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So you want to be a writer part 5

Part 5 – The early social media presence

Welcome back to this series of posts about becoming a successful writer. As always, the most important concept to consider is the consistent and continuous release of quality content, and we’ll talk about how to improve the quality of content as we progress, or if you prefer, you can just hire an editor.

The last post discussed building and selling your brand, something you do regardless of which publishing route you take. The question then becomes, how does one get people to notice a brand?

Remember, your brand is you; you are selling yourself, so go out and be yourself. The world today has opened the door for all of us to do just that. We can do live videos on FaceBook. We can upload YouTube videos. We can tweet, share content and comments on Google+ and LinkedIn, we can blog on our own sites, on Quora, Medium, write stories to Wattpad, Fanfcition, and Quotev. I mean, c’mon, the opportunities are endless, but as has been mentioned, it’s important to connect with readers. If all you’re doing is following, retweeting, and sharing with other writers, you are not connecting with readers.

This brings us to another big, big, mega, huge misconception. Just about every writer out there, who is not published by a mainstream publisher, thinks they can pool their resources with other writers. They think that they can give their fans to their fellow writers, and get fans from their fellow writers.

Wrong. Man, is that ever wrong.

Does Burger King share consumers with McDonald’s? No. They compete. Does Citgo share their consumers with Shell? No, they compete. Does George Martin hold a blog tour with J.K. Rowling? No! Not even their publishers set up such things. Why? It doesn’t work.

Don’t believe it? Go and follow the mainstream authors and publishers, and look at their tweets, posts, and updates. Go look at their websites. Regardless of whether or not you think their published content is any good, it is an undeniable fact that the mainstream publishers and writers sell, at least on average, better than indie or self published writers, which means that their business model works, and their business model does not involve banding together.

They compete, and they promote competition. Perhaps no quite so intensely as Nintendo and Sega did in the past, but Simon and Schuster is not trying to give fans to or get fans from Penguin Random House.

Here’s the deal; before you are published, you do want to work with other writers, not to try and share fans—thinking that if that writer sells books, you can get their fans to buy your books—you engage with other writers just to view writing from a different perspective. Look at their brand, read their voice, check out their book covers, blog formats, etc. There’s a ton of stuff you can get from other writers, but you are not trying to get their fans, or pool fans between one another. The consumer world just doesn’t work that way, and as a writer, you are also a businessman, and you have to understand business.

Another factor of business is social media. As was stated earlier, the world has opened itself up to social connections, but you have to be…wait for it…sociable.

Retweeting, and setting up auto tweets, and auto posts is the wrong approach. It is certainly a time saver, but you should not be spending the bulk of your time on social media, or even promoting your work, anyway; you should be spending the bulk of your time reading, writing, editing, and discussing topics—connecting with humans as a human.

Be sociable. Engage with other readers. Right now, before writing your novel, make an account on Goodreads, FaceBook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, Reddit, Medium, and have your own blog. Go to where the people are discussing topics you like.

Maybe, you like The Elder Scrolls. I do. I went and conversed with people who enjoyed The Elder Scrolls, and I just talked about the video games. I did not immediately try to monopolize the posts by telling everyone to drop what they were doing and come read my Skyrim fanfiction. I acted like a human being, and I discussed whatever the particular topic was. Then, when the opportunity presented itself, I let people know that I enjoyed Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim so much, I went and wrote a fanfiction. I added that if anyone was interested, the link to the free book was available, and it worked; people came to read my story.

Maybe you like HarryPotter. Believe it; plenty of people are talking HarryPotter. Join groups dedicated to HarryPotter and discuss. Then, when the opportunity presents itself, you let people know you are also working on a HarryPotter fanfcition and would love some feedback.

This is how you benefit from social media. People think that they should use social media to send out an update from their blog, or send out a link to a buy page for a book. There are times to do that, but releasing those kinds of posts on a regular basis is not what sells books. It just doesn’t work that way.

Think about it. If a new, mainstream author emerged today, and you are on Twitter, and you see a retweet from someone you follow, which states: @JohnPWriter visit http://www.jpwriter.com for my new book: Mars Raiders, are you going to run out and buy the book? Why would you? Are you even going to click the link to see what the book is about?

Here’s the bigger question; what are the odds of you even seeing that tweet?

If you start your social media presence now, before writing your debut novel, you’re selling yourself, that’s all you’re trying to do. You are creating an online presence, and people will take you seriously because you are a real person who is interacting with other, likeminded people. Then, as you write your short stories or fanfiction, you can kindly, kindly, ask people to come look at your work, but only if the opportunity is there.

The great thing about a lot of social media sites is that you can ask the question. Something along the lines of the following makes for a great opener: I want to write a Harry Potter fanfiction, can someone provide me some feedback? Don’t expect everyone who likes HarryPotter to rush on over to your question and answer it, but don’t be surprised if people are interested either; everyone likes to talk about themselves and what they enjoy.

A great tweet might also read: @JohnPWriter I’m trying to finish my #HarryPotter #Fanfiction, all comments welcome visit http://www.jpwriter.com Thanks

Social media is extremely important, but 90% of writers are using it incorrectly. These posts, however, have not been designed to teach you the intricacies of using each social platform. There are numerous books written by numerous people, and everyone has their own take on how to optimize a Twitter presence, or a FaceBook author page, or a Google+ brand page. Feel free to buy those books, just be sure to check out the one and two star reviews, not only the five star reviews.

What needs to be considered is that, empirically speaking, if you send out a tweet, which has a shelf life of about six seconds, and that tweet states: http://www.jpwriter.com come check out my new #HarryPotter #fanfiction. No one is going to pay attention.

I can prove it.

Find your favorite, indie author who is claiming they’re earning a five figure income per month, and look at their tweets. Then, look at how many followers they have. They may have a million followers, but then look at the number of likes and retweets each tweet gets. For FaceBook and other platforms, look at how many likes, shares, and comments they have. In all likelihood, it’s very few.

On the rarest of occasion, you may come across the one person who is getting mass likes, retweets, shares, and comments, and if that’s the case, they have built their brand correctly, and in that case, you should scrutinize their tweets because the working formula is in there somewhere. Most people are trying to use social media to get people to view their book or website, when they should be using their book or website to get more followers. Most writers have it backwards.

I’ll be totally honest, I have few followers on Twitter, and I don’t use FaceBook; in the end, the numbers matter very little. Don’t believe that either? Go look at Penguin Random House’s Twitter account. Look at their tweets, and see how many likes and retweets they have. Look also at how many tweets they send out per day. Read their tweets carefully. You won’t see what you expect. They certainly sell books, though, don’t they? Social media numbers mean very little.

Here’s the math: if you send out a tweet with a shelf life of six seconds, very few people will see it unless it is consistently retweeted regardless of how many followers you have, but let’s assume that one million people see this magic tweet over the course of a day. Out of one million views, if no one retweets it—or even if it is the retweeting which garners this magic tweet one million views—out of those views, maybe 1% of people will be interested enough to click on the link. That means that only ten thousand people will view the linked page. If that page is a buy page on, say, Barnes and Noble, how many of those people, those ten thousand, will be readers, people looking to buy a book? How many will be people looking to buy a book of that genre, by you, a virtually unknown author?

How many people will be interested enough to look at the title, cover, and blurb? Maybe one percent? That means that of that ten thousand, one hundred people are likely to buy the book.

Hey, one hundred sales isn’t too bad, though, right?

Let me tell you; unless your tweet is magic, your tweet isn’t going to get a million views. Think about it. When you’re on Twitter, or which ever social media outlet you prefer, how many posts do you scrutinize? How many have links to pages? How many of those do you actually click? Where do you usually wind up? A website? A blog? How much scrutiny do you give then? Have you ever actually bought a book explicitly due to a Tweet? A mention on FaceBook? A post on LinkedIn?

Are you with me?

Social media is not used to sell books or even drive traffic to your site. Social media is used to engage, sociably, with likeminded people. King and Martin have a mess of followers on Twitter because people already know those guys exist. People—fans—will follow you after visiting your site, downloading your free, short story, reading your fanfiction, or purchasing your novel, not the other way around, so you have to understand what social media does; it gives people a chance to talk, to talk about what they enjoy, and if people enjoy reading the fantasy genre then talk to those people about the fantasy genre.

Yes, you do want to Tweet and post updates, which you have made to your blog or website, but if that’s all you do with social media, it won’t get you the results you’re expecting. Why would anyone want to retweet such a thing? What is there to entice someone to click on the link? Who cares that John P. Writer just released a new, blog post entitled: fat cash for fast cats?

Also, if other writers are consistently retweeting your tweets, won’t they be missing out on potential fans or sales? If you’re constantly retweeting other writers, won’t you be suffering the same? Well, yes and no; as was discussed, you aren’t getting sales from tweets anyway, but you’re definitely losing out on attention, so there will come a time to distance yourself from other writers, and we’ll dive into that a little bit more later on.

What is important to understand is that social media does not sell products, but it can certainly sell a brand. That brand is you, so be cute, be funny, be accessible, be present. You like cats? I love cats! Post cat memes, pictures, gifs, and videos to your social media accounts. Then, find a way to relate cats to your writing, book, blog, or site.

You can easily make a cat meme with your website on it. No, it won’t be a clickable hyperlink, but people will still see your website, or perhaps, the title of your book. Make a cat meme that says: Grumpy catwuvs Mars Raiders. Don’t you wuv grumpy cat?

Yes, it’s absolutely stupid, but it creates a mental link, a connection. People will associate something they know and love with something unfamiliar. After someone sees grumpy cat wuvving the title of your book or website a half a dozen times, they’re going to get curious.

Own a cat? Sweet! Snap a pic of your cat sleeping on your laptop, and make claims that Mrs. Whiskers if feeling left out because you’ve been writing so much.

Feel me?

This is business. This is marketing, and you can use social media to market your brand, but you cannot use social media to get new readers and sell books by simply auto tweeting: come check out my new #fantasy #adventure The Ring of Lords.

Yes, as with everything else, this is time consuming, and there are numerous variables, which you must calculate specifically for your title, audience, genre, etc. Social media is a powerful tool, but even the best Phillip’s head screwdriver is useless if all your screws are flatheads head, right? You have to use the proper tools properly, and I promise you, the number of followers you have on Twitter or any social media site does not equate to the number of visitors who will spend time on your site and subsequently buy your books.

So what sell books? Quality content and people. If people like you then they like your brand. If they like your brand they will discuss it with others through their social media accounts. This is why you haven’t written your novel yet. You are writing short stories and giving them away, so that you can learn what your audience likes. Then, you will write your fanfiction, and give that away, too. Then, when it’s time to write your novel, people will already be waiting for it. You will already have a better understanding on how to improve the quality of your writing, too.

It sounds like a great deal of effort. It is! It will pay off, though. Engage people who already enjoy what you enjoy. Build connections. Build your brand. Release quality content, and then people will sell your content for you.

You can’t possibly sell thousands of copies of your own books, but if you sell ten copies, and your fans talk about them, thus selling more copies, and then everyone is selling tens of copies of your books then suddenly everyone is buying your books. People, consumers, fans sell products, not social media.

Thanks, you guys have been great. I’m going to be releasing one more post in this series, so stay tuned. If you’re interested in learning how to improve your content, read any of my “Editing” posts. Also visit the Editing Services tab.

So you want to be a writer part 3

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Last time, we touched on short stories, and no, I will never stop harping over how important it is to write short stories, especially at the onset of your journey to living as a successful writer. This time, however, I’m going to talk about fanfiction.

Fanfiction is very important. Fanfiction is a must for a writer. As a matter of fact, fanfiction is practically the only way a screen writer can become a working screen writer. Fanfiction is a story based on an existing world, and every writer needs to write fanfiction for a multitude of reasons, but let’s back up.

There was a time, about 20 or 30 years ago, when writers just like you were struggling to become successful, and honestly, not too much has changed. Even back then, and probably even as far back as 50 or 60 years ago, vanity presses existed, so self publishing is not the new fad the mainstream publishers are pretending it is, what has changed is the popularity and success of self publishing, but we’ll talk more about that later.

What I want to talk about is the process through which your predecessors became successful. There was a time when readers read these weird things called magazines (ma-guh-zeens), and magazines had pictures, and articles, and interviews, and ads, and short stories. Now, we see all this same stuff on Quora, Reddit, FaceBook, and other social media outlets, right? We see this stuff on websites, too. If you Google “fanfiction” all kinds of stuff will come up, right? If you Google “free short stories” all kinds of stuff will come up, right?

Well, 20 and 30 years ago, people subscribed to magazines for the same content. People don’t really subscribe to magazines anymore, but you still want to write, and you still want readers to read your stuff, right? That means you need to adapt to a changing environment, but the good news is that this environment has evolved to a stable level; enough writers have figured out how to game the system.

Last time, we talked about short stories, and they are perhaps the most important aspect of becoming a successful writer. Back in the day, writers submitted short stories to writing magazines, and they were paid pennies per word, and sometimes, they weren’t paid at all, but if the story was good enough (well edited and free of errors) it was printed in the magazine, and if readers enjoyed the story, the writer had a chance to become known, and if the writer became known and liked, the writer had a chance to submit a novel to a publisher and actually be taken seriously.

Yes, even 20 or 30 years ago, it was insanely difficult to become a published, mainstream writer. You have to go back about 100 years to reach a time when writing was easy. 100 years ago, all you had to do was be able to write a book from start to finish. Then, if you found an actual publisher, they used their editor to make sure the book was its best (hire an editor!) and the book was released to the public. 100 years ago, when half the American population didn’t know how to read, writing an entire book from start to finish was a major accomplishment, and anyone who had the time and gumption, yeah, gumption, to do so was taken seriously.

Today, practically everyone can read and write, and writing is mandatory, so writing a book from start to finish is no longer considered a big deal; everyone can do it, and actually, lots of people do do it. (Do do…but there’s no time for that now!)

Let’s get back to the present. If people aren’t really reading magazines anymore, where or what are they reading? Where were you reading before you started writing? FaceBook? Google+? LinkedIn? Maybe, you were trolling Barnes and Noble online for free material. Maybe, you were trolling Amazon for free material. Maybe, you were trolling FanFiction for free material. Maybe, you were trolling the web and stumbled onto a writer’s blog where they posted free material, so that’s where you have to post your work, and you need to post it for free, at least for now.

This is where fanfiction starts to become your key component. First and foremost, you have a favorite genre. You know what genre you enjoy, and you know what you want to write. You also know which shows, movies, books, video games, and comic books you enjoy. You want to be a successful writer, so you’re probably a nerd or a dork, and that’s okay; in fact, that’s great. Use it!

Go to where the nerds and dorks are, and give the nerds and dorks what they want. The nerds and dorks are at Wattpad, and Quotev, and especially FanFiction. Since you’re not yet trying to earn money from your novel, this also a great time to put into practice everything you learned from writing short stories.

Now, you’re going to learn the best way to structure an entire novel. You’re going to learn how to structure chapters, build suspense, slow or quicken the story’s pacing, and other integral aspects of writing. What better way than to practice with something you already know?

For one, it takes a little of the pressure off because you at least have an entire back story and cast. The problem then becomes staying true to the franchise. If you’re writing Superman fanfiction, and you make Clark Kent a popular, outgoing, ladies man, people will be turned off by your presentation. If you’re writing a Dragon Ball Z fanfiction, and you make Goku a coward, people will be very disappointed, so there is a different struggle, but if you know your subject matter inside and out, it shouldn’t be that difficult to stay true to the franchise. Then, you can focus on the technical aspects of novel writing.

At this point, you should be presenting your story as you write it (after reading what you wrote once or twice) on Wattpad, Quotev, and your blog, and sending out updates through social media.

Now, I’m gonna’ go on a bit of a detour here. Stay with me.

One of the best sites a writer can use is Goodreads. Goodreads has a blog. Readers participate in discussions. Readers and writers can join groups. Honestly, the same thing can be said for Google+ and LinkedIn, so take what I say about Goodreads, and apply it to Google+ and LinkedIn as well.

Now’s the perfect time to join groups, groups of readers, and groups of writers, and talk to the readers about what they like, and then invite them to look at your blog. Then, talk to writers about what they like, and invite them, too. Be courteous. Be respectful. Engage people as a person, not a salesman.

Post your fanfiction to Goodreads, Google+, and LinkedIn, and your personal blog, of course, and invite the people of each site to view the corresponding blog, which will also have a link back to your personal blog.

Listen to the feedback as you go along. Thank people for their time. DO NOT ENGAGE NEGATIVE PEOPLE.

Right now, If you’ve practiced writing short stories and are in the middle of writing your fanfiction, all you want to do is release something like a chapter per week to each of your blogs. It gives you something to blog about. It gives people something to read without demanding a commitment. It gives you the feeling of being a writer.

The reason you want to delay publishing your fanfiction to FanFiction is simple and important. FanFiction has some serious readers, and they expect, demand, a level of quality you may not yet be able to provide. They want their books free of errors, true to the franchise, and well structured. They want your fanfiction to be an actual book that sounds as though it was written by an actual writer, not someone who is trying to become a writer, so, for now, stick to the other sites, and get all the feedback you can get.

After your fanfiction has been written to completion, it’s time to go back and read your old short stories. You’ll have grown leaps and bounds as a writer and an editor by the time you finish your fanfiction novel. You’ll even pick up on nuances you weren’t able to grasp when you first began writing, so touch up your short stories and re-release them; it should be pretty easy to do so.

At this point, you also have something new to blog about, your journey as a writer, and you can invite people to read your updated stories. You can start getting professional covers for your short stories and your fanfiction.

It’s just as important to be a real person throughout this journey. Don’t even think about going around, telling everyone that your stuff is better than what’s out there, not yet, because right now, you want people to like you. If people like you, they will be more receptive to your posts, discussions, comments, and invitations.

Now is also a pretty good time to hire a competent editor who can teach you how to better write for an audience.

I have a style of writing that I enjoy employing, but it is not necessarily what readers enjoy reading, and it’s my job as a writer, who is charging for a product, to find a balance between what I enjoy and what my audience enjoys, hence the editing.

Regardless of what you think you know at this point, I cannot stress it enough that the best and most successful writers have the best editors. Editors are paramount. They read your work differently than you do, but you also have to be careful because until you’re published by a mainstream publisher, you’re going to have to hire your own editor. Of course, a lot of the mainstream editors are terrible anyway, I’ve written about that as well, but that’s not really the point because if you’re published by a mainstream publisher, you don’t have to spend your money, and you don’t have a say on what the book is like at the publication stage, see what I mean?

If you’re spending your money to hire an editor, you want someone who understands both the writing process and the reading process. If your publisher has an editor, which they force onto you then you have no say, no control, but their job is to sell books, and at the very least, a mainstream publisher will try to do that. This can’t be said about some of the smaller presses or hybrid presses unfortunately, but we’ll discuss different methods of publishing later on.

At any rate, once your fanfiction is polished to perfection, publish it to FanFiction. There are people—nerds, dorks, readers—trolling the site, looking specifically for stories about franchises they love; Supernatural, Twilight, The Hulk, Game of Thrones, Skyrim, and more. These readers are looking for something fresh, and new, and written by a competent fan, someone who enjoys the franchise as much as they do, and you want to be the person who supplies that fanfiction.

Why? Because if you do a good job, these dorks and nerds will become your loyal fans. These are the people who will buy your original novel. These are the people who will post a link to your work on their social media pages. These are the people who will generate buzz for your book. These are also the people who will tell you what they like and don’t like about your writing, so you will also learn what to do to please them, and you want to please them. Nerds and dorks are the foundation upon which all great writing is based. I should know; I’m one of them.

I have to add right here that I didn’t understand any of this when I started writing. I skipped so many integral steps that I really hindered my career. My only saving grace was that I had some really neat story ideas, but if I had followed the advice I’m giving now, I also would have applied these same principles to writing my original novel, and then, instead of zero sales on my quarterly reports for years, I might have actually made some money off my first books (even though they were terribly written).

Back to business now—treat your fanfiction novel as if it were your original novel. Get a professional cover made for it. Publish it to Smashwords. Be careful with copyrights, and be sure to let everyone know that the book is fanfiction and cannot be sold for a profit; for all intents and purposes, this book is your original novel, and you must use it to make a name for yourself, which also means it must be free of errors, well written, and engaging.

You may now be wondering what any of this has to do with magazines and the writers who started becoming successful 20 or 30 years ago. Well, here’s the deal. Since those magazines to which they submitted their stories don’t exist anymore, and whatever prints or digital prints there are are owned by those writers now, the mainstream publishers have purposefully built a barricade to keep out new writers.

I know, it sounds crazy, but I’m dead freaking serious. They have this special good ole’ boy club, and they have it because they are terrified. The mainstream writers have all run into a major disconnect with the fans, but this happens to every facet of the entertainment industry every decade or so.

Doesn’t music change drastically every ten years? Don’t movies and television shows change drastically every ten years? Do you know why? Because every ten to twenty years there’s a new generation of people; there’s a new culture with a new language, and a new set of goals, and the major companies can hardly keep up. The book publishers are the worst at keeping up, and that’s why they’re terrified of self publishers, but, and this is a big BUT! when they find a self published individual who is doing well, they try to swoop in and sign the writer.

This is exactly what happened to Christopher Paolini. This is kind of what happened to E. L. James.

You see, it used to be that in order to garner the attention of a literary agent, or even a publisher, one had to get published by those magazines. Now, since those magazines don’t exist, or are shutting writers out, an up and coming writer has to find a new way to break in to the world of reading, but hey, that’s exactly what I’ve been teaching you with these posts.

Right here, I want to add that it pisses me off the way The Huffington Post and other journals smear self published writing. If it’s so bad, why do the publishers and agents keep their eyes open for successful self published writers? Because self publishing is actually a great way to connect with new readers, and when a great self published writer is drawing attention, the major companies swoop in to steal, sorry, augment their success.

Well, at any rate, you want to be a writer. It’s why you’re reading this. Start by thinking about your idea. Join social media groups. Start taking part in group discussions with readers. Start reading what other up and coming writers are writing. Start your blogs now. Invite readers and writers to talk about what they like, and all the while, you can start writing your short stories.

Then, you’ll already have a network willing to look at your short stories, a network of writers and readers, which is important. Then, when the time is right, you can publish your short stories for free, and they’ll sit there, bringing you more and more fans. Next, write your fanfiction. Develop your voice, and really create a fan base. I can’t stress it enough, building a fan base before you release your debut novel is paramount, and using social media to send people to your site to buy your book doesn’t work—another topic for discussion later on.

Yes…this is going to take a great deal of effort on your part. Yes…this is going to take a long time. I know you want to write your novel today. Hell, you may have already written it and started shopping for literary agents or publishers, but without the world’s biggest rabbit’s foot, literary agents and publishers won’t take you seriously.

I’m not saying it’s impossible. In fact, it happens all the time; a first time writer writes a novel, and it gets picked up, but will that happen for you? What if it doesn’t? Shouldn’t you prepare for that possibility? Don’t you want to start off on the right foot with as many opportunities as possible?

What I’m trying to help you accomplish is the building of a solid foundation. If you follow the advice presented in these three posts, you can garner some serious attention for yourself, and then, if you want to go the mainstream route, you’ll have a better chance of being picked up by a literary agent or publisher because they want you to be marketable, they want you to bring them your fans, not the other way around. If you want to go the self publishing route, and there are numerous reasons to do so, you’ll already be setting yourself up for success in that field, too.

Now, don’t think this is the last post on how to become a successful writer. We’re only just beginning. Thanks for reading, and I implore you, if you have any kind of input; if you want to talk about your experience, your pitfalls, your successes, please share. I can’t help everyone by myself. Being an indie or self published writer doesn’t mean working alone; that’s a huge misconception. All it means is that I don’t have the backing of a major corporation, so let’s work together.

Readers, talk about what you like and don’t like. Writers, talk about your struggles and successes.

Don’t forget to check out my Editing Services. Thanks again.