S is for Self Promotion

At a writers lunch this week, one of us asked if you HAD to be on Twitter, Facebook etc. The others there, including me, had all been told to Twitter etc by their publisher, but once on, enjoyed it. We all had different strategies to stop it eating into our writing time - limiting the number of people one followed, using a timer, not having writing computer linked to internet, having internet 'cut out' software, using a Facebook author page rather than a normal account for spreading the word.

The next question was: did it make a difference to sales? Again, we all agreed that it wasn't about sales so much as raising one's profile in the industry, which led to journalistic commissions and offers to speak at libraries and lit fests.

And another thing we all agreed on (it was a very harmonious lunch) was that obvious self-promotion was a turn off. We simply stopped following anyone who appeared pushy. One of us - not me BTW - had a problem with a friend of a friend who was emailing to ask her to re-tweet his posts of self-promotion. Unfollow, we all advised.

All of us had gone further and taken against authors who relentlessly promoted their books. We'd also made judgements about who we liked or didn't like on the basis of their on-line media presence. It may sound crass to base your reading choices on the personality of an author, but we'd all done it. I had been going to buy one particular novel, and then decided against it because the author seemed such an opinionated, judgmental person on-line. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but their media presence made me not buy.

As an author myself, this makes me slightly uneasy - just because someone promotes themselves well, it doesn't follow that their book will be a good read. But hey, aren't all purchases based on flimsy things like a good blurb, or personal quirks of preference. I once did a first page exercise in class using the Booker Prize short-list where several students rejected one particular book because a sailing ship was mentioned in the first paragraph and they didn't like books about the sea.

Back to the lunch. Our advice can be summarised:

1. Engage with others, and don't just be Me! Me! Me! all the time.

2. Don't expect to see direct results in terms of sales.

3. It can eat time, so you need to set up strategies to make sure it doesn't.

4. You don't have to do everything; I don't 'get' Facebook, but love Twitter, it was the opposite for one of the other writers.

5. If you're writing for children, you may have to be inventive about how they follow you - there are age restrictions on some social media networks.

6. Don't do anything you don't like, but on the other hand, don't dismiss it immediately - it takes time to settle in.

7. If you blog, update it at least once a week or don't bother at all.

8. Group blogs, where you blog once a month, are useful if you don't have much free time (or much you want to say - not my problem, ahem).

9. On Twitter, get to grips with various areas like mentions, hashtags etc. I didn't realise about the mention facility at first, and spent hours scrolling through in case I'd missed someone talking to me.

10. Have fun!

Platforms Are For Trains, Not Writers

There's been lots of discussion about platforms recently on the forums that I follow. 'You MUST have a platform', many blogs announce. 'You MUST use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn...you MUST blog...you MUST have a website.'

I've read people saying that publishers check out how many followers an unpublished author has before they'll consider representation and therefore unpublished authors MUST have a media presence or they won't get published.

Hmm. Well, all I can say is Piffle.

There's no MUST about it. Yes, if you like doing these things, by all means go ahead and do them. I know of at least one person who credits getting her agent to her media platform (and that led to a publishing deal). I suspect the quality of her writing was more important.

Put simply, writing a good book is how you get published. No one is going to spend money on a rubbish book however many followers someone has. Having said that, if you have thousands of followers you must be able to write well and have interesting stuff to say, so it may look as though:

thousands of followers = the publishing deal,

but I think the equation actually looks like:

good writer and interesting ideas=thousands of followers=publishing deal.

And I think you can also write it:

good writer and interesting ideas=publishing deal.

Social media is a powerful tool to reach people, but many authors are unconvinced that it actually sells books, especially if you're conventionally published. I was told by my publisher about two years ago that I MUST go on Twitter, Facebook and start blogging. This blog, and my Twitter account (@sarahduncan1) were the result. Personally, I like Twitter, so I do that, and I like blogging (most of the time!) so do that too. Facebook I can't get the hang of (not helped by them changing the format often), and LinkedIn is just a step too far...

I think it's made a difference in the sense that I've been asked to give more talks and write more articles over the past two years than I had before, and it's probably sold a few more books. But what I know has sold most books has been getting shortlisted for prizes, getting good reviews, and getting selected for retailer special offers. All those come from the quality of the book (tho it has to be said that the cover plays a huge part in being selected for the special offers).

If you don't want to get involved in social media, don't. Every day people who haven't got media platforms or any followers sign publishing deals. Yes, it may make you more attractive to a publisher - especially an e-publisher - because publishers like authors who are good at marketing themselves. But at heart it's about the book. Always.

So, if your choice is writing a great book or building a media platform, then writing a great book wins every time.

My Internet Diet

I've been on an Internet diet for the last ten days. It was helped by having intermittant internet access, but I haven't read a single publishing article or blog, or been on either Facebook or Twitter, or any of the writing forums I'm part of AT ALL.

I haven't lost pounds, but I've gained words. Thousands of them, in fact. Perhaps not as many as I'd hoped, but still - a lot more than I've produced in a single week since the start of this year. Result!

And as a side product I'm feeling much less stressed by writing generally. Let's face it, the publishing industry is all over the place at the moment and no one knows where it's going to end up or when it's going to stabilise. What I've realised is that industry-ignorant writers who produce novels are better placed than industry informed writers who don't produce novels.

I've come off the wagon once. I went to a launch party for a friend, the fabulous Liz Kessler, author of the Emily Windsnapp series and there were several YA, teenage and children's writers there to gossip with. It was a fun evening, but I definitely had industry indigestion the next day.

Like any crash diet, you can't sustain it for ever so I'm back on the social media, but this time it's going to be controlled. No more endless reading of blogs and articles. From now on, my writing comes before others.

Don't Be Grotty, Be Writing

I had a grotty week a couple of weeks ago. There was all this stuff about e-publishing flying around and a lot of people were telling me either about authors who weren't having their contracts renewed, or about publishing people being sacked, or about the big name authors signing contracts for squillions, or about the market moving into historicals! crime! historical crime!

I read it all - every contradictory blog, every triumphant/despondant Tweet, every forum posting. I chatted to other writers who were hopeful/elated/suicidal. And it was the end of term and I was tired so ended up being confused and a bit hot and bothered about what I was doing. Or rather, what I wasn't doing.

Because while I was reading and blogging and Tweeting and posting on Facebook and chatting to writers and readers on line and in person, I sort of forgot what it is I actually do. Which is write.

The Internet is a wonderful thing, but it's easy for me to get overwhelmed by all the information out there. Perhaps other people handle it better, but there's so much going on I find it hard to draw a line between what is interesting to know and what I need to know. It's interesting to know about new developments and news (good and bad) in publishing, but do I really need to know them?

Or, to put it another way, do I need to know them more than I need to finish my novel? Umm....

So my message to myself is the title of this post: Don't be grotty, be writing.