Category: publishing

            I’ve seen a lot of people talking about this sort of thing lately.  Facebook, Twitter, blogging, Tumblr, Instagram—all the various forms of social media.  Tons of writers want to know how to make it work for them.  What’s the real trick to turning tweets into sales?  How do I make my blog pay for itself?

            Well, it’s pretty easy.

            Allow me to explain…

            You’ve probably heard people talk about networking. Regular networking.  You know, the thing where I know George and he knows Phoebe and she knows that other George and suddenly wham I’m writing a Star Wars movie.  Because it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Right?

            Lots of gurus push networking.  It’s their go-to thing for success, because it’s kind of a fail-safe thing to preach.  If you succeed, they were right.  If you fail, they were also right (you clearly didn’t network with the right people).

            And so a lot of beginning folks go out there and network.  And by “network,” I mean they stalk professional writers and agents and editors, both online and in the real world.  They bombard them with emails and messages and friend requests.  They follow them around at parties and conventions.

            The truth is, though, this isn’t how networking works.  It isn’t about people I’ve hunted down and cornered.  It’s about people who are friends and acquaintances—real friends and acquaintances.  You may have heard folks say that networking should be lateral, not upward, because friendship is lateral.
            As I’ve mentioned over on my ranty blog, this is why active networking doesn’t work.  If I become “friends” with someone just because I want something from them, they’re going to sense that.  It’s a forced relationship, and those are never good.

            Why do I bring up networking?

            Well, the same holds for social networking.  If I’m blogging or tweeting or running a fan page just to have a captive audience who’ll buy stuff from me… it’s not going to work. If I try to use social media as a billboard or a series of commercials… it won’t work.  I can’t just stick up non-stop “buy my book, read my blog, look at this” because people don’t respond to that.  People use social media to interact, and that’s what all these systems are set up around. 

            Here’s a few other tips…

            First, if I have “a platform,” I’m kind of screwed.  No one wants to see my platform.  No one’s interested in it.  It’s a nonsense term made up by another idiot marketing guru, and it means I’m turning people into assets.  The simple fact that I think of it as “a platform” means I’m doing it wrong.  It makes it very clear how I view the people I interact with online.

            Second, social media has to be organic.  The whole system is based around this.  It can’t be forced or rushed or bought.  I see so many folks get frustrated because they don’t have a thousand rabid followers in their first three months.  I have a big Facebook following, but my fan page has been up for almost six years.  On the flipside I’ve barely been on Twitter for six months and right now one of my cats has twice as many followers as me.

            Third, remember how I just said it can’t be bought?  I was serious.  Paying for ads or exposure on social media is like doing the cheerleader or quarterback’s English homework so I can sit at the popular table during lunch.  I’m only there for a day or two, most people are going to tune me out, and then I’m back over in the corner with the drama club and that one kid who just runs in place during gym class, no matter what everyone else is doing.  Not only that, but there’ve been several studies by smart people that show paying for social media ads (especially on Facebook) accomplishes nothing and actually hurts me in the long run.

            This is only my opinion, but I think the best thing someone can do as an author on social media is to just be themselves.  Be honest.  Be fun.  Like stuff more than hating it.  Be positive more than negative.  If you look at my fan page or twitter feed, I’d guess 60-70% of the stuff I post has nothing to do with my books or me as an author.  It’s mostly about me as a geek who likes a lot of fun stuff and likes sharing it with people. 

            If that isn’t your thing… don’t do social media.  Lots of successful authors don’t.  Because if I’m going to be on social media people expect me to be social, not to spend every minute hammering home a publicity/ marketing plan.  Really, that’s the kind of presence that hurts more than helps.  I’ve seen different authors try different methods (from starvation to… well, risqué), but this is more or less what it boils down to.  People are on social media to interact, not to receive advertising or canned updates.

            So, how do you turn tweets into sales?

            You don’t.

Last night I was directed to a blog post that said self-publishers should not be allowed to call themselves authors.  Fighting words, I know.  It was a ham-fisted, blanket statement,  and I think it’s pretty tough to say something that broad without getting some deserved backlash.  Plus, in all fairness, the person who wrote it had a bunch of issues when it came to their own writing ability.  Then again, said writer wasn’t insisting on being called an author anywhere that I saw…

I found myself kind of agreeing with the general idea, though, if not the way it was delivered.  “Author” used to be a term that meant something.  It implied a degree of prestige, that someone had worked at their chosen art for years and been rewarded with a title.

Nowadays, though… no work needed.  I can just demand that title for doing well… anything.  Or nothing.

Take the Baboon Fart Story book.  If you’re not familiar with it, the story goes something like this.  Chuck Wendig made an offhand comment a while back that these days someone can just print the word “fart” 100,000 times, slap a picture of a baboon on the cover, and have it up on Amazon within the hour.  So, this being the internet, someone did just that.  Baboon Fart Story, clearly stating it was just the word “fart” repeated 100,000 times and referencing Wendig, was for sale on Amazon for about a day before someone at the company realized it was a mockery of their whole business plan and it was pulled for content reasons.  I think their official excuse was “a less than satisfactory reading experience.”

So, question for the floor… should the person who slapped Baboon Fart Storytogether be considered an author?  Has he or she earned that title with that book?  It was 100,000 words.  It even sold a couple dozen copies (some of the equally humorous reviews on Amazon were verified purchases).

Baboon Fart Story.  Author or not?

Now, let me spare some of you a bit of time.  I’m sure someone’s leaping down to the comments right now to explain that Baboon Fart was just a joke.  A not-very elaborate joke to illustrate a point.  Heck, it was really just an exercise in cut-and-paste.

To which I say, whoa!  Are we now putting definitions on what counts as a book?  On who gets to call themselves an author?

Of course we are.

As I’ve said many times over on my ranty blog, most of us know how to cook, but very few of us would consider ourselves chefs.  I make a fairly good almost-from-scratch pizza and decent stir-fried rice, but I’d never call myself a chef.  Someone would have to be arrogant as hell to insist we call them a chef because they poured orange juice and heated up waffles in the toaster.  Because we all understand that chef is a title which reflects a certain degree of experience and education past the commonly-known basics. 

Are there self-published writers who deserve to be called authors?  Absolutely and without question.  There are some phenomenally talented and practiced people who’ve chosen to go that route, and they’ve earned that title a hundred times over.  I’d argue the point with anyone who tried to say otherwise.

Does everyone who self-publishes immediately and automatically deserve the title of author?  No.  No, they do not.  Because being an author means something, and it’s more than “able to upload files.”  It implies someone doesn’t just have a base ability to write—or to cut and paste—but a certain level of experience and ability with words.  The exact definition is changing with some of these new paths, but it’s still there.  And it should be there. And we should all be happy it’s there and strive to earn it.

One term floating around the internet a lot these days is “the gatekeepers.”  On the off chance you’re not familiar with it, it’s a handy, catch-all term some folks use for editors and agents, both in publishing and sometimes in Hollywood, too.  The idea is that these are the people who decide if a writer’s work should be published or produced.  The gatekeepers either let me in the world of big publishers or keep me out.

Naturally, of course, my work is genius and should be published.  But for some reason or another—usually because they’re idiots—those gatekeepers won’t let me past the entrance.  I say this because it’s a key point when talking about this subject.  A huge percentage of people who use the term gatekeepers—the vast majority, I’d say—are people who aren’t being allowed through those gates. 

So, in a very real way, “gatekeepers” is being used as an insult.  A slur.  It’s like that old joke about the difference between a nymph and a slut.  A nymph sleeps with everyone, a slut sleeps with everyone… except you.  So what’s the difference between an editor and a gatekeeper…?

Here’s the thing no one likes to admit about those gatekeepers. 

They aren’t just keeping me out.  They’re also keeping out all those other people whose work is complete crap.  Dull stories, predictable plots, flat characters, poor spelling… we can all agree that those people should be kept out.  We don’t want to deal with their crap.  No one does.

Again, none of that applies to me, naturally.  My work, as I mentioned, is genius.  And deserves to be published.

Y’see, once I stop thinking about me and insulting them, it’s pretty clear that what the gatekeepers are doing is vetting material.  They’re weeding out all the stuff that’s dull or predictable or would take far too much work to become a sellable product (this is a business, after all).

Now, a lot of those same folks who slam the gatekeepers also say the market will decide if something’s any good or not.  If a million people want to put their epic sci-fi/horror/fantasy/steampunk trilogies on Kindle, power to them.  And on one level I’m okay with that and I agree with it.

However…  What I find ironic is that then they talk about how they’ll find their way through those thousands and thousands of dull, flat, poorly written manuscripts.  They’ll check to see Amazon ratings.  They’ll see what bloggers have to say.  They’ll see what has the best reviews.

In other words, they’ll let someone else vet the material for them.  Someone else can sift through all the crap so those readers only need to see the good stuff.  The things that deserve to make money.

Thing is, if people really wanted a completely fair and equal marketplace, one with absolutely no gatekeepers, there would be no reviews.  No ratings.  No word of mouth.  No one would be allowed to influence whether or not a book gets seen.  We’d all just pick titles at random and hope for the best. 

And let’s be honest–the best would be few and far between.  There’s a lot of awful material out there these days.  God-awful.  Probably three out of five, if I had to guess, because there are no restrictions or guidelines about who can reach the marketplace.  Maybe as high as four out of five.

I think we’re all glad when someone else is willing to take one for the team and weed those awful books out.  To vet the material for us.  To make sure some things get our attention and others don’t.

Thank goodness there are gatekeepers.