So Let's Talk Social Webbies....

I talk with a lot authors, either through e-mails or face-to-face

Authors ranging from the newbie looking to find their footing in the publishing world-to-authors who have five or six novels under their belt and tons of critical acclaim, and without fail most of these conversations lead to sales and marketing i.e., How the Hell Do I Sell More Books? How Do I Publish More Stories?

For most writers, their biggest struggle is not how to write a better book or story, but how to get the fine novels and stories they’ve written out to a wider audience so they can make more money and dedicate more time to writing better novels and stories. But in order to do this, there has to be an audience to begin with. A core of people who will not only buy the books and read the stories, but who will pass it along their suggestions to friends and family who will then (hopefully) act on those suggestions and do the same thing and so on and so forth.

It’s called creating great word of mouth.

It’s called getting the audience to work for you and simply put, it is a huge pain in the ass to accomplish.

At one time, creating great word of mouth was a bit easier. Publishers had vast marketing departments who would design print and media campaigns, get copy out to key outlets and the only thing the author would have to worry about is writing his/her next book in their contract and concern themselves with the quality of their hotel rooms on their book tour.

All of this, of course, changed with the invention of personal computers, the internet, and publishers becoming larger, publicly traded corporate entities.

Suddenly publishers weren’t so concerned with developing new and exciting talent or even designing media campaigns for them, because all they really became concerned with was the bottom line. And marketing campaigns cost MONEY, money that was being taken out of the pockets of stock holders. Besides, with e-mail and blogs and instant communications, the author was now able to do a lot of the leg work if not all of it.

I know, it sucks.

Writers are artists, not sales people.

They should only be concentrating on the written word, not on if they’ve earned back their advances. But like it or not, the writer handling his/her own publicity is here to stay and I say it’s better to learn the ins and outs of it.

Now at this point, I know what most of you are thinking, you’re thinking: c’mon, Rawson, you don’t have a book deal, you don’t know the real financial struggle of an author.

And you’re right, I don’t, and I don't know if I ever will either?

But what I do know a thing or two about is how to market: How to get word out about books, stories, authors, publications, and how to audience build. It’s been a long time hobby of mine that has since grown into a budding career—and not to toot my own horn—I’ve gotten pretty good at the social marketing end of writing. And with me spending so much time working on how to best promote my own writing and Crimefactory, I’ve observed a few different ideas in social networking that work very well and others that just plain fall flat.

So what I’ve been doing in between fiction writing and day-to-day life is I’ve started writing down a few of the things that I’ve learned and I’ve decided to write them up and post them to my much neglected little blog (because guess what? Blogs are kind of essential to a modern writer and a lesson I should be slapping myself silly over) over the next couple of weeks.

And you can take these posts as you will.

You can read them earnestly or think I’m just full of shit. Either way, I don’t care because I’m going to post this stuff anyway.

I’ll see you in a couple of days when I start to cover Facebook…

A couple of things before I go, here’s some links I wanted to pass along:

First off, have you read Jedidiah Ayres Beat To A Pulp debut Down, Down, Down, Burns, Burns, Burns yet? If you haven’t, give it a read right HERE. It’s a different kind of story for Ayres and I honestly think it’s one of his best.

Secondly, Dan O’shea’s Red Cross Tornado Flash Fiction Challenge has produced a fine line up of stories that I’m just starting to delve into thanks to a rambunctious weekend. But you can check out the full line up right HERE.

Lastly, I made my debut over at Kent Gowran’s sweet Flash Fiction site, Shotgun Honey. You can read my story “The Floating Man” right HERE.

And with all this reading, if you run across a story you like, make sure to leave a comment, writers are fond of those.