Social Networking. The Dos, The Don'ts, and the Huh?s - J M Kelley

Ah, social networking. The key. The golden ticket. Open a Twitter account, shoot out your book’s purchase links, and sit back and watch the money roll in.

Right?

Wrong-o.

Don’t misinterpret me. I think social networking plays a huge role in getting the word out about your writing. If you figure out the fine balance between promotion and spamming, you’ve got it made in the shade.

But it’s not just about sharing purchase links. The online world offers so much more to enrich your experience as a writer. You can connect with your favorite authors, and even have legitimate dialogue with the ones who enjoy interacting with their fan base.

My favorite moment came when I took part in a “twitterview” and not only managed to have people chiming in, but someone bought my book mid-event. Sometimes, I find a plea for purchase tinged with the right amount of snark yields a random book sale. Personal interaction is always key.

Social media, it is a wonderful thing. But there are a lot of hitches I never considered. And a lot of hurdles I can’t always figure out how to clear.

See, the online world has a good side and a bad side. You have so much at your fingertips. You can link. You can blog. You can tweet. You can have a Facebook fan page, your own website. You can wear the letters off your homerow keys with all the ways an author can network online.

But how the heck do you get anybody to listen to you?

Ah, there’s the rub. Talking to the virtual brick wall. Believe me, some days I feel like that’s all I do.

There are so many authors online. It’s great. You can network with thousands of people who feel the same as you about writing and reading. You talk shop. Commiserate about writer’s block. Cheer along as someone makes fantastic progress on their manuscript. Cross your fingers as someone else sends a full manuscript to an agent for review.

It’s a giant online crew of people in the exact same boat you’re in. You love it. You want to hug all the authors surrounding you.

But then a nagging question starts to form: Am I marketing to other marketing authors and that’s it?

And then the next nagging question bullies the first one out of position: How the heck am I supposed to do this and keep my day job?

Sometimes, the despair sets in. I’m a blue collar girl living in an easy-access-to-the-internet world. I don’t have a desk. I don’t have a work computer. I don’t have a system for getting around my duties and getting online during the day. So how do I find a way to get readers to hear me when I can’t always be around to do the self-promotion?

I love social media. But how do I get it to love me ? The question I pose, kind readers, is this: How do you make the internet work for you ? What are the pros and cons you’ve discovered about the fine art of social networking?


J.M. Kelley


J.M. Kelley's debut novel, Drew in Blue , is a contemporary romance available from Lazy Day Publishing. Drew in Blue was nominated for Best Contemporary of 2010 by The Romance Reviews, and is a TRR and Night Owl Reviews Top Pick. Drew is available for download from Amazon, B&N, All Romance, and OmniLit. J.M.'s dabbles next in the paranormal realm with her short erotic romance, Laws of Attraction , included in the Lazy Day Publishing anthology, Indulgence , available on Amazon on October 19th. For information and news, please visit http://www.jmkelleywrites.com/

The Social Network Debate ! ! !

This week is dedicated to Social Networking! I had a huge response on this topic alone. On the 5th Join J.M Kelly for the Do's, The Don'ts and the Huh?s  - On the 6th Deb Nam-Krane tells us why Getting Noticed Offline Is Hard If We DONT Have An ONLINE Presence and on the 7th Shay Fabbro warns: Aspring Writers Need To Be Aware of the Demand on Their Time.

A Quick Tip from Erin Cawood:

The world of a writer can be a lonely place sometimes. There are times when you're locked away for hours, days, weeks, months, working on your masterpiece, or you may a have deadlines, or your muse may have abandonned you, or you've read your last manuscript after months or your characters aren't talking back to you. All of a sudden your world doesn't make sense to you anymore. That's when the first of many benefits of the time consuming social networking comes in.

There are thousands of like minded people on the web who understand exactly what you're going through. 

When I first approached guest bloggers on the subject of "To Be or No To Be A Writer" I used social networking as an example of why its great to be a writer and why its not so great to be a writer. Never before have we been able to be in touch with readers, to have instant feedback, to be engaged, interact and connect they way we are able to with sites like Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter and, of course, Blogger. The problem with them is if you're a member to all of them, you would spend all of your life using them. My tip, tweetdeck or hootsuite or some other multi-social network desktop app. I use tweetdeck, it allows me to post to most of my social networks at once (or one at a time) and I only have the one screen open with a feed to notify me of any updates from all networks. 
    

My Perfect Hero is Flawed - By Shay Fabbro

I think writing heroes and heroines is the hardest part of writing. I think many (if not most) writers want to create heroes that are everything we’re NOT: perfect. It’s difficult for people to face what’s not perfect about themselves and therefore it’s easy to want to live vicariously through a character without flaws. But let’s be honest!

Readers don’t want to see page after page of ridiculous perfection.

They want characters they can relate to and the only way to do that it to create characters with flaws. But with just enough flaws to be realistic. It’s a tough balancing act, actually. I tend to give my characters flaws that are similar to my own, but exaggerated a little or just a tad different. I also use annoying tendencies I observe in other people. And if the writer REALLY knows what they’re doing, they will have their hero/heroine grow and change over the course of the book.

This is even more important in the case of a series. Nothing is worse than reading three or four books where the characters are exactly the same as they were in the first book. There must be some growth. I think this is particularly important for YA books. JK Rowling was superb in her treatment of the Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Each one grew and matured in their own way and changed over the course of the seven book series.

Shay Fabbro 

Author of the Portals of Destiny series and The Adventures of Alexis Davenport series

Website: shayfabbro.com