Building Your Name

Friday, May 1, 2009

 

Mary Rosenblum:  Happy May Day, all. I hope you’re enjoying May flowers!   I was asked to do this Forum and it's a good topic. The question was 'how do you build up a 'platform' on the internet...in other words make yourself visible to the world.  While the internet has provided us with a huge marketplace that doesn't cost anything much to put our books out there,  the internet is also awash with thousands and thousands of self published and small press published books.  How do you stand out in that sea?
What a lot of aspiring writers are doing is trying to build an identiry for themselves, so that people notice them and thus go find their books.  How do you get noticed? People mention you in their blogs and add a link to your own blog or website. So people go visit your blog or website. And if they like it, they mention it and add a link. This is called viral dissemination.
I am on twitter and facebook and myspace.
Mary Rosenblum:  Facebook, twitter, linked in, myspace....all the networking sites are great places to make yourself and your work known.  Now, there's a downside here. The more time you spend making yourself a presence on twitter, facebook, and various blogs, the less time you have for writing. So you have to balance these two aspects of your life.  But that internet presence is valid self promotion and a lot more effective than driving a half hour each way to a couple of local bookstores, in the long run. Although driving to the local bookstores is something you need to do, too.  However, there's another thing to think about here, and a lot of novice writers forget it.  You not only need to be present on these public networking spaces, you need to be....are you ready for this, all?
Interesting.
If you bore people to tears why on earth do you think they'll go read your book? That is the hard part.
How much time a week do you spend in this medium?
Mary Rosenblum:  Mule, I am at a different stage of career than you all are. I can make myself known to people in ways that aren't open to you yet. I do a lot of workshops, conferences, small classes, teaching, and appearances on radio, the internet, nominations for awards, what have you.  But when you don't have the credentials to get you attention at that level, you can make yourself visible through blogging and the social networking sites.  You  can make the effort, and you can put up interesting information you find, anecdotes about events, interesting people, anything to entertain people and make them remember you.
What about Kindle Books?
Mary Rosenblum:  Kindle has more or less the same issues as amazon.com. Why does a reader pay to read your book when there are fifteen hundred other similar titles there?
Mary is there a format program or is it all hard copy?
Mary Rosenblum:  For what, jrp?
Oh novel for example.
Mary Rosenblum:  Every publisher has submission guidelines, jrp, and they cover the format the prefer for submissions. Every publisher typesets the submitted mss into the format that the house publishes in.
I have a sony reader, I bought your books from Amazon in paperback so I could make notes. But what do you have to do to get your books into the ebook market?
Mary Rosenblum:  Mule, the ebook market is VERY open. The number of ebook publishers are proliferating because it's inexpensive to publish that way. Judith Glad was my guest some time ago. She has started an epublishing company here in Portland (Uncial Press) and is doing well -- for an ebook publisher.

I see how a blog can be useful for developing a following and as a sample of our writing, in fact, I recently began one. Wouldn't we want a seperate and more professional website for publishers? What is the proper way to show clips on a site, just with a link? What happens if , say, the newsletter we were published in is no longer available?
Mary Rosenblum:  Good question lady. Yes, I would have a more formal website for publishers and the browsing public (who always google your name).  If your published work is no longer in print, you can post it on your website. If you post that now-out-of-print clip on the website, be sure to say where it was originally published.
Do you know anything about WL Writers Agency?

Mary Rosenblum:  Jrp, you should always check any agent or publisher on Preditors and Editors, the scam site.
Mary, as far as clips go, is there a proper way to list where and when an item was published? What about the same article published with different slants...how is that portrayed?
Mary Rosenblum:  Lady, you can just mention that when and where. 'This article was published in June 2007 in Field and Stream Magazine. '
How do you pick the best ways to get noticed on the internet?
Mary Rosenblum:  DLB, you choose what's likely to work for you.  If you write glibly and maybe with humor and your friends love to read your stuff, do a blog. Find other blogs that are on topics you are interested in and be a presence. You can probably leave the link to your blog or website there if the blog owner enjoys your comments.
Mary, at the risk of asking a dumb question, doesn't this idea of "platforming" apply primarily to a new writer who already has a novel published? Does platforming have any sort of role in networking prior to publication (my guess is no but I have to ask.
Mary Rosenblum:   Dale it can be a very valuable tool before you have anything published. If you are an entertaining voice in various places, you have people who will go seek you out when you finally tell everyone that your book is published.
I've heard a writer's blog should create a "buzz" months before beginning to market a book. They're advice was geared toward N-F writers, tho'. How does one do that with, say, a mystery novel?
Mary Rosenblum:   Gail, you can write about writing that mystery, as long as you don't give the story away.   Fans love to participate in naming characters, choosing the color scheme for Mrs. Newcastle's living room. You can get a lot of interest going by dropping enticing hints that of course you can't answer . They have to read the book.
So write a teaser
Oh! I get it!
Mary Rosenblum:   Publishers are quite happy to have you put chunks of the book up on the internet as long as the whole thing isn't there and you don't give too much away. You could do something such as hold a contest to name a new character.
What if you feel that your "real life" is boring, just your writing is exciting? How do you blog that?
Mary Rosenblum:   Charie, that's where the real problem comes in. It sounds so easy to just 'go out and be visible'. But it takes as much creative effort to entertain and engage people with your daily diary as it does to write a novel, in my opinion. Just  as not everybody is a good personal narrative writer, not everybody is going to write an interesting and entertaining blog.
It sounds draining, emotionally, to me.
Do you have to do it daily?
Mary Rosenblum:   It IS hard to do and it won't work for everybody. Pretty close to everyday, jrp, if you're trying to build a web presence.  It is a time commitment. People have short internet memories.  I get annoyed with the articles in the writing mags that blythely describe this as if it's like falling off a log. It's not. It's creative work.

If you write, you think about interesting things. The writing is probably just the tip of the iceberg. Some things that don't make good stories can likely be expounded upon in blogs.
Mary Rosenblum:   Good suggestion, galatyne. And if you're making up a fantasy world, that's a great place to expand on your world, put up all the things you can't include in the novel but you have to know as the author. You have to balance your writing and your internet name building, Gail. Some mystery writers, for example, will write about their experiences, say, with the local police department. Maybe they did a ride-along to get some realism for a novel. That makes for a fascinating blog post or three.
I recently visited an author blog where he put up "deleted scenes" of one of his recent fantasy novels.
Mary Rosenblum:   There you go, Dale.  And some writers can put up character profiles of their characters, a more detailed history than can be included in the novel. Anything that generates interest is good.
I follow James Van Pelt's blog as well as George R.R. Martin (fantasy & SF writers). James Van Pelt is good for sharing writing information since he's an English teacher AND fiction writer. He had a blog that posted several other authors' blogs he's following himself. Should I post the link as an example?
Mary Rosenblum:   Sure, Red, that's a good one. Jim is a very thoughtful person. :-)
http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/201523.html
Is it any benefit to enter as many contests as possible...such as writer's Digest. Become a "Gold Star Commenter" with1500 plus posts?
Mary Rosenblum:   I don't know about contests, straight. Contest judging is notoriously whimsical and publishers don't pay close attention to many contests.
Mary Rosenblum:   So the more sites you can leave a link on, the more people who link to your site, the more people you're likely to bring in.  One thing you all can do is to send interesting blog links to me for the Newsletter. I'd love to have more good blogs or websites to post in the Review section of the Newsletter. But you have to send 'em to me first.
I'm not computer savvy as most of you seem to be, when do you find time to write with all the blogging you do?
Mary Rosenblum:   Galalnt, you shouldn't spend all your writing time making an internet presence for yourself. But as a promotional tool, you can budget time for it, the way you'd budget time to do readings and signings at local bookstores.  And, as I said before, if you hate it, putting up a few grudging words is not in your best interest.
Can you talk about reviews in places like the Fix? Just how important are reviews, and do editors read them? Does it help to mention reviews in cover letters?
Mary Rosenblum:   Reviews are important, Red, depending on where your work is reviewed. If Cory Doctorow reviews your work on 'Boing Boing' you're going to see significant sales and publishers will remember you.  But if some miniscule site reviews it and nobody has ever heard of this person, no big deal.
You can usually put up a website for free through your server -- the company that provides your internet access.  If you're just using free wireless where you find it, you can find free website space anyway, geocities is one, but you have to put up with advertising on your site.
Red, back to the nature of reviews...one of the reasons to go hang out at a writers conference (nudge nudge) is you hear about whose reviews are getting attention.
What do you do if you do not have the time or money for Writers conferences?
Mary Rosenblum:   DLB you go find editors, agents, writers who are blogging and you bookmark those who talk about the craft. You'll find a lot of information.  I would cast about for blogs written by editors, agents and other people in publishing.  A lot of folk like to talk about their craft and business. Just take things said with a grain of salt, eh?
So, to close, the internet is a great place to promote yourself, but it requires creative energy to do a good job, as well as time. You need to balance promoting with writing, remember! Look around and see what's out there, who's doing what, and what seems to be working. And links rule! Link your blog to everybody who lets you!