Social Media for Masochists

The Knowing Ones tell the writers these days to get on Goodreads™, the social media site for folks who like to read books. It’s one of those handy tips for success, like get on Twitter and collect a hundred followers. Or a thousand, I forget which. The publishers won’t promote your work unless they see that it doesn’t need to be promoted, but they will give you these tips on how to become famous.

I was on Goodreads a couple of years ago but I quit. Well, I tried to quit, but I couldn't figure out how to get off it so I changed my name to blank. “ .” Then Goodreads stopped being a thorn in my side after awhile, and I forgot why I quit, because who has time to dwell on old injuries? Okay, the Irish. You know what Irish Alzheimer’s is, right? You forget everything except a grudge. Anyway now that I know we’re actually Dutch I don't have to do that Irish stuff. So I forgive everybody. If you were ever on my list, you're off it. That includes Goodreads. Or so I thought.

Today I got back on again.

The idea is to enter a warm bath of collegiality with your readers, the friendly creatures, who are delighted to be able to interact with the writers. This is the expectation that the Knowing Ones hold out.This time I opened an account where I gave Goodreads my married name instead of my writing name, thinking to sneak up on my loving readers slowly. Goodreads offered to collect my Facebook friends and invite them to join me as Goodreads friends. You may have gotten a message from my Facebook account about this. I let them go ahead with it, because who doesn’t need friends?

Then Goodreads wanted to know what sort of thing I liked to read. Images of book covers appeared, and they invited me to click on them and rate them with stars if I had read them. I had read a couple of hundred. I gave them all four or five stars. If I don't like a book, I cast it aside and forget it. I don't go online and complain that it made my eyes bleed, as the moderns seem to do. The selection of books I was offered seemed mystifying. Most of them I had never heard of. But then, I'm not a well-read person. Nothing that's on my night table appeared in Goodread’s selection except for Russell Shorto’s The Island at the Center of the World, a riveting and compelling account of the settling of Dutch Manhattan. It was full of my ancestors. I gave it five well-deserved stars and noticed that most of the other books Goodreads was pushing at me had also been on the New York Times bestseller list.

You can probably guess what I did next. “I’ll just take a peek,” I said to myself. “Maybe those reviews of my last couple of books weren’t as bad as I thought at the time. I’m feeling all mellow right now. My Dutch blood, and all that. I’ll just go have a look.”

Here are three that caught my eye, all one-star. These are not excerpts, they are the entire reviews:

“Wanted to read it for the subject matter of early silent picture production, but the writing was rather amateurish.” 

“Poorly written mystery that takes place when talking movies are just beginning. Time period is interesting and that is it. Book by New Jersey author” 

“do not waste your time on this stupid, poorly written, ridiculously silly book.”

Amateurish? Hey, I've been writing professionally for more years that you've been alive, you twit. Poorly written? What makes you say that? Then I thought, who are these people? If they hate my work, what sort of stuff do they think is good?

I clicked on the last one’s face, which brought up her profile page. There was a graph showing how many books she had given one star to, and two stars, and so forth. Most of what she read she actually liked, so it wasn’t as though she panned everything on general principles. She just hated my work. But the bar graph gave no indication of what it was that she did like. Maybe if I saw her whole profile it would say. But Goodreads told me that I was not allowed to see her profile unless I became her friend. Her friend? Are you kidding me? But then I thought, yes. I should do that. Maybe her mind is young and unformed. Or maybe she is a frazzled housewife without the time and energy to savor my deathless prose. Or maybe it's a bad book. No, that can’t be it.

Perhaps I will befriend her and get to the bottom of this. In an environment as hostile to writers as Goodreads it’s important to have friends. And you know what they say: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. That was Machiavelli, wasn’t it? He was Italian, not Dutch. Come to think of it, Goodreads offered me The Prince as a book to rate. Of course I’ve read it. But where am I going to get the nerve to rate it, a classic for hundreds of years? I would have to assume the character of an adolescent Goodreads reviewer. I’d have to, like, give it one star and say, “OMG! It made my eyes bleed!”

© 2014 Kate Gallison

Your Home Page Needs These Links

After straightening out my thoughts on social media last week I ran out and got a severely short haircut, so short that almost everyone I met on the streets of Lambertville that day remarked upon it, most of them favorably, bless their hearts, one or two saying that I must be very brave. It's a Scorpio thing, I told them. We Scorpios like to completely reinvent ourselves every so often.

Now, however, my web site is obsolete. That woman has hair down to her shoulders. Like my head, my home page must now be reinvented. By me, since I'm my own web designer. So the appearance of the thing needs to change. I'm going to play around with different backgrounds, colors, fonts, and graphics for a while and see if I can come up with something I'm pleased with before I go completely blind. There are elements I won't change, though I might move them to a different place on the page. These are links to various sub-pages. A home page without these links isn't doing its job.

ABOUT (or Bio, or All About Kate, or whatever.) Clicking on this should take the viewer to a short bio, a long bio, and a head shot.

BLOG A link to kategallison.blogspot.com. Some writers run a journal on their home page. I like Blogger because it accepts comments and tracks page views.

SCHEDULE (or Appearances, or Public Appearances.) This links to a calendar or a list of signings, conferences, and lectures. That way folks will know when you'll be in town.

BOOKS (or Works.) Everything I ever wrote that made it into print, with pictures of covers and short descriptions.

MEDIA KIT This should link to a page full of classy, hi-res photos suitable for inclusion in newspaper articles and the cover of MYSTERY SCENE (I should live so long). Now I have to get new pictures taken. My hair is all cut off. Bummer. Maybe that's what they meant when they told me I was brave.

CONTACT This can bring up your email address, or show a page with your email address, your post office box if you have one, and your twitter handle. I'm thinking a post office box might be a neat idea in case fans want to send me gifts of jewelry or shoes. It's also useful for dealing with correspondence from convicts. If you want to do that.

You might also include a link to reviews, if you have a whole bunch of nice ones, a link to free stories and chapters, and a link to your book trailers. But the first six links I mentioned, or five links, if you don't keep a blog, are the most important.

It is also interesting to note that a page without text on it tends to be ignored by search engines. So put some text on your page. Kate Gallison – World's Greatest Writer. Something along those lines.

Anyway here goes. I'm going to shoot for something pretty.

Kate Gallison

Riding the Beast of Social Media

The cool weather is back. I wake from my long summer's torpor and pick up my Authors Guild Bulletin. It says here that other writers are prospering in their careers through skillful use of social media.

How does one do this? A couple of years ago I got some advice from Janet Reid, the Query Shark, who gave me tips on improving my web site (www.kategallison.com), told me to post on my blog three times a week, and guided me onto Twitter. My Twitter handle is @kategallison. Oh, please follow me. I still don't have many followers. On the other hand I don't tweet much. But this is about to change.

Alafair Burke's Puppy

Alafair Burke (@alafairburke) is good on Twitter, Janet says. I follow her, and it's true. She shares personal stuff without grossly invading her own privacy, a fine line to walk, and interacts gracefully with other tweeters. Besides being a lovely person and an engaging writer, Alafair has a really cute puppy.

J.T. Ellison (@thrillerchick) was mentioned in the Authors Guild article as having an excellent Facebook presence. I looked, and it's true. Odyl helped her design the application, and Involver handles her mailing list. Constant Contact is one of many other services that will do this for people. The mailing list is used to direct the newsletter.

Maureen Johnson (@maureenjohnson) won an award for her Twitter activities. She's a lot of fun to follow. Her web site is very nice, having been developed over a period of years. The visual design is gorgeous, and the functions work well.

All of these women are writers of enviable success, and owe some of it to social media. What are they doing that the rest of us can emulate? Here's a plan.

Write a really excellent book. (Hey, I did that. A couple of times.)

Choose your social media venue carefully. Don't overextend yourself. Nobody does everything. Remember you're going to have to update early and often. Here's what's out there that's been useful for reaching readers:

• Your web site. You have to have one. I'll tell you what needs to be on it in my next post, and suggest ways to put it together whether or not you have technical expertise. Meanwhile check out the above links to other people's sites.
• Your blog. That can be the same as your web site, with a little tweaking. Blogger supports custom URLs, and a number of other platforms probably do too. (If you don't know what any of  that means, don't worry about it. We'll talk later.)
• Your newsletter. You will write this at regular intervals and your mailing service will mail it out to the people who gave them their emails and said they wanted it. (I haven't been doing one. Maybe later.)
• Facebook. You can put up an author page on Facebook, which is different from the "wall" you use to send baby pictures to Aunt Fanny. It can, and should, be beautifully decorated and fancy.
• Twitter. Post short, clever observations here, hang around to see what goes on, and become involved in conversations. Post links to items of interest.
• Goodreads. You should explore that. I'm no good at it.
• Youtube. You can put book trailers up, if you have the skills or the money, or you can post home movies of your puppy.

There are others. These are the most popular right now. I don't understand the usefulness of LinkedIn to writers unless they're looking for day jobs, but there are groups on LinkedIn where you can talk to other writers.

Be open to hiring help. (For setting up pages and mailing lists, that is, not for writing tweets, blog posts, or Facebook remarks. That's supposed to be you talking.)

So here I go, all set to drum up a little interest before the next book comes out (MONKEYSTORM, or maybe BUCKER DUDLEY.) I'm going to try out some of the things mentioned in the Authors Guild article as well as the things I talked about here. I'll let you know how it goes.

I am not going to get a puppy.

Kate Gallison

Internet Constant Contact: How Much Is Too Much?

We need to talk.  Before my thoughts on this subject solidify.

On Facebook, two or three of my friends tend to post or share pictures eight or ten times quickly within half an hour or so.  On Twitter, there are people who tweet twelve or fifteen times a day.

“Bling!”  “Bling!” If my phone makes a noise announcing a text message, I pay attention.  It could be a family member who needs help.  It could be a witty friend inviting me for a chat and a glass or three of wine.  It could be my agent announcing a movie deal!  Most likely: it’s another writer tweeting to announce a new blog post.  Sometimes, it all seems like a bit much.

I agree wholeheartedly that we all need to take full advantage of the opportunities available from sites like Facebook and Twitter.  I have a feeling I don’t do enough.  You may feel the same.  Like most of the writers I know well, I am more or less desperate to attract attention to my work.  I am not at all above using shameless self-promotion.  Look what I am doing right now, for instance.  And yes, I will FB and tweet links to this rant.  This is all true.  But that said, I for one will benefit from some discussion of the question “How much is too much?” Is all this social media stuff something to do while procrastinating about getting on with the next book? 

Getting a substantive conversation going on a blog is a tricky business, but I hold out hope that you will weigh in on this.  How much is just enough when it comes to these sorts of communications?  And how many tweets or postings a day would you say are too many?  How should we space them out?  And how would you politely tell that wonderful writer whose work you so admire that telling everyone on FB every time her cat sneezes is not going to get us to like her more?

 Before I start annoying the stuffing out of all my friends, I really need to know what you think?

Annamaria Alfieri

Social Media: The Next Bubble?

I sat down at the breakfast table this morning and booted Twitter on the Macbook. As the familiar cerulean page came up I found myself facing that eternal question: What the @#$% am I doing on Twitter? Why am I writing two blogs a week, free for nothing, when I could be working on my next book, the book my agent is waiting for, the book my readers are waiting for, all three of them, book one of a thrilling new series whose name I won't even make public for fear someone will steal this terrific title before my book comes out?

And, lo, there in the Twittersphere was the answer. Someone had tweeted a link to a blog post entitled "4 social media lessons from the world of book publishing." Eagerly I opened the page and began to read. Now I would find out what I was doing on Twitter.

The first thing that occurred to me was that social media is a career now. An industry, even. The publicity department of one of my own publishing houses employs a social media expert full time. That's her job. Social media. It pays her a good living. It pays a good living to the people who put the social media blogs together. The social media advice books, maybe not so much. Books, you know.

So here we have yet another instance of the American economy sliding into the production of nothing but services, which is to say the production of nothing. Social media is a bubble. It is the real estate boom of the twenty-first century. The social media experts sell you the means to make hundreds of artificial friends, very few of whom will actually say hello to you on the street, meet you for lunch in Doylestown, bring you a casserole when you get out of the hospital, show up at your signing, your wedding, or your funeral, tell you when you have spinach on your teeth, or stand by you in times of real trouble.

But the blog looked slick, maybe even helpful to folks who buy the concept. So I retweeted the link to the post. I could tell you what the four handy tips were, but I would have to charge you money.

Kate Gallison