t you then taking time to relate to and network with and forge relationships with people who love the topic you write about?
I just want to impress the importance of relationship when it comes to social media. It is important to be in relationship with other writers. They make us angry, call us on our drama, cheer us when we triumph and are there when we cry.
But we need to permit readers into our lives as well. If all our actions tell readers to “Keep Out”--that this is a “Writers Only” group, then we can't be shocked when we fail to connect.
Make the reader feel like you care. I know you all do. Writers are among the most amazing, generous, kind people I am blessed enough to know.
I am not here to embarass or villify anyone. I am here to make you better and to point out that too many of us are running around naked and clueless why people have a hard time making eye contact.
If you can connect, if you can network and forge relationships beyond your comfort zone, then you will finally be able to appreciate what social media is all about...not how many friends you can collect or how many people you can blitz with the title of your book or your latest blog using the latest gimmick or app. Social media isn’t about technology.
It is about people.
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