Friday Speak Out!: You Oughtta Write a Book! (Part 3 – The Importance of Social Media in Helping Your Book Get “Found”)

by Heather Heyford

Chances are, when you get published the first time, it will be digitally. You’ll want to develop an on-line personality, aka brand, well ahead of time. Check out my website, HeatherHeyford.com facebook page https://www.facebook.com/heatherheyford1 and Pinterest boards http://www.pinterest.com/Romance_Writer/ and you’ll see I that use the same head shot and color of blue across all my platforms. Once you have established your brand, choose two or three platforms—starting with your own website, because this will become your home base for your book sales—and apply it universally.

Regardless of the path to publishing you choose, selecting a few social media platforms to be active on is an integral part of promoting yourself and your books. A sampling of some of the most common platforms as of today are facebook, twitter, Pinterest, goodreads, instagram, and youtube. But keep abreast of trends—new platforms are born all the time.

Develop a set of rules you can live with, such as never posting after drinking, never engaging in mouth battles, and never responding to negative reviews. The key to presenting a good image to the reading public is to be personable, not personal. If engaging in political or controversial subjects, only do it as part of your brand. Speaking for myself, I try to always be upbeat and entertaining in my posts. There’s enough negativity in the world, right? Others try to post helpful hints or pictures of the setting of their writing, eg., Scotland or the wine country.

It’s also important to genuinely interact with others instead of merely posting original comments all the time. Commiserate with others’ troubles and congratulate them on their successes.

A very famous author once said: The difference between being unpublished and published is one second. Like anything else, the more you use social media, the better you get at it. You can never be ready enough for the day your book becomes a reality.

Following is a list of books that helped me tremendously, both before and after I published. Best of luck with your writing career!

Recommended Reading

The craft of writing:

• Writing 21st Century Fiction—High Impact Techniques for Exceptional Storytelling by Donald Maass
• Break Into Fiction: 11 Steps to Building a Story that Sells by Mary Buckham and Dianna Love
• Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook by Donald Maass
• Hooked by Les Edgerton
• The Making of a Story by Alice LaPlant

Maximizing the use of social media:

• Rise of the Machine by Kristin Lamb

(Note: You can read "You Oughtta Write a Book! Part 1— Discover Your Style of Writing" here and "You Oughtta Write a Book! Part 2- The Digital Revolution  Or, There’s More than One Way to Skin a Cat"here.)

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Heather Heyford is the author of Wine Heiresses Series: A Taste of Chardonnay,  A Taste of Merlot, A Taste of Sauvignon, and A Taste of Sake, from Kensington Publishing. She is represented by The Nancy Yost Literary Agency. Visit her at HeatherHeyford.com, https://www.facebook.com/heatherheyford1 and http://www.pinterest.com/Romance_Writer/.
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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!
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1 comment author branding, author platforms, author promotion, Friday Speak Out, Heather Heyford, online personality, social media

Blogging Basics

It’s hard to believe now, but I first came up with the idea to start a blog in October 2007, around the same time I decided that developing a website for my business was a necessity. As my writing career has evolved and had its share of ups and downs, so has the blog, titled Renee’s Pages.

At first I focused on freelance writing topics, being a work-at-home mom and sharing clips of my articles. Over time I gained a few regular followers, and it felt great to be involved in a supportive writing community. However, when I failed to post regularly, the followers slowly waned. I blame this on the fact that I had regular paying writing and editing gigs that took up a lot of my time, and some of it is a result of never having a clear vision for my blog. I never took the time to sit down and make a blogging schedule or brainstorm a list of what I really wanted to write about. I just sort of posted when I felt like it.

About three years ago I started dabbling in writing fiction and reading interviews with authors and agents that stressed the importance of author platforms, specifically blogging. I realized I needed to revamp my website and figure out where my blog was going. I also needed to think positively and figure out what the heck my platform was going to be on the off chance that I actually sell a book one day. I sat down and thought about the topics of my two works-in-progress, a middle-grade and YA novel. One focuses on a tale of time travel to the 1980s and the other is a coming of age story set in the 1990s. I’m also a celebrity gossip junkie and rely heavily on music as part of my creative process. One day I want to completely redesign my blog when I have more time and resources, but for now I use one of the basic templates in Blogger. I kept the name, Renee’s Pages, and added a subtitle, “The Writing Life of a Pop Culture Junkie.” It seemed fitting.

I spend a lot of time watching old television shows and movies through Netflix and on cable and I finally figured out I can write about how my favorites relate to my book and article topics. Voila! There’s my platform. I’ve also tried to study blogs I admire for more ideas on how to improve the blog. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

1. You must post regularly. For now, even once a week would be great for me, but two to three times a week seems to be the standard in most of the popular, highly-trafficked blogs I visit.
2. For writing-related blogs, readers love giveaways! Network with other writers and agents and soon you’ll have more products to give away than you know what to do with.
3. Network with other writers and develop a regular schedule of author, editor and blogger interviews and guest posts.

Do you have a blog? Do you update it regularly? What tips do you have for gaining more traffic and visibility?

Renee Roberson is an award-winning freelance writer who loves to blog about books, movies, music and celebrity gossip and writing. Visit her website at www.FinishedPages.com.

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6 comments author platforms, blogging tips, driving traffic to your blog, maintaining a blog, Renee Roberson

Should You Self-Publish Your Own Work?

Photo by Gayle Shomer Photography

I have a journal with the following quote embossed into the leather cover:

“If you wish to be a writer, write.”

I remind myself of that constantly, especially when I feel discouraged that my career is stalled. Nowadays, I feel like there should also be some inspirational quotes out there relating to publishing. Two or three years ago, I wouldn’t have even considered self-publishing my own work. But lately, it seems like every time I turn around, I find myself face to face with writers who have taken control of their careers and followed successful and satisfying journeys into self-publishing. I find myself more intrigued and inspired by the prospect each day.

I know that when I first started writing professionally ten years ago, there was still a bit of a stigma attached to self-publishing, particularly through vanity presses that virtually published anything as long as the authors were willing to pay the price.

But times have definitely changed. There are still writers who would prefer to try their hand at traditional publishing first, and that’s perfectly fine. But there are some cases where self-publishing can actually help strengthen an author’s platform or garner enough attention to attract a traditional publisher down the road.

I recently interviewed a local writer who decided to publish her historical fiction novel after she had actually secured an agent. While the agent loved this author’s work and they had a great business relationship, the agent was unable to interest any publishing houses in the book because of the subject matter and genre. Instead of giving up, this author started work on a second historical fiction novel and pursued publishing the book on her own. She developed a marketing plan and drew up a list of book review blogs to contact and even garnered a positive review from the Sacramento Book Review. I checked on Amazon and as of this writing, the book has almost 30 reviews and has an average of 4.6 out of 5 stars.

Now, granted, this author has a full-time day job and writes fiction on the side like many of us, but she was positive and encouraging as she chatted with me about her experience. She did stress that you shouldn’t self-publish impulsively but that it is definitely something writers should consider if they are getting good feedback from agents and editors but are stalled at finding a publishing contract.

While I am in the process of shopping around my middle-grade novel, I’ve also begun considering self-publishing either a novella or collection of short stories digitally. I personally know a few writing instructors who have found success in micro-publishing resource guides as PDFs and it is definitely something I want to explore further as a way to help grow my platform before I hopefully publish traditionally.

Here are a few articles on self-publishing that I think are helpful:
Divergent Paths to Publication
Which Publishing Path is Right for You?
Self-Publishing: The Debate is Over

Have you ever self-published your work? What did you like or not like about the process?

Renee Roberson is an award-winning freelance writer and editor who blogs at Renee’s Pages.

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10 comments author platforms, Renee Roberson, self-publishing, success stories, traditional publishing