Breaking Digital Bread: An Author’s Introduction to Social Networking
February 5, 2008
When it comes to social networking sites, everyone seems to have an opinion. Are they extravagant time wasters? A revolution in how we interact? The end of the world as we know it? As is usually the case, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle of all of the clamoring voices. Weave through the hyperactive proponents and the knee-jerk naysayers and you’ll figure out for yourself how sites like MySpace and Facebook can help you in your writing career.
For my part, it seems that social networking ties in pretty nicely with the goals of writers. Most of those I’ve met during my years in the self-publishing business are at least a little bit interested in having readers. The tools available on most social networking sites are almost tailor-made to a writer looking to grow their audience. The ability to have an events calendar, blogs and news bulletins in one single place gives you the chance to efficiently keep your audience updated about your current activities.
Of course, readers aren’t the only people you’ll want to link up with. More and more writers are recognizing the advantages of discussing their experiences, giving advice and workshopping ideas in online groups. If you’re not already involved in one, take some time to peruse a few of them to figure out if the atmosphere feels like a good fit to you – you’d want to have some idea of the personalities of a group before striking up a conversation, and the same is true of online discussion groups. And you don’t want to bring your romantic poetry into a mystery writer’s group.
Think of these Web sites as a way to give a reader more than a book cover and a blurb to go on. You don’t have to delve into the most intimate details of your personal life, but allowing your personality to show can really add to your current readers’ experience, and influence po-ten-tial readers to shed themselves of those three annoying syllables. These sites are by no means a shortcut to publishing success, but they can be a pretty handy tool. If we didn’t believe it, we wouldn’t have started Facebook and MySpace groups for Wordclay!
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Barry Davidson | February 8, 2008 at 6:12 am
To be honest with you, I’m not sure how much a MySpace or Facebook accounts actually helps until you have at least a small following. If you search a name on either, you’ll get thousands of results. Research someone famous on MySpace, and you’ll get hundreds of results. Accounts that have used the same name in their profile.
Now, to be honest, I do hear the call. I only created a MySpace account after I started writing again. The only problem I have is the time to update the page, or the energy to actually do it. Just like selling yourself and your book on a book signing tour, you have to expend a bit of time to keep the pages updated. Unless your name is Stephen King, in which case you can hire other people to take care of it.
One thing that you guys did do, and it brought me here to check you out, was your creating accounts on http://www.thenextbigwriter.com and http://www.booksie.com to get your message out. That, and your poetry book and individual poem contest you advertised there.
My wife badgered me to create and account on TheNextBigWriter a few years back. To shut her up, I finally joined and posted some of my old work. After one bad review, I wrote a story almost entirely in clichés. That story wound up winning one of the quarterly short story contests. It also started me writing even more.
I seem to be rambling here. Essentially, I’m saying that people can’t just throw up a page and expect anything. Just like anything else in life, they’ll have to work it. you’re not just selling your books. To truly be successful, you also have to sell yourself. You never would have heard about Eragon if his parents hadn’t dragged him all over the country to book signings and scifi/fantasy events, having him tell the people his story.