Social Media for the Pre-Published Writer

By Annette Dashofy

Some of the questions I’m most asked when I talk to a group of writers trying to break into publishing deal with social networking. Most of us have a love/hate relationship with it. On the downside, it eats up chunks of time when we should be writing. On the upside, it can serve as a much needed escape if you’re going stir crazy, as a source of research (haven’t you ever posted a question about your WIP to Facebook or Twitter?), and it can expand your marketing reach.

I’ll get back to that last part in a minute.

Did you just say, “I don’t have anything to sell now, so I’ll wait to get on (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc) until after I sign a contract.”

WRONG. Do not wait.

Several years ago, I took a marketing workshop. At the time, we were talking about Yahoo groups. The thing I remember above all else was the advice to join groups you enjoy and MAKE FRIENDS. Don’t mention you have a book, but add it to your signature line. When someone notices and asks, you can say, “Oh, yes, I’ve published a book.” BECAUSE YOU ARE THEIR FRIEND, they will want to buy their friend’s book!

It’s the same with Facebook and Twitter. Join NOW. Participate in the mindless chatter. Post cute cat pictures. Make friends. Sure you can mention in passing that you’re writing a book, but don’t make it your entire social media life.

Besides, do we really need more people asking, “Have you got that book published yet?” Seriously. We get enough of that from our families.

I was on Facebook for several years before getting published. By the time I made the announcement, I had “friends” from all over the country and beyond who were thrilled by my news.

If I’d waited until I had a contract to start, I’d have been way behind. Plus I’d have come across as a spammer, which no one likes.

That bit about expanding your marketing reach I mentioned earlier? Many of those Facebook friends I’ve made over the years bought my books. Thankfully, they liked them. They told their friends, both in person and online. Those friends also bought my books.

Facebook is word of mouth on steroids.

If you cringe at the thought of all those social media outlets, my advice is try them, find the one (or two) that you honestly enjoy, and focus on those. I love Facebook. Too much, perhaps. But I’m on Twitter a little. Pinterest a little less. I have friends who prefer Twitter to Facebook, and that’s cool.

If you hate a social media site, don’t bother with it. Your discomfort will show through your posts, which makes it impossible to build real friendships with others. You’ll come across as one of those dreaded spammers I mentioned.

Remember, it’s called social networking for a reason. Be social. Network. Have fun with it. Make friends. We can always use a few more friends. Right?


Annette Dashofy is the USA Today best selling author of the Zoe Chambers mystery series about a paramedic and deputy coroner in rural Pennsylvania’s tight-knit Vance Township. CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE was published in March, followed by LOST LEGACY, which was released in September. Her short fiction includes a 2007 Derringer Award nominee featuring the same characters as her novels. Watch for BRIDGES BURNED, the third mystery of the series, coming early April 2015.


CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE: Zoe Chambers, paramedic and deputy coroner in rural Pennsylvania’s tight-knit Vance Township, has been privy to a number of local secrets over the years, some of them her own. But secrets become explosive when a dead body is found in the Township Board President’s abandoned car. As a January blizzard rages, Zoe and Police Chief Pete Adams launch a desperate search for the killer, even if it means uncovering secrets that could not only destroy Zoe and Pete, but also those closest to them.

LOST LEGACY: On a sultry summer afternoon, Paramedic Zoe Chambers responds to a call and finds a farmer’s body hanging from the rafters of his hay barn. What first appears to be a suicide quickly becomes something sinister when Zoe links the victim to a pair of deaths forty-five years earlier. Her attempts to wheedle information from her mother and stepfather hit a brick wall of deception, one that brings into question everything Zoe knows about her late father, who died in a car crash when she was eight. Or did he?

The Point of Being a Writer

By Janice Hamrick

 

Before I wrote my first novel, I thought getting that first book published was The Goal, The Dream, The Point of being an author. Sort of like reaching the Promised Land, only better.

What I’ve found is that it’s actually more like reaching that first rest stop on the first day of a two week cross-country driving vacation. Sure, you’re delighted to get out and stretch, and you feel great about having come so far. But then a glance at the map makes you realize you haven’t even made it out of your state, no one else cares whether you keep going or not, and you still have a LONG way to go.

Getting my first book contract opened the floodgates on an immense and overwhelming river of writing-related-but-not-actually-writing activities. My editor said I needed a website, a Twitter account, a Facebook presence, and a blog. And it wasn’t enough to just set them up – I needed to actually engage readers, writers, and anyone else I could think of, preferably on a daily basis. Oh, and also try to get as many signings and speaking engagements as possible. 

As he described all the things I suddenly needed to do to promote my book, a small voice in my head whispered, “But when will I have time to write?”

I didn’t listen to that voice. I plunged in to the full extent of my abilities and financial resources. I made a ton of mistakes, and I did a few things right. I learned a lot about social media and about the incredible kindness of other writers making this same journey. But in the end, publication and all the trappings that surround it are really only distractions. Sometimes shiny, fun distractions…but still distractions.

Because I was wrong about The Point of being an author. The Point is not to be published or to have 15,000 followers on Twitter or even to get rave reviews in the New York Times.  Those things are fabulous – but they are just the sprinkles on the donut. The Point is to write. To sit in the quiet hours of the day and have an entire world come to life in your head and flow, however imperfectly, onto the page. The Point is to embrace your unique talents and experience and create something that no one else in the entire world could create. 

If success follows, that’s wonderful. We all want that. But the real lesson I’ve learned is to focus on the only thing I can control – the writing. And that’s my advice to anyone who has just published their first novel. Do what you can to promote your book, but don’t let that effort cut into your writing time. In the end, the best thing you can do for your writing career is to write your next novel.

Janice Hamrick Bio:

Janice Hamrick is the author of the award-winning Jocelyn Shore mystery series. Her first novel DEATH ON TOUR (2011, Minotaur) won the MWA/Minotaur First Crime Novel award and was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark and RT Reviewers’ Choice awards.  In the newest novel, DEATH RIDES AGAIN (2013), Jocelyn visits her family’s Texas ranch only to find that a cousin is missing, another has been shot, and opening day at the new racetrack is off to a murderous start.  Janice was born in Oklahoma, grew up near Kansas City, and now lives in Austin with more dogs than she cares to admit. Visit her at www.janicehamrick.com, Facebook, and Twitter.

About DEATH RIDES AGAIN:

Texas high school teacher Jocelyn Shore was enjoying Thanksgiving at her Uncle Kel’s ranch until she discovers Uncle Kel threatening his son-in-law Eddy with a shotgun. Thanks to Jocelyn’s quick thinking, disaster is averted, but within hours Kel’s daughter Ruby June goes missing and the family pins the disappearance on Eddy. 

Still, it isn't until Jocelyn and her sometime-boyfriend Austin Homicide Detective Colin Gallagher find Eddy's body that the police really take notice. Unfortunately, all eyes—including Colin’s—are on Kel as the most likely suspect. While Colin assists the local police, Jocelyn and her cousin Kyla decide to investigate on their own. Their hunt turns up a shady ranch manager, a mysterious racehorse owner, and an overly persistent goat, but no sign of Ruby June… or a killer who is poised to strike again.

With a family reunion that is getting smaller by the minute and more romance and humor than can be fenced in on any ranch Janice Hamrick’s DEATH RIDES AGAIN is another outstanding addition to her award-winning mystery series.

31 Years & 19 Best Sellers: Some of What I've Learned

By Michael Palmer

BE FEARLESS

Before I get started, let me explain the way I write when I am communicating with friends...

It’s like this—thoughts with no particular syntax or attention to punctuation...lots of ellipses...One of the reasons for doing this is that I can only type with 2 fingers...think of it—19 books with all the rewrites…20 if you count the one that has never been published in English (6 foreign translations, though) and all of it done with these two fingers...my first 2 books were done on a manual Olivetti, the third on an electric smith corona, and the next two on a Kay-Pro, the 30 pound “portable” 9” green screen so-called writer’s computer…After that it’s been Mac all the way…I go for easy… 

No wonder I needed to have a carpal tunnel release 2 years ago…great operation, by the way, for anyone who needs it…write me for the name of my doc at MGH… 

There is more than laziness to my blogging this way…this is how I write when I’m figuring things out or am trying to break my way out of creator’s block…writing is easy—making up what to write, not so easy…so I call it creator’s block, and writing like this is the way I handle it. 

So, here are some rambling thoughts for you as they pop into my head—thoughts accumulated over 34 years (I first tried my hand at this in November, 1978 and sold my first book as an 80-page outline in 1980 for what was at the time, the largest advance ever paid to a fiction writer who had never published a book -- $250,000… amazing) …for some of my writing story, check out the bio on www.michaelpalmerbooks.com) … 

My two guiding principles in this business are never to forget that (1) THIS IS HARD and (2) BE FEARLESS… 

It is so hard that I can never believe how many authors actually finish books—good or stinky, published or not…I don’t think I ever would have tried if I didn’t have a nice fall-back job behind me—namely: physician…talk about a safety net…my two biggest assets are my always wild imagination, and my discipline…

Wanna know if you have the discipline it takes to write a novel?—take organic chemistry…as for the second guiding principal, that’s what it’s all about—you (me) must get rid of the fear of sounding stupid and also of being rejected…write first, worry later…

And be careful about reading your stuff over when you are tired…not much of anything reads un-stupid when you’re exhausted…of course, we’re all always exhausted, so the state is relative…any questions, read your stuff out loud (I do that all the time, and when I’ve finished a book, I actually pay my son Daniel (a terrific writer, now finishing his 4th thriller, and doing well with STOLEN, his third) to read it out loud with me… 

I write almost every chance I get…usually I write six days a week with a goal of like three to five pages a day…

HOWEVER, perhaps the third guiding principle is never to be too hard on myself…if I do two hours and only one page and can’t do any more for whatever reason, then I walk away…

But remember what I wrote about discipline…discipline is doing it when you don’t want to…you must know yourself to know when it’s time to stop…I used to be driven to do another hour in organic by seeing other pre-meds sitting there in the library with their noses in that humongous to me…I just now put on some music for a while…anything to make it easier…I love the 150 or so tunes on my iTunes and know them so well, they are like white noise most of the time…at the moment it’s Richard Cory by S&G…what a great song…

Brings up my 4th guiding principle…never if you can help it, I mean NEVER go around comparing your insides (or writing) to other people’s outsides…it takes practice and reminders, but it will make a hell of a difference in your writing and your life…need reinforcement about this, get Richard Cory from the sounds of silence album and put it on your iTunes…

Everyone wants to be an overnight wonder in this business…I never even thought about that and damn if I didn’t luck out with The Sisterhood…but life and the book business was different then…it was more personal and less crowded, it moved slower and there were amazingly talented and imaginative people in the publishing world whose job it was to make me a success…there are still such people, but the industry can’t pay enough to keep them…

Now I watch what son Daniel is going through and I ache for him…he’s good—really good, actually…but there are just so many people writing, and so many publishers throwing books up against the wall searching for the next girl with the dragon tattoo, and then deserting the author when the book doesn’t immediately make it…computer-generated sales figures are the enemy in that regard…

There are e-books flooding the market, and amazon, and nook, and blogs and conferences and speaking opportunities from organizations looking for “free” entertainment and program fillers…you can’t imagine how many ARCs I get every month searching for blurbs…believe it or not, Daniel’s older brother Matthew just got a great 6-figure, 2-book deal from Putnam…he’s got a great “fall-back” job as I did…so I don’t ache for what he’s in for as much as I do for the full-time writers who have no other source of income… 

That brings me to the last thought I want to blog about here…publicity and marketing…new writers often ask me: okay, my book is coming out next march, now what can I do to get people to read it?? …they never like my answer, which is that the most effective thing they can do is to write another book…

It wasn’t like that in the old days…I was on good morning America and today and Larry King (several times) and many other shows…I had reviews in tons of newspapers (some of those papers still exist and some of those actually still review books—but a continuously shrinking number) …I did dozens and dozens of my favorite media—talk radio, and dozens of shows like good morning Cleveland and good morning Pittsburgh, many of which if not most have gone the way of the dodo bird…

So what’s left? …here’s sort of an amalgam of what I’ve learned from my experience and Daniel’s and others and what I will be passing on to Matthew (who is too busy working for the state department to go out and hock his book anyway) …

First of all, get a web site and keep it up…get lots of business cards made that are eye-catching and list your site (www.VISTAprint.com)…..give one to whoever will take it…make it informative and imaginative…people love the writers’ tips on my web site, even though I don’t have time to update them…TV and radio appearances probably help…TV lots…newspaper ads—who knows? …no one really seems to know about ads, even big ones like the full pagers I have had in the NY Times…

Social media may actually help, but only if you really work at it…contests, frequent postings, Facebook ads to increase numbers on your “fan page” …what about hiring a pro?? I REALLY DON’T KNOW…

I would go social media pro rather than media unless you have a real hook that would appeal to TV or Glenn Beck or someone…Daniel does social media himself, but he spends time on it, and of course when you’re doing anything that isn’t writing, you’re not writing…make that guiding principal #6 or whatever number I’m on… 

Speaking of which, even though this is fun and relaxing and easy for me, as well as being gratifying because I love to help new writers, while I’m doing it, I’m not working on my new book, RESISTANT … so… 

POLITICAL SUICIDE:

Dr. Lou Welcome, from Palmer's bestselling Oath of Office, is back. A desperate phone call embroils Lou in scandal and murder involving Dr. Gary McHugh, known around the Capital as the “society doc.” Lou has been supervising McHugh, formerly a black-out drinker, through his work with the Physician Wellness Office.  McHugh has been very cavalier about his recovery, barely attending AA and refusing a sponsor. But Lou sees progress, and the two men are becoming friends. Now, McHugh has been found unconscious in his wrecked car after visiting a patient of his, the powerful Congressman Elias Colston, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Soon after McHugh awakens in the hospital ER, Colston's wife returns home to find her husband shot dead in their garage. She then admits to the police that she had just broken off a long-standing affair with McHugh. Something about McHugh's story has Lou believing he is telling the truth, that the Congressman was dead when he arrived and before he blacked out. Lou agrees to look into matters, but when he encounters motive, method and opportunity he is hard pressed to believe in his friend—that is until a deadly high-level conspiracy begins to unravel, and Lou acquires information that makes him the next target.

BIO:  Michael Palmer is the author of seventeen novels of medical suspense, all international bestsellers, and an associate director of the Massachusetts Medical Society Physical Health Services, devoted to helping physicians sidelined by mental illness, physical illness, behavioral issues, and chemical dependency. His books have been translated into thirty-five languages. He lives in eastern Massachusetts. Visit him at www.michaelpalmerbooks.com.