Post #164 April 8 2019

“Promoting Yourself as a Writer”

Many of the posts I’ve made to this blog over the last few years have been related to the mechanics of writing and storytelling. But to be a real success as a modern author in today’s hyper-chaotic literary marketplace, you have to network, promote and market yourself and your ‘brand.’  This is something that doesn’t always come naturally to many writers, who are often disposed to be somewhat loners and introspective, though not all of course.   But I’m that way.

I want to spend the next few posts looking at ways we wordsmiths can dive into the modern world of commercial writer promotion and networking and make our brands better known and successful.

Toward that end, I’ve come up with five ways we can do this.

1. Start a blog, like The Word Shed.  I started this blog back in late 2015.  Now it’s early 2019.  Creating and managing a blog is an easy way to make yourself known and approachable to potential readers.  Engaging with your readers is really what it’s all about these days…understanding what they like, what they don’t like, answering their questions, arguing about details and plots and characters, etc.  Your blog should steadily encourage others to post and as the blog manager, you should try to answer as many of these posts as possible.  Running a blog is like creating and nurturing a little ecosystem of readers who read and write each other, all gathered around an interest in following and supporting you as an author.   This is a potentially rich source of readers and growing your readership is what every author should be aiming for.  I’ve seen my own grow since 2014, when my work first appeared online, to almost 24,000 downloads.
2. Build and maintain an effective web site.  This is one area where I could improve. I do have an author’ website.  It’s at http://philbosshardt.wix.com/philip-bosshardt.  But it needs updating badly as it doesn’t show but a quarter of my work.  A good author’s website should offer a nonstop library-bookstore of all the author’s available work.  Mike Shatzkin, of Digital Book World, offers this checklist:
    
   – List of all the author’s books, listed chronologically and by series
   – Landing page for each book, including the cover, a description, reviews, excerpts, links to retail sites and other important metadata that would help readers discover the title and decide to buy
   – Contact page so readers can easily send an email and get a response
   – Email capture
   – Social media buttons, so readers can easily sign up to follow the author on Twitter, etc.
   – Calendar with upcoming publication dates and scheduled public appearances
   – Page with links to articles and reviews by the author, as well as references to the author on blogs and in the press
   In addition to these things on an author website, Shatzkin recommends that authors all should have:
   – Up-to-date Amazon author page
   – Google Plus page (which is crucial for effective search engine optimization strategy)
   – Twitter and Facebook (optional)
    
   Seems like a lot of work but I believe it’s worth it, to give your readers a place to browse your work and make selections…and most important, to keep them coming back wanting more.
3. Join a writer’s group, or a critique group.  I did this last year and it was a great decision.  To hang out with people who loves books and writing and who are slaving away on their own projects, to give and take constructive criticism and tips and suggestions and pointers, is priceless.  It makes you realize you’re really not alone in what can be a lonely occupation.  Moreover, it’s a great way to network and meet people.  The group I’m in meets once a week, every Wednesday and we are always doing some kind of writing and bringing something current to read.  My group keeps me on my toes and doesn’t let me lag behind or slack off.
4. Attend writers’ conferences and conventions.  Yet another way to meet and network.  Plus they can be just plain fun.  This may require travel, and so incurs the cost and time involved in that.  But done expeditiously, with proper expectations, conferences and conventions can be a great outlet for your creative juices and may well inspire you with new ideas and new friends.  Writers are actually human beings and have social needs just like everybody.  Some of the best conventions are genre-related, like Mystery Writers of America or Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers and their World Cons. 
5. Write reviews.  In my own work, I’ve seen spikes in my downloads after recent reviews, spikes even in works not being reviewed.  Good reviews and ratings are priceless but even bad reviews make your work noticed and notice is what it’s all about.  Readers’ attention is a limited resource and it’s getting harder and harder to capture your share of that.  Writing and receiving reviews (for Goodreads and others; there are dozens, if not more) is a great way to achieve notice, even notoriety.  You may well find that your willingness to review another writer’s work can translate into others’ willingness to do the same…quid pro quo.

 

Networking and promoting your author brand is essential in today’s literary marketplace and anything you can do along the lines of my five suggestions will help gain you the notice and the readers that we all want.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on April 15, 2019.

See you then.

Phil B.