Social Media - There Is No escape
I wanted to signal boost this to any other new authors out there, because it’s really important. And if you’re anything like me on this stuff, you need all the help you can get. ‘This stuff’ being social media promotion.
Nicole Kimberling’s launched a series of posts to help new authors market themselves online, and they're invaluable.
I’m the first to admit I'm appalling at it. In fact, I suspect that, as my first publisher, hauling me, whining and sulking, into the social media light, probably drove Nicole in desperation to write the series. You hear her, ‘I’m having no more shitty excuses, you’re not getting out of it’ tone? I did that.
I know I have a pitiful attitude to self-promo. It all feels so *boastful*, she squirmed, in an agony of Presbyterian self-effacement. BUT Nicole is a hundred per cent right. Publishing is a transformed landscape, the days of blissful anonymity for 85-year-old janitors in Milwaukee are no longer possible, and however shy new writers may (or, indeed, may not) feel about it, readers have to know we exist, and are eager to engage with them. This is Nicole:
“Because this is the way readers will discover you and share their love of your work with each other and with you. And it’s also where you will reassure them that you are still alive and beavering away at your next project. It’s where you will build excitement for your creations and where your readers will share their excitement with others.
Your work will be competing with thousands of other titles. Your active social media presence is what keeps your work from being subsumed by the massive tidal (title?) wave of other works and promotional campaigns.
Social media also allows you to build relationships with other writers. It’s no exaggeration to say that your relationships with other writers will dictate the course of your career. They will inspire you, teach you, introduce you to important industry professionals and, most importantly, introduce you to new readers via cross-promotion.”
So -- eyes and teeth everyone! Says the voice from beneath the bucket.
Part 1 of Nicole’s Masterclass: