Been reading lots of articles on how to promote a book and all are social media gaga. One article said authors needed to be social media gurus or suffer no readers and another said soon social media will be dead and all this fuss will be gone. Maybe the Book of Revelations will come through, but only for writers, everyone else will be saved.
I don’t know, but I’ve followed the advice and tweet and FB and created a book page and all the social media feeds. You know.
But what I discovered is that I am mostly talking to the same people, just on different sites, and irritating the hell out of them probably.
The folks who bought my book have done so and the others, who knows? Maybe, but there is no way for me to know. I figured my offer to make myself available to book groups and classrooms might get some traffic and it did. I had at least one ask about it, so not a total wash. I am hoping for the upcoming semester to maybe get some more offers.
Now I’ve heard there is something called a klout score – another thing to look at to depress writers and suffuse them with the anxiety of an IRS audit. We seem to be caught in whirlpool of social media taking over the art of being a writer. What balance to strike then? My friend Dee Broughton gave me some great advice and she constructed this new and improved website. I think this is a great point for my web presence. It will let me blog about stuff (intermittently as weather permits) and have all my book and bio info for people to glance at. I will link some samples of my work like I have done before. Showcase my writing and not Public Relations and Marketing skills which I have damn little of. Maybe the writing I share in those links will increase my platform (still not sure what exactly that means or how to recognize it in a line up). Maybe it’ll entice folks to read my book.
What I have found doing all this is that my writing has suffered. I think there is damn little clout in that.
Tip: Don’t get distracted by things you have no control of and lose the art you so loved to do in the first place. Sure some, got to get the name out there, but keep the art first and close to your heart.
Social media not only eats time but if writers are forced to do this, then why pay agents/publishers 97% of the cost of a book?
Good point, Jan and I’ve been kicking around a post in my head covering that question. There are other factors a writer has to consider before marketing even becomes an issue.