The Loneliest Planet by Randy Ross

Double Whammy? Querying in the Time of Covid and Identity Politics

2022-06-20T18:28:00.002-04:00

I) PUBLISHING UPDATE: SUBMISSION PROGRESS ON SECOND NOVEL “THE SQUID AND THE SPACEMAN"

Backstory: The publisher of my first book "God Bless Cambodia" had first right of refusal on my new book. However, they are going through a transition phase (publisher passed away last year) and publishing four books instead of their customary 16 so I’m back on the street looking for a book deal.

1) Since October, I've queried 103 agents with my new book "The Squid and the Spaceman."

Results so far:

- 30 rejections

- 1 request for manuscript, later rejected

Whining and Kvetching: I submitted my first book to 106 agents and received 7 requests for the manuscripts, which were eventually rejected.

Clearly, the query letter for the new book isn’t working so I just revamped it, highlighting topical elements, such as race, gender, #MeToo (a bit of a stretch considering the characters in the book spend a lot of time poking wokes and insulting uptight Boston millennials.)

The new query letter:

THE SQUID AND THE SPACEMAN is an 80,000-word comedic novel that combines the romantic dysfunction of Jonathan Tropper, the dark humor of Sam Lipsyte, and insight into the male psyche and the confusion men are facing with today’s shifting rules of courtship love, and commitment.

It's 2015 and Boston is being colonized by gender-trenders, biotech hipsters, and artisanal pickle shops. Two tone-deaf fifty-somethings, who are unhappy with city’s transformation, meet and fall in love.

Randall is chronically single. Jackie doesn't date men, she marries them. He's Jewish and trying to reinvent himself as an artist. She's Chinese-American and drives a muscle car. Both are struggling with their racial identities, the fear they've aged out of the local dating pool and that this is probably their last chance for happiness.

Four months into the relationship, Randall develops insomnia and Jackie develops an ulcer. Because Randall has never been married, they both agree he's the problem. He locates a therapist, Dr. Byrnes, who has a plan for turning him into marriage material.

As part of the treatment, Randall and Jackie attend a fetish conference to resuscitate their middle-aged sex life. Can acceptance, compromise, active listening, and a sphincter harness save their relationship? More importantly, how much can –- and should –- one man change for the one he loves?

2) Since February, I've queried 36 highly rated mid-sized and small independent presses.

Results so far:

- 6 rejections

Sniveling and Moaning: Many independent presses let you pitch them directly even if you don’t have or can’t get an agent. Response times are much longer than I remember for first book – many of these publishers claim to take up to nine months to respond.

In addition to tweaking my query letter, I’ve rewritten the first three pages of the novel and created a marketing plan, which some small presses want to see.

Latest version of my marketing plan

II) MARKETING UPDATE

Backstory: To promote my first book, I've developed lectures, authors talks, and two one-man shows based on the book. (For the one-man shows, I took some acting lessons and hired a director. I'm no star but I'm competent enough not to embarrass myself. My current one-man show on youtube.

The year in review

2021: 19 shows and author talks, almost all virtual on Zoom or Youtube.

- 10 at local libraries, about half with The New England Indie Authors Collective (three friends and I)

- 9 at theater festivals

Worth noting: I got some decent reviews from these virtual gigs but didn’t sell a single book.

Reviews:

Salt Lake City fringe theater festival

Tales of a Reluctant World Traveler (Live on Zoom)

"Absolutely hilarious" "animated story-telling" "a theatrical experience"

--Utah Theatre Bloggers Association (2020 Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival)

Kansas City fringe festival

“Entertaining” “Sardonic kvetching”

--Fringe Festival KC

User Reviews from the Minnesota fringe festival

Beantown (four stars) "An entertaining travelogue through the world which morphs into an entertaining travelogue though the book-publishing world. Pleasantly neurotic in a gruff, understated, and recognizably Bostonian way.

Bald Bostonian Tell It Like It Really Is! (five stars) "Extraordinarily funny, honest, and horrible! And a journey of a Wandering Jew at that, too!"

So Far in 2022: The library scene appears to have dried up due to Covid – it’s still a thing in Boston. In addition, many people are burned out on Zoom and attendance at virtual shows has plummeted. As a result, I am now pitching arts festivals and open studios.

Current schedule below.

for more details

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Marketing for Writers: Selling Books at Live Events

2021-07-03T15:13:00.005-04:00

Selling books needn't involve begging

Last week, I did my first live reading – in front of a live audience -- in more than 15 months and sold three books. That's more than I sold doing 20 Zoom readings in 2020.

If libraries, bookstores, and art events are opening in your area, you may have more opportunities to sell books. Here are some tips for making the most of those opportunities.

1) Ask the event organizer or library if you can sell books at the event.

2) Offer books at different price points

- I offer the following: hard cover for $20, a paperback for $15, and a chapbook for $5.

- Note: my publisher, the Permanent Press, typically prints hard covers, which is what most libraries want. However, they also produced a paperback galley copy to send to reviewers. I bought galleys from the publisher that I sell as paperbacks, which cost less than the hard covers. The publisher tweaked the cover to say "Preview Edition."

Galley proofs my publisher let me sell as low-priced paperbacks.

- If you don't have a chapbook you can sell for $5, create one. Using Microsoft Publisher, I self-published a 40-page sampler of my work that includes, scenes from my novel as well as published and unpublished short stories and comedy bits.

Some tips for creating a chapbook:

*create a simple cover that will be printed on card-stock (heavy paper that fits in an inkjet or laser printer.)

*for the body of the book, use or request standard copy paper.

*get pricing from smaller local places (In my experience, Staples was twice as expensive as the print shop at a local university. Yes, call the print shop at a local university to see if they'll take jobs from the general public. My 40-page chapbook cost me $3 to print and I sold copies for $5.

- Download a free PDF copy of my chapbook

My self-published $5 chapbook

3) Display your book like a retailer

- Ask the event organizer for a table to display and sign books.

- Buy a book stand so your wares are easier to see.

Display your wares with a $5 book stand.

- If possible, spread them out on the stage before you read.

- After the event, have a book in your hand as people are leaving.

- Create different size signs with title, prices, and Venmo and Paypal accounts so people lined up can pay ahead of time (assuming you have a line). Be sure your Paypal and Venmo accounts are set up to email you when you get money.

- If you're at a table with other writers, mention one of the other writers' books after someone buys yours.

- Provide a sign up sheet for people who want to get on your mailing list.

4) Give away something after your talk or reading

At the end of my reading, I offer a free chapbook to the first person to answer a simple question about my talk. In most cases, the winner also comes up and buys a book.

5) Offer multiple payment options

- Bring cash

- Use Venmo, Paypal, etc

- Anticipate problems with your credit card swiper. I use a PayPal triangle and it generally requires several swipes to work – when it works at all.

- Be sure to include your Paypal and Venmo info on your book signs.

Some other options:

*enter the credit card number manually

*Paypal now offers a QR code that someone can scan and use to pay with their own phone. (I have it set up but have yet to use it)

*test out your Paypal or Paypal Here before the event. (assume you won't have wifi)

6) Close the deal

- When someone approaches, give your elevator pitch

- Ask the person a question – most people want to talk about themselves as opposed to listening to you.

- One way to close the deal if a person is hesitant: "I'm happy to sign one for you."

If all else fails, beg.

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Marketing for Writers: Tips for Virtual Readings on Zoom, Facebook Live, etc

2021-06-23T14:12:00.005-04:00

Read your work, sell books, get paid, increase your visibility, but please, wear normal glasses

Events, such as readings, are a good way to raise your visibility and, occasionally, sell books.

Among the benefits:

- If you're reading for a library or other organization, they will often handle the publicity and generate an audience.

- You may get paid. (In the Boston area, most libraries pay between $150 and $300 for a reading. Some don't pay at all -- I avoid them.)

- You can ask the library to stock your book.

- If the organization records the event, you'll get a free video. (I've done events in which the library has brought in the local cable TV station.)

What follows are tips I've gathered over the last 15 months reading on Zoom. Contrary to popular belief, most venues still want virtual events. Live in-person events may be widespread in the fall -- or not.

(In the coming weeks, I'll offer tips on live, in-person events -- I'm doing my first live gig in 15 months next weekend)

I) Zoom (my preference) and Facebook Live, etc.

1) Elevate your web camera so you can stand up, which gives your more energy and movement.

- The camera should be slightly above your eye level, tilted down slightly.

- If you're using your phone camera get a tripod and clamp for holding your phone.

- If you're using the camera on your laptop, elevate it on a small table.

(Right Click to enlarge)

- Don't use Wifi to connect to the Internet -- it can be flaky. Instead connect directly to your cable modem, if possible.

- Don't wear clothes with stripes or crazy patterns – test out your out fit and rig with a friend on the other end of a practice Zoom session. (Yes, you'll need your own Zoom account)

My seer-sucker striped pants looked weird on camera.

2) Background: Test them out before your gig!

- The backgrounds included with Zoom can cause you to fade in and out during events.

- A better option: Set up your office with a good background. A blank wall with a Japanese screen works great. I've created a black background with a windsurfing mast and some black tarps.

(Right click to enlarge)

3) Lighting: critical!

- Quick and dirty: Buy a ring light

- DIY: use exiting floor and desk lamps

Right Click to enlarge

- Much more than you need to know on lighting:

https://vimeo.com/blog/post/an-introduction-to-three-point-lighting/

https://wistia.com/learn/production/down-and-dirty-lighting-kit

4) Reading

- Print out what you're reading in large type instead of reading directly from the book.

- If you're reading a scene with dialog, rewrite it with attributions in front of the dialog, not after it.

- To avoid reflection of your monitor in your glasses, try tilting your glasses down at an angle.

- Read into the camera not to the audience on your screen.

- Limit big gestures as they can appear blurry on audience's screens.

- Bonus points if you can memorize some of what you're going to read. That way you can look at the audience.

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Marketing Tips for Writers: Twitter Hashtags

2021-05-24T18:12:00.005-04:00

I) Why bother with Hashtags

Twitter hashtags are potentially useful for accomplishing the following:

- Expanding your audience: Insert your tweets into existing conversations on topics related to your book or of interest to prospective readers or the press.

- Promoting an upcoming event, such as a book launch or reading, by creating a hashtag that other people can use.

What follows is a summation of advice from avowed experts and my own experiences following that advice. This blog post is geared toward novelists and fiction writers -- online marketing is generally easier for non-fiction writers.

Note: This post assumes some basic knowledge of Twitter. Some previous posts, if you need a refresher

Disclaimer: In 2014 I made a big push on Twitter and as of today, I have not been offered any Pulitzer prizes or Guggenheim fellowships, but I'm giving in another shot on the advice of an agent I met with earlier in the month.

II) Things to Try

1) Find and use hashtags employed by authors of books similar to yours.

My first book God Bless Cambodia and my novel in progress are love stories featuring romantic dysfunction, bathroom humor, and white guys behaving badly. (I know, I know -- I'm tone deaf, out of sync with 2021, etc)

Unfortunately, after checking out authors with similar work, I found no useful hashtags. One of my comp authors used hashtags mainly to promote his work (@jonathan tropper). Two other comp authors, Sam Lipsyte and Joshua Ferris don't use Twitter, and a third comp author, Philip Roth, is dead.

Verdict: Not useful for my work

Try Lit-Map if you need help finding comp authors for your work

Lit-Map.com can help you find comparable (comp) authors

2) Find hashtags related to themes or topics in your book

My books and one-man shows include neurotic, mildly offensive humor so I searched for comedians, such as Larry David, Greg Gutfeld, and Chris Rock – didn't find them use any useful hashtags.

God Bless Cambodia, my first novel, includes a lot of travel writing – the narrator takes a trip around the world and had a rotten time. I was able to find plenty of hashtags related to travel but most were promoting travel not saying it sucks.

Verdict: Not useful for my work

3) Find hashtags for your genre

Here's a list of hashtags for different genres (scroll to the middle of the page)

Another place to find your genre: See how comp books are categorized on bookseller sites or at the local library.

My books don't fit neatly into a genre. God Bless Cambodia falls somewhere between commercial fiction and literary fiction and has been classified under "absurdist" and "comedy," on some bookseller sites and, at the public library, under "Man-woman relationships -- Fiction," "Voyages and travels -- Fiction," "Depression in men -- Fiction.

Verdict: Not useful for my work

4) Use hashtags used by the local press: arts reporters, book reviewers,

Even if your tweets don't result in immediate coverage, you might build some visibility and generate coverage at a future date because reporters will be familiar with your name. Remember the old axiom of advertising: need to hit someone seven times before they'll notice you) What are local arts media and authors using?

Verdict: this has promise

5) Create your own hashtag for a theme in your book or an upcoming event your hosting.

How to create your own hashtag: When creating a tweet, adding a “#” to the beginning of an unbroken word or phrase creates a hashtag.

For my Twitter account @chronicsingle, I created a hashtag a few years back called #chronicsingle.

Here's a hashtag I created and am going to try out. For songs, movies, books, etc that were funny some years ago but will likely be offensive now, I created the #wontflyin2021 by simply typing it into a tweet.

Step 1 for creating a hashtag

And here's what a tweet using the hashtag #wontflyin2021 looks like. Note: I tried to weave the hashtag into the actual tweet.

The finished product

Note: If you're using a Twitter to promote an event, be sure to ask attendees, the press, etc, to use the hashtag in any tweets.

Verdict: Could be useful

III) Tweet Etiquette for Deploying Hashtags

- Weave the hashtags into your tweet – classier but not always practical

- List them at the end of your tweet – easiest

- Don't use too many. Twitter and other experts recommend no more than two per post.

IV) More Marketing Tips for Authors

More on Hashtags

https://writersrelief.medium.com/55-social-media-hashtags-for-authors-and-how-to-use-them-cc56490b67d7

https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/how-to-use-hashtags

Twitter Refreshers

https://www.theloneliestplanet.com/search/label/twitter

https://www.makealivingwriting.com/writers-win-social-media/

Previous Blog Post: Covid Query Process for a New Novel

Video trailer for my first novel God Bless Cambodia

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Covid Query Process for a New Novel

2021-05-11T14:07:00.002-04:00

On the Publishing Roller Coaster -- again

My second novel is almost done so I'm preparing to query agents and then, if I have no takers, small presses. The small press that published my first novel, God Bless Cambodia, has first right of refusal on the new novel but in light of my less-than-stellar sales (about 400 copies), it might refuse.

To prepare for the worst case, I attended a recent writing conference and paid $200 a pop to two agents who read my query letter, synopsis, and first twenty pages.

Worth noting:

- Of the 65 agents at the conference, all but two said they were looking for books by featuring LGBTQ and BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) authors/themese.

- most were young white women

- five were men

(Full disclosure: I am a whiny, middle-aged white guy and my books feature a narrator who is a whiny, middle-aged white guy. Oy, vey)

I met with the two agents who seemed more open to books from authors who look like me. One was a young Asian woman and the other was a guy about my age.

What the Agents Said

Neither agent found my material offensive but both agreed that my odds of finding an agent and a big publisher were slim because of my genre: absurdist, raunchy, comedy featuring white guys behaving badly – a genre that used to be known as "laddie lit." The book is a heterosexual love story and the female love interest is an Asian woman – since I am not an Asian woman, publishers might ding me for cultural appropriation.

Both agents empathized with my book being out of sync with the times and one expressed concern for their existing author clients who were middle-aged white guys and having a difficult time finding publishers. Despite Covid, publishers are still acquiring books, the agents said.

One agent was OK with the query letter, said they never read synopses, and thought the opening of the book and the first twenty pages were fine.

The other agent loved my query letter, didn't like the opening scene of my book, and suggested I boost my social media presence from my current 10,000 followers on Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, Youtube, etc. to 60,000 followers. (I always thought that social media was not important for fiction writers but I am going to follow this agent's advice.)

Note: To promote my first book, I created and attended events where I read scenes and performed two one-man shows about the book at amateur theater festivals, libraries, and other venues (link to calendar). Due to Covid, all my events during the last year have been virtual – this has been a poor way to sell books. When I was doing in-person events, people occasionally bought books. Hopefully, this will change by this fall when I can go live again.

Another note: I had no previous theater training but took acting classes and hired a theater director. My acting isn't great -- but I'm what's known as a story-teller: my material is memorized, has a story arc, and I tell the story (scenes from my book) with minimal acting.

Here's a sample (yeah, you could probably do this)

My Book Marketing To Do List

1) I revamped my website using one of these template. The idea was to simplify the home page and add more images.

2) I am brushing up on my social media by following the advice of book marketing experts like Fauzia Burke, Jane Friedman and others. Future posts will describe those efforts and what's working and what's not. I am also sharpening my skills with tools designed to make managing social media easier such as:

- Hootsuite: let's preschedule posts to appear on multiple platforms. Last Saturday, I scheduled a week's worth of posts to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

- iunfollow – to jettison people I'm following who are not following back. If you're following more people than follow you, you can be perceived as a social media loser.

3) My Social Media Accounts

a) On Twitter: I have two accounts:

- @rsquaredd (currently have 6,021 followers) for professional posts about publishing and for following industry news, libraries, and agents.

- @chronicsingle (currently 1,283 followers) for raunchy comedy and edgier fare. I am attempting to woo fans of authors/comedians with work similar to mine: Curb your enthusiasm, single life, fringe theater festivals. I also need post using hashtags they use.

b) Facebook: I have a personal page (3,230 friends) and an author/performer page (1,843) I will likely post personal and raunchy comedy stuff on the pages

c) Instagram (53 followers) I have a professional page to which I am posting comedy stuff – photos with captions.

d) Linked In (3,030 Connections) for posting publishing and professional stuff. I haven't done much with this in years but may start.

c) Youtube (16 subscribers) I've posted probably 40 videos over the last eight years. I am a Youtube loser but the videos do generate some traffic for my website.

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Pt 2: Debut Novelist's Rocky Road to Getting Published

2018-04-23T14:42:00.000-04:00

In the previous "Rocky Road" post, I described efforts to position my book. I thought it should be a travel memoir, a male version of Eat, Pray, Love. Then I spoke to three agents who thought otherwise:

Over eight years, I received advice from agents on how best to position my book.

In the end, I decided the hell with it: The novel has been the most fun, I'm sticking with it. Around this time, I also hired an editor, a woman I met in one of my writing classes, who knew more about creative writing than the instructor.

The Query Letter

Another 1.5 years, a new draft of the novel and a query letter that I vetted in a class on how to write query letters.

click to enlarge image

In image above, I followed the basic query format:
1) Why I'm writing you, Ms. Agent. (as I started to run out of relevant agents, I started used very generic intro lines like this one.)

2) The positioning of my book, the market, and comp titles and authors. A web site called Literature Map was helpful.

3) A description of the book using the tone and writing style of the book. (Yeah, this section is a little long.)

4) Why I was qualified to write the book. (Yeah, I had no real qualifications or writing credits.)

Querying Agents

How many agents did I query? At one writing conference, I met an agent who had sold a book for a debut author who had queried 120 agent -- the agent I was talking to was number 120. The book was picked up by a large publishing house and made into a movie. Works for me.

My stats:

1) I queried 110 agents:
- half didn't respond
- of the remaining agents, seven asked to read all or part of the manuscript and none wanted it. (My manuscript request rate was about 6 percent or one out every 16 queries resulted in a request.)
- reasons given for rejections:
"It's a guy's book and, except for sci-fi, guys don't buy a lot of fiction."
"Humor is a hard sell."
"Not enough action."
"It's offensive."
"You suck and you're a worthless human being." (implied)

2) I queried the 110 agents over eight months.
- Initially, I sent out ten queries to agents with whom I had a legit connection: one of their authors gave me their agent's name or I had met the agent at a writing conference.

- Then I would send out five email queries three mornings a week.

3) Midway through the process, I realized that I may not get an agent so I did two things: I started a second novel and began querying small presses who took email queries.

4) Around month seven, I began querying agents and small presses who didn't take email queries, the old-school folks who wanted a snail-mail letter.

Be sure to read submission guidelines!

5) One of the small presses, The Permanent Press, bought the book.

6) Worth noting: Six months after signing a contract with The Permanent Press, an agent contacted me and wanted to see my manuscript.

Querying Tips (from someone who didn't get an agent)

My blog posts on how I found 110 agents and other things I learned about querying agents and small presses:

- Find an Agent: One Writer's Strategy

- The Query Letter and Synopsis: Lesser Known Tips

<to be continued next week>

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A Debut Novelist's Rocky Road to Publication: Pt 1

2018-04-19T14:11:00.002-04:00

In 2007, I was laid of from my job as an editor at PC World magazine. I was too depressed to look for another job and I had a severance package, so I did what most people would have done: I took a vacation, a long vacation, a four-month, solo trip around the world. And I had a rotten, miserable time.

I accept some responsibility: I've been told by more than one ex-girlfriend, that I'm a rotten, miserable person who deserves to die alone.

But I am from New York and we like to blame others. For the purposes of this blog, I'm going to blame various travel guidebooks that failed to mention that the countries I would be visiting were known as much for their exotic cuisine as they were for...

My four-month trip to all the "hot spots."

Over the four rotten, miserable months, when I wasn't in the bathroom, I visited Internet cafes and wrote this blog. When I returned to Boston, I had 150 pages of kvetching and moaning and moaning and kvetching. Surely that was enough for a travel memoir. In 2007, Eat, Pray, Love had sold about five million copies. Surely, I could sell a tenth of that, live well, and never leave the U.S. again. I got to work.

For 18 months, I took creative writing classes, joined writers' groups, went to overpriced writers' conferences and met an agent. She said the market for memoirs was hot and suggested I rework my book.

Popular, semi-fictional "memoirs" of the mid 2000's

For 18 months, I took memoir writing classes, joined writers' groups, and went to overpriced writers' conferences and met another agent. She said there was now no market for memoirs unless you were a Kennedy and that I should rework my memoir as a novel.

See me anywhere in this photo of Kennedys? Me, neither

For 18 months, I took fiction writing classes, joined writers' groups, and went to overpriced writers' conferences and met another agent. She said my book wasn't bad and had I ever thought of turning it into a travel memoir?

Prelude to the darkest night of the soul

<to be continued next week>

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The Query Letter and Synopsis: Lesser Known Tips

2015-04-20T16:16:00.002-04:00

Last week, I shared my strategy for searching for a literary agent. This week's post includes lesser-known tips for writing an email query letter and advice that I followed for writing the dreaded one-page synopsis.

I) The Email Query

There's plenty of good stuff out there on how to write a query letter, but I didn't find it that useful. So I took classes at a Boston writing center called Grub Street and my letter went from "needs a lot of work" to something the agent teaching the class held up as an example of a good letter. (Apparently it wasn't that good because she hasn't offered to represent me.)

Here's a link to the query letter for my novel that includes the basic components:
- The positioning of the book and comparative titles.
- The hook and story.
- My qualifications to write it.
- Some humor to reflect the writing style of book.

Small Stuff I Didn't Learn in Any Class:

1) Subject Lines for EMail Queries
- Check the agents Web site for specifics on what to include in the subject line.
- If the site offers no details, I've been going with either: "Query: agents name to whom I'm directing the query" or "Query and title of novel and category"

More than you want to know on this subject
"How to format an email query for literary agents"
"Subject lines are your bffs"

2) "I'm Querying You Because": Opening Sentences in Your Query

To some writers and agents, letting the agent know why you're querying is a good idea. Reasons you're querying them can include:
- One of their authors recommended you query them.
- You met the agent at a conference.
- You saw them on a manuscript wish-list site and your book fits their needs.
- You read their author's book, liked it, and wanted to query.

A great article on opening sentences for your query letter

On the other hand, some agents don't care if you have a good reason and will read your query anyway.

II) The Synopsis: A Huge Pain

My synopsis took me a week to write. The experience kind of sucked. In my agent research so far, it seems that a one-page query is the norm -- which is fine, I don't want to write a longer one.

In my synopsis I tried to focus on:
- Succinctly describing the main story, eschewing any subplots.
- Including a brief description of the protagonist.
- Injecting some humor, when appropriate, because my book is supposed to be funny .

Some good links on how to write a synopsis
- On Jane Friedman's site
- From How-to-write-a-book-now.com

III) Other Tips

1) Once your email query is done, send it to yourself to see how it looks and to check for weird formatting.

2) Create files that include different packages that agents are likely to request. Here's what I've seen agents requesting:
- a query only
- a query with the first five pages of your novel,
- a query and synopsis
- a query and the first 10 pages,
- a query and the first chapter,
- a query and synopsis and first 10 pages.

Note: By having ready-made files, I can simply copy and paste the required text without having to assemble each one on the fly. Unless, requested otherwise, most agents will want you to paste the text into your email as opposed to sending documents as attachments.

3) Unorthodox querying advice from agent Janet Reid

- Consider querying agents who don't profess interest in your particular category or genre.
- If one agent at an agency says no, query other agents at the same agency.
- If you don't hear back from an agent within 30 days, query them two more times.

4) Typical Strategy for Finding a Publisher
- First, query literary agents.
- Then try small publishers, university presses, and publishing contests where the prizes include having your book published.
- Then, if you have the time and budget, self-publish.

*Note: I am not attempting to pass myself off as an expert on these topics. This article is a compilation of advice that author friends have followed. The advice seemed to make sense to me, so I'm following it. I am two weeks into the agent-querying process. So far, I've queried 15 agents: Three told me to take a hike, one requested a full manuscript, and from the others, so far just hearing crickets.

Photo credit: Me performing scenes from my novel at a fringe theater festival in D.C. shot by Paul Gillis Photography,

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Find An Agent: One Writer's Strategy

2015-04-14T15:48:00.000-04:00

After seven years of classes, writing, and rewriting, I finally finished my novel. Apparently, that was the easy part because now I'm trying to find an agent, which I'm approaching with more trepidation than bungee jumping.

To make the agent search process less stressful, I've broken it down to two steps:
- Finding agents who might be interested in my type of novel (quirky, edgy, comedy, or satire)
- Vetting the agents to see if they're legit and successful at selling work similar to mine.

Next week, I'll offer links to advice on query letters and the dreaded synopsis.*

I) Finding Appropriate Agents

One of the first question any writer needs to ask himself: How many agents will I query before I give up and consider other options? I heard of one guy who hit 70 agents until he found one. I currently have a list of 45 possible agents, whom I'm contacting at a rate of 10 every two weeks.

Where to Look:

1) Ask friends and connections

Getting a referral to an agent from one of their current authors is probably the best way to start. Ask friends and other authors. In my experience, some people I expected to help, wouldn't lift a finger. Other people whom I met only once, say at a party, gave me a referral. But you have to ask!

2) Consider agents attending writing conferences

Some writing conferences are worth attending. Some are a waste of time and money. Regardless, agents attending are probably looking for writers so you can read their profiles on the conference Web site and, if they cover your type of book, query them.

Writers conferences I've attended that were worthwhile for meeting agents:
- Grub Street Muse and the Marketplace in Boston. (Pros: you can meet with agents for 20 minutes. They will review your query letter and first 20 pages. Cons: expensive ($710 to see two agents and attend for one day, the minimum attendance.) But you can view the list of attending agents without signing up.

- Backspace conference in New York
I went to a live event in 2010. I met four agents, two were interested in seeing my finished novel. Unfortunately, this was five years ago: Since then, one of the agents left the business. I've contacted the other, who may or may not remember me. This event is now an online only event -- a virtual conference, but you can view the list of agents without signing up.

Good lists of conferences that agents attend:

- Writer's Digest newsletter from Chuck Sambuchino

- New Pages

3) Find authors of comparable books

Literature Map lets you enter the name of an author to other similar authors. My book is similar in flavor to novels written by author Joshua Ferris. Here's a list of comparable authors. I took some of these authors searched for their agents on a site called Publishers Marketplace ($25 a month, but worth the dough. More on Publishers Marketplace down below.)

Find an author's agent using Publishers Marketplace.

Also, check the cover of comparable books: Which authors are recommending this book? They may write comparable books.

4) Search by genre or category

There are numerous sites that let you search for agents by genre. Again, my book is not genre fiction -- romance, sci fi, mystery, etc -- but it may be classified as comedy, humor, satire, debut fiction, or quirky depending on the Web site

Query Tracker (free)

Results for a Query Tracker search on agents who will consider "quirky" novels.

Agent Query (free)

Results for an Agent Query search on "quirky."

Publishers Marketplace ($25/month)

A search on agents who've sold novels from "debut authors."

5) Visit sites where agents post what they're looking for

Some agents post what type of books they're looking for on Twitter using the hashtag #mswl or on the Web site Manuscript Wish List. To search on Twitter, enter the hastag, then a space, and your genre.

To search on Twitter, enter the hastag, then a space, and your genre. In this example, I search for: #mswl quirky.

Here I searched the list of genres, indicated by the arrow, for humor.

6) Consider social media long shots (Note: I haven't tried this yet)

- Post on Facebook and ask friends if they know an agent or an agented author who might talk to you.

- Check LinkedIn connections: You may have some agents connected to you or have connections who are connected to a literary agent. In this case, I would vet the agent and consider mentioning in my query letter something like the following:

"Dear Agent X.

I am contacting you because we are connected on LinkedIn by <connections name> and because you represent <name of a comparable author or appropriate genre>"

Agents I'm connected to on Linked In I might consider vetting and querying

II) Vet the agents

1) Check their recent sales on Publishers Marketplace

If they haven't sold any books similar to mine recently, might be best to skip them.

Use Publishers Marketplace to see if an agent has been selling books like yours recently.

2) Visit agent's Web site for querying instructions

Here you'll find information on what the agent wants to see in a query and offers a good way of double-checking information found on other sites.

3) Look for dirt: Is that agent legit?

Writers Beware and Preditors and Editors list problem agents.

- Writers Beware: Thumbs down page on http://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/thumbs-down-agency/
- Preditors and Editors list of agents to avoid: http://pred-ed.com/peala.ht

The Writers Beware "Thumbs Down" page lists questionable agents.

Preditors Editors also offers information on problem agents.

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Facebook for Writers: New Features a Waste of Time?

2014-12-22T16:46:00.004-05:00

Think your Facebook author page is worthless? You're not alone: some businesses large and small have abandoned their pages during the last year. Perhaps to slow the exodus, Facebook is rolling out new features that may be of use to writers and authors. Note: I have not tried out these features -- they sounded interesting but could be a waste of time.

Call to Action Buttons

In the coming weeks, U.S. Facebook page owners will be able to add buttons that send fans to a Web site, or allow them to sign up for a newsletter or blog. The buttons will appear to the left of the Like Button currently on your page. More than you want to know about Call to Action Buttons


An example of a Call to Action Button that Facebook will roll out to Page owners in the next few weeks.

Target Fans by Interest

Facebook now offers a feature that lets you target posts to people by location, interests, gender, and other criteria. This could be particularly useful if you'll be reading in a particular location or if you have some racy content that isn't appropriate for some fans. More than you want to know about Facebook's targeting capabilities plus some other upcoming features that made no sense to me.


To target fans by interest, location, or gender, first enable your Page's Targeting and Privacy settings.

Then, create an update and target the post to fans using different criteria.

Rooms

Remember the chat rooms and forums of yore which you could join and post anonymously or with some weird nickname? Facebook is rolling out a similar capability via an app for iPhone and iPad users that allows you to post text, photos, and video. Rooms is in its early stages, so you might be able to create a room on a topic related to your book -- before anyone else does. More than you want to know about Rooms. Currently, Room topics are being vetted and you have to apply.

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Art attribution: Facebook image on top of page by Pictofigo [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

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Email Marketing for Writers: Build Your List!

2014-12-01T19:34:00.001-05:00

Time to ditch social media for email marketing? Here are five tips for collecting more emails, which will help you sell more books, boost your writer's platform, and waste less time online.

Why Email?

Building your email list is a better use of your time than acquiring followers, friends, fans, or connections on social media. Here's why.

Send an email and almost all your subscribers will receive it and on average 25 percent will open it. Post to your Facebook author page and you're lucky if 10 percent see the post -- never mind click on it. The response rates on Facebook pages has gotten so poor one major blogger recently killed their page.

I have 2,000 Facebook fans: Only about 1% of them Like or Share a typical post.

I have 380 email subscribers: My emails reach almost all of them and 30% open my missives. Adding more email subscribers is a better use of my time than adding Facebook fans.

Tips for Building Your Email List

1) Start with a free, relatively easy-to-use email management tool. I've been using Mailchimp so we'll use that in the examples below.

2) Review, sort, and upload existing contacts to Mailchimp. Over the years, you've been collecting emails of friends, coworkers, former coworkers, and other people. Email management programs typically let you export your contacts into a format that can be manipulated in a spreadsheet or other program. In Yahoo mail, go to your contacts page, click on Actions at the top of the page, and choose Export. In your spreadsheet, weed out all the jerks who wouldn't want to hear about your new book or an update on your writing career.

The Yahoo export page on the Contacts page.

3) Collect emails in person at parties, readings, or any place where you discuss your book or writing. The ask: "Can I add you to my email list?" If someone gives you a business card always ask: "Would it be better for me to use your personal email address?" (It's better for you to their personal email in case folks change jobs.)

4) Collect emails on your blog and Web site. On your blog, be sure there's a sign-up box embedded in each post. (See what I've done at the end of this post using Feedburner, a tool designed specifically for blogs.). Want to parse your audience into more targeted lists? Mailchimp allows you to create a variety of email lists each with their own sign-up box. This is useful if your blog or Web site, like mine, covers a range of topics.

Two sign-up boxes on my Web site.

A third sign-up box on my blog.

5) Convert social media connections to email subscribers. With Facebook, consider paying to promote a post that notifies your fans that they may not be seeing your updates due to recent changes to Facebook. Include a link to a signup box. You may even offer a freebie -- a chapter, a short story -- to people who sign up. For more on email sign-up incentives, read how author James Seeley boosted his subscriber list.

6) More Email marketing tips

- the basics from Wiley
- a good primer on Bookbaby
- advanced tips from Copyblogger

More Marketing for Writers

- Book Marketing: E-mail Lists and Newsletters

- Self-Promotion for Writers: Dump Social Media, Embrace E-mail

- LinkedIn for Writers: A Slick Trick to Reach Readers

Art attribution for email image: Gokhan.kapici at tr.wikipedia. Later version(s) were uploaded by Emperyan at tr.wikipedia. [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons

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LinkedIn for Writers: A Slick Trick to Reach Readers

2014-11-10T18:05:00.001-05:00

As LinkedIn adds users, useless features, and contrary policies, using the service to reach readers becomes more challenging. Here's a quick trick to help writers market their work and develop their author platforms.

Email Marketing with LinkedIn

LinkedIn lets you send customized messages to subsets of your connections. Reading your writing in another city? Invite connections who live in that city to your event. Recently published a how-to article of interest to writers, send it your writer connections. Just blogged about a looming tax policy, alert your accountant connections.

Depending on their LinkedIn settings, recipients may receive your LinkedIn message in their email inboxes -- so more of them will see it. Remember: Just posting an update on LinkedIn will only reach a small subset of your connections. For example, I have 2,500 connections. My updates typically reach only 50 connections. Also, posting to LinkedIn groups is less useful than it used to be because group moderators can choose to block your posts -- and you permanently -- if your posts are too promotional.

How to Do it

1) Go to Your Connections

In the "Connections" menu at the top of your LinkedIn screen, click on "Keep in Touch" to bring up a list of all your connections. (You may need to scroll down the page to see your list.)

2) Target the Right Connections

LinkedIn offers two main features to segment your connections: "Filter by" or "Search."

"Filter by" lets you sort your connections by:

- Company
- Tag: If you were smart enough to include tags for your contacts -- I wasn't -- this could be a winner.
- Location: This didn't work well for me, so I used the "Search" box discussed below.
- Title: Search on a title, such as "author" to reach other writers. Using the "Search" box may generate different or more connections. Be sure to try both.

"Search"

- I found entering a word or phrase in "Search" more useful than the "Filter by" feature. For example, when I entered "author" in "Filter by" and "Title" I got a list of 20 people. Searching on "author" and I got 50.

Note: you can send an email to each list in separate messages, be sure to look for dupes, people who appear on both lists, so you don't email them twice.

More on LinkedIn's Filter and Search capabilities

Example: I live in Boston, but was doing a reading in Atlanta and wanted to ask my connections in the area to help me get the word out. Here's what I did.

- I typed "Atlanta" into the "Search" box.

Use Search box instead of a "Filter by" to find connections in a specific city.

- In the list of results, I clicked the word greyed out word "Atlanta" under one of the connections. LinkedIn took me to a page that listed 18 of my connections who lived in Atlanta. (Note: My search results included some people who didn't live in Atlanta. )

- I clicked "Select All" and then the "Message" option appeared. Clicking "Message" produced a blank message populated with only those connections living in or near Atlanta.

Use "Select All" then "Message" to create a message populated with your selected contacts.

LinkIn lets you message up to 50 connections at a time.

3) Craft Your Message and Don't Be Annoying!

Here's how:
- Instead of making a bald, pushy pitch for your reading or book, ask connections to help you spread the word.
- Keep subject lines short and sweet. Here's what I used for in the Atlanta example: "I'm reading in Atlanta. Please help me spread the word!"
- Offer to reciprocate in some way.
- Make it easy for them to help you by including a sample Tweet or Facebook post they can simply copy and paste.

Your message should ask for help and offer to reciprocate. Don't use bald pitches like "buy my book!"

Include a Tweet or Facebook post you'd like people to share. Include sample text so they can just copy and paste.

4) Before You Hit Send

To avoid looking like a spammer and to preserve everyone's privacy, unclick the check box at bottom that says "Allow recipients to see each other's names and email addresses."

5) Miscellaneous Tips

- Don't over do it -- I send messages a few times a year to the same group.

- After searching or sorting, tag the connections. (In my example, I could tag everyone as "Atlanta")

- Remember you can only send a message to 50 people at a time.

-Realistic Expectations: I've used LinkedIn messages for readings in several cities. Some people I didn't know well offered to help and shared my posts. One guy, I met for lunch. All marketing is a crap-shoot but it never hurts to get your name in front of people. Moreover, this feature doesn't take a lot of time.

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Marketing for Writers: Blogging Best Practices

2014-09-29T18:11:00.001-04:00

How often should you blog? How long should your posts be? How do you get more people to sign up? If blogging is taking too much of time and not delivering the traffic you want, this article can help.

Length and Frequency

Several years ago, the conventional wisdom for blogging was that frequent, shorter posts were best. Now, you're better off posting longer, more in-depth articles weekly -- or even monthly -- than daily short bits. My blog posts typically run 500 words to as many as 2,000.

Here's why longer posts are better:

- Google now prefers longer posts, which means more chances of your work appearing in search results.
- Longer posts of 250 words or more let you demonstrate your expertise and really get into a topic.
- Longer, meatier posts are more likely to be linked to by other sites.
- In my experience, readers are more likely to sign up after reading a longer, more thorough post than a shortie that just skims a topic.
- Writing, fewer longer posts also prevents burn out. Some months I only post once, but I've noticed that people will still sign up for my blog if they like the article and see that I've written plenty of meaty stuff in the past.

Some anecdotal evidence in favor of long posts: Facebook now allows posts of up to 12,000 words, Google+ allows posts of up to 20,000 words, and LinkedIn now allows you to post long articles using its new publishing platform. (This doesn't mean you're going to write articles that long or post them solely on these social media sites. You always want to post your article on your own site first.)

Waste Less Time

After you publish a new blog post, you're probably promoting it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and any other sites you frequent. You should be posting links to your post on appropriate groups and using hash tags to reach people interested in the topics you write about. (If you need convincing, see these articles on social media marketing for writers.)

But how do you know if your efforts are paying off? Measure. Most blogs include the ability to measure your Web traffic and tell you where the traffic is coming from. This capability is called Web analytics. If not, you may want to consider a free tool, such as Google Analytics (overkill for most people) or Statcounter (simple to use).

Regardless of which tool you use, here are some things to be looking for:

1) How people are finding you -- which social media sites are pulling their weight. In this snapshot of my blog, most visitors are finding my blog by searching on Google (red box and arrow) or by seeing my posts in groups on Google+ or Facebook (blue arrow and box). I also post my articles on sites such as thebookdesigner.com, which is also generating some traffic. Twitter is generating the fewest clicks. I need to reevaluate my Twitter strategy and either change something or ditch the site.

Using Statcounter, I can track how visitors are finding my blog.

2) The types of articles that are generating the most clicks
Obviously, you'll want to cover that topic more often. But if you have an article that is getting lots of traffic month in and month out, consider updating parts of that article and adding fresh links to other articles on your site. You'll want to treat that article as a minitiature home page, a portal, a way that many visitors are coming to your site. Don't change the title or anything else that would affect the url for that page. Other pages are probably linking to it.

For example, my novel includes racy scenes that take place in Southeast Asian massage parlors. In 2007, I was traveling in Vietnam and met a French sex tourist who proceeded to provide unsolicited tips on how to find a prostitute. Soon after, I wrote a politically-incorrect article called "Prostitution for Dummies." Five years later, this article is still getting a lot of traffic. Recently, I tweaked the article to include links to my naughty short stories and novel excerpts. Note: This article will be offensive to some people. Do not click, if you are offended by this kind of thing. "Prostitution for Dummies"

Hook Readers with Summary Ledes and Subheads

On the Internet, readers tend to skim articles and blog posts. Two good ways to hook a skimmer:

- Use a lede that summarizes your post.
When you post a link to Facebook or Google+, the site often displays the first paragraph, forcing readers to click to read more. If your lede is cutesy or confusing, you may lose readers.

- Use subheads and bold text-- even for creative writing and fiction.
Highlight an interesting bit of dialog or turn of phrase to get readers to stop and read the context. In the article below, the author highlighted a snippet of dialog: "How are satellites bad for women?"

A Simple Trick for Getting More People to Sign Up

Most people visiting a Web site know to ignore that outer columns of the page, which are filled with ads and other promotional stuff. If that's where you put your sign up box, you're going to be ignored. Last year, I began adding my sign up box to the end of every new blog post. My sign ups have increased five-fold. (The sign up box is at the end of this article, under "Sign up to have my Marketing for Writers blog delivered to your inbox free each week:")

Include the Right Image at the Top of Posts

With all the free art and image editing tools available, there is no excuse for not including a decent piece of art at the top of every post.

- Free images are available at Creative Commons
- You can crop them with a simple, free tool like Irfanview
- You can create your own graphics using Powerpoint. (create a slide, save it as a .jpg and upload it to your blog. (I used Powerpoint for the image/infogrpaphic at the top of this blog.)
- Make sure your top image is a horizontal rectangle -- it will look better when you post to Facebook groups.

Marketing for Writers: 3 Tricks for Facebook, Twitter, MeetUp

2014-08-25T18:11:00.001-04:00

Not getting much from your social media efforts? Here are some quick and easy tips for Twitter and Facebook, plus tricks for promoting your readings and events with Meetup.com.

Brown-Nosing with Twitter

Gathering thousands of followers on Twitter can take a lot of time. Or you can save time and buy followers. Will this drive traffic to your Web site or sell books? Doubtful.

There's an option that is cheaper and more efficient: Connect, flatter, and brown-nose people who already have a large number of followers.

Here's How:
- Identify influential writers, journalists, and experts in your industry. For non-fiction writers, this is straightforward -- search Google and Twitter for your topic and see who appears at the top of the list of search results. For fiction, you have to consider themes of your work. I'm writing a novel about a chronically-single guy who takes a trip around the world looking for the woman of his dreams. So, my book covers two topics: life as a single person (dating, loneliness, sex, relationships) and world travel.
- Follow these influential people on Twitter and sign up for their blogs. On Twitter, follow who they follow and who follows them. Make note of hashtags they use in their posts.
- Tweet and retweet their posts. Post images of their books or links to their Web sites. Go to their lectures or readings, take a photo, and post it to Twitter.
- Be sure to include their Twitter handles and favorite hashtags in your posts. By including their Twitter handles, you're telling them that you like their work and are happy to help them get the word out. People may retweet your tweet, which means all their followers will see your name. They influential people and their followers may follow you.

Example involving a play and performer popular with single people:

After attending an event by writer/performer Elaine Liner, I took a photo of her promotional flyer and posted it to Twitter. I included her handle @thesweatercurse and #edfringe, a hashtag she used to promote the event. That hashtag is also followed by the local press and other influential people.

Brown-Nosing on Facebook

On Facebook, you can make posts to groups you follow and mention important people. Most of the same rules for Twitter apply on Facebook:
- Post photos and links.
- Thanks people for help, praise their accomplishments, be a nice person.
- To tag, or include people's names in your posts, start typing their name and it should appear in a pick list. Type capital letters for first letter of their name. You can include their page by typing the @ sign and their page name. More on tagging with Facebook.

An example from a Facebook Group I belong to frequented by writers and performers interested in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. (I just went and performed excerpts from my novel in progress.)

In the post to a Facebook group, I thanked important people who helped me produce and perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Tips for Promoting Yourself with MeetUp Groups

I've discussed using MeetUp groups for promotion before. Recently, I tweaked my strategy.

For MeetUp, you want to promote an event geared toward individual groups. Better still, offer them something special for attending: a discount, drinks with the author (you), or something else. Here's what I did for my recent events in Edinburgh, Scotland

1) Searched for groups by location and topic:

Here I'm searching for single's groups within 10 miles of Edinburgh.

2) Completed a profile and joined the group. I was honest and said I'm a writer who will be in town performing my work at the Edinburgh Fringe festival.

3) Contacted the organizer and asked if it was OK to post an event. This is good etiquette. You could just post your event, but you might piss off the group organizer. Either way, be prepared for responses ranging from: "Sure!" to "Only if you pay me" to "Drop dead."

4) At this event in Edinburgh, I offered a discount on tickets and the opportunity to meet with me after the event.

5) Other things to consider:
- Lead time: Do this several weeks to a month before your event.
- Links with more information: Include a link to your Web page or another page describing your event and location.

After striking out with single's groups and groups interested in travel -- two themes of my book -- I contacted a local writers group. First I filled out a profile and then emailed the organizer to ask if I could pitch an event.

Art Attribution:
By Comstratega (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

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One Writer's Social Media Campaign: What Worked, What Didn't

2014-06-09T22:01:00.000-04:00

Recently, I started promoting my writing with special events -- readings and lectures -- and using social media to publicize those events. I read at public libraries, youth hostels, adult education centers, and fringe theater festivals. The results: My readings and lectures were mentioned on numerous Web sites and by media outlets that normally wouldn't have given me the time of day. This blog post describes social media tactics I used as well as what worked and what didn't

I assembled my short fiction into a one-man show called "The Chronic Single's Handbook." Recent performances were mentioned in publications such as the Orlando Sentinel.

Readings and Special Events for Writers

To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut: Writers are in show business. Put on a good show and you'll get noticed. But reading straight from your book is boring. Some better options:

- Rework short scenes from your fiction and creative non-fiction into stand-alone stories, memorize them, and enhance with a little acting. Tips on reading your work in public.

- Non-fiction writers can create entertaining lectures. Contrary to popular belief, Powerpoint presentations can be engaging -- just keep them short and kooky. Lectures and Powerpoint presentations I've given
- Then find venues and festivals that will let you read/perform/lecture. Look for organizations that have in-house marketing staffs that will promote your event. Recent venues and festivals

After you've read at your local library and hit up your friends, family, and co-workers several times, you'll need to branch out to other cities and other audiences. Drawing an audience in a distant city is tough.

Over the last month, I've performed scenes from my book at fringe theater festivals in Atlanta and Orlando. Here's how I used social media and Web marketing to generate awareness of events held far from my hometown of Boston.

Web and Social Media Marketing for Events

1) Help the Venue Promote You

- I provided a short description of my event, plus photos, links to my Web site, links to my youtube channel, a press release -- whatever they want.

- I met all deadlines and size requirements. If they wanted a 60-word description, I didn't send a 70-word description.

My Results: Excellent

- I was listed in printed and online show catalogs produced by the venues.

- I was mentioned on the venues' Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr pages.

- In Orlando, I was listed in a preview in The Orlando Weekly.

- In Orlando, I was reviewed by the Orlando Sentinel and the art publication Watermark. These articles were picked up by blogs and social media.

2) Ask Fans, Followers, and Connections for Help

- I created a Web page describing my event.
- I created a short note linking to the Web page and asking people for help.
- In the short note, I explained -- specifically -- how people could help and made it easy for them to do so. (I asked people to post a link to the Web page and ask their friends to retweet it on Twitter and share it on Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn.)
- I sent the short note to email contacts and posted it to other email lists, such as a college alumni email list, my blog, and as a social media update.
- LinkedIn: This site has a unique feature that lets you sort your contacts by location and send them a note. I created groups of contacts in Orlando (about 10 people) and Atlanta. (about 15 people). I sent them a note through LinkedIn. Several people offered to post my note to their connections. (More on how to do this next week.)

My Results: Mediocre, but worth trying.
- Email: About half of my contacts read the email. Several posted to Twitter, etc as I had asked. The key benefit: I connected with former coworkers, friends, and other contacts who I only email a few times a year.
- Social Media: I got a few retweets and shares.
- Not sure if this brought anyone to my shows.

An email blast to my Mailchimp contacts was opened by about half of them.

Sample of note I sent over LinkedIn

3) Posted to Related Social Media Groups and Pages

- I searched Facebook and Google+ for groups in my target cities. For both Orlando and Atlanta, I found a bunch. My book is about a chronically single guy who takes a trip around the world looking for the woman of his dreams. So, I looked for groups in my target cites that catered to singles, travelers, or folks interested in the arts.
- I checked the rules of the groups to see if posting links was OK. If so, I joined. If I wasn't sure, I dropped a note to the group owner and asked if I could post my event.

My Results: Negligible. Not Sure if this is worth the time.
- One group owner posted my link on his group and personal Facebook page.
- A few people in a Google+ group liked and commented on my post.
- Not sure this brought anyone to my shows

4) Posted to Meetup Groups

- I joined Meetup.com and searched by city and interests (arts, travel, and singles)
- After joining, I posted my show as a possible event for the group.
- In most cases, the event never got posted to the group.
- In a few it did and I was listed as the host.
(more on this next week)

My Results: Negligible, but worth trying.
- In one Orlando group, seven people signed up to see my show.
- Only one showed up.
- In one Atlanta group, the moderator asked me to pay to $50 post my event. I declined.
- Why it's worth trying: I did an event in November that was picked up by a Meetup in Boston and five people showed up. A friend did an event last year and dozens of Meetup folks showed up.

Meetup.com lets you search for groups of people with common interests in other cities. Then you can post your event. Though my results were mixed, the process doesn't take much time and is probably worth trying.

5) Contact Media in Target cities

- I created a press release with links to a basic online press kit with photos, a resume, and other information the press might want.
- I asked the festival organizers for a list of local media contacts in Atlanta and Orlando.
- I also Googled each city for editors who cover arts and entertainment. I found a few editors with email addresses and emailed my press release. For those who didn't post their email addresses, I located them on Twitter, followed them, and sent them a tweet about my show.
- Many media sites have events calendars: I uploaded my event to the calendars.
(more on press releases next week)

My Results: Good
- My event was listed in dozens of events calendars.
- But I was not interviewed by the local press.

6) During the Shows
- I took selfies and other photos, and posted them to my Facebook and Twitter pages. I always mentioned the venue, so they could see I was working to promote myself and the festival.
- Each morning, I Googled my name and my show for mentions that I might share with Facebook and Twitter followers.
- For Facebook, I posted to my Author Page, then logged out and logged in using my personal account. I went to my Author Page and then liked and shared the link.

My Results: Good
- My posts on my Facebook Page reached ten to twenty times more people than normal.

A post of me with a 6' 7" female impersonator at the Atlanta Fringe festival reached 193 of my Facebook fans. Typically, my posts reach about 20 of my 2,000 fans.

More on Special Events and PR

- One Writer's Platform: Events and PR

- Promote Your Writing: Events, Readings, and Fringe Festivals

- My Note to Blog Subscribers Requesting Help Promoting Recent Events

Photo credit: George Skene, Orlando Sentinel / May 16, 2014

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Professional Update/Upcoming Comedy Performances

2014-05-06T18:27:00.000-04:00

Dear All,

My apologies in advance to anyone who has already seen this on Facebook or elsewhere. But once again, I would love a little help spreading the word about my upcoming performances.

I) Executive Summary: What I'm Up To

- Polishing a novel, The Loneliest Planet, which I've been writing for the last six years. The manuscript will go to agents and publishers in early 2015 (I swear!)

- Lecturing about online marketing for writers at colleges and adult education centers around Boston.

- My one-man show, The Chronic Single's Handbook, will be featured at theater festivals in Orlando, FL; Atlanta; and Edinburgh, Scotland; this spring and summer.

II) Pleading and Groveling

Can you help me get the word out about my upcoming shows?

- Mention to people you know who might go, post on Twitter, Facebook, etc. (Sample Tweets and links below. Also, I inserted my online flyer and link at the end of this note.)

- I'm happy to reciprocate and share your events or news on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Sample Tweet:

A friend performs his show Chronic Single's Handbook: FL (5/14-24) Atlanta (6/5-8) Edinburgh (8/1-16) Go or RT http://www.chronicsingle.com/2014/04/the-chronic-singles-handbook-shows-for.html

Sample Facebook Post:

A friend will perform his one-man comedy play, The Chronic Single's Handbook, in Orlando, FL (5/14-24) Atlanta (6/5-8) Edinburgh, Scotland (8/1-16). The play is about a never-married guy who takes a trip around the world looking for the woman of his dreams. Please go or share. http://www.chronicsingle.com/2014/04/the-chronic-singles-handbook-shows-for.html

III) More Detail Than You Want

1) Here are some links to youtubes of me performing two scenes from a December performance in Boston. For the upcoming theater festivals, I'll have props but no mic, which means I'll be able to move around the stage.

- Opening scene:
"Chronically single? You've got lots of company"
Content warning for adults situations, black tongues, sadistic medical professionals.
http://youtu.be/zuzpRPWGg_c

- "One Day in Thailand"
Lady boys, tuk-tuk scammers, and the day I was almost gay.
http://youtu.be/p8AF_xhXctg

IV) Online flyer for the show

The link: http://www.chronicsingle.com/2014/04/the-chronic-singles-handbook-shows-for.html

The actual flyer:

"The Chronic Single's Handbook": Shows for 2014

The Chronic Single's Handbook: One man's global search for love

A solo performance inspired by actual events
featuring Randy Ross

Exotic Locales

Pepto-Bismol

A body-spa named The Curious Finger.

Early praise for The Chronic Single's Handbook:

"Hysterical, side-splitting, profound, a tour-de-force of droll insight. One of the year's best."
-- Randy Ross, writer/performer, The Chronic Single's Handbook

"The balance on your credit card is overdue. Please remit immediately."
-- Bank of West Boston

Upcoming Shows (all shows last one hour)

1) May 14-24 Orlando International Fringe theater festival

Dates/times
- Wed, May 14 (11:30 pm)
- Fri, May 16 (9:00 pm)
- Sat, May 17 (4:20 pm)
- Wed, May 21 (10:30 pm)
- Sat, May 24 (3:15 pm)

Location
Red Venue, Lowndes Shakespeare Center
812 E Rollins
Orlando, FL 32803
Directions

Tickets, more information.
- Cost: $12, plus one-time $9 fee for a festival entry button, which is required to see any show at the festival (sorry).

Sample show program

2) June 5-8 Atlanta Fringe theater festival

Dates/times
- Thurs, June 5 (8:00 pm)
- Fri, June 6 (11:00 pm)
- Sat, June 7, two shows (5:00 pm and 9:30 pm)
- Sun, June 8, (2:00 pm)

Location
Highland Inn Ballroom Lounge
644 N. Highland Ave.
Atlanta, GA 30306
Directions

Tickets, more information
(tickets and prices available in May (should be $10 to $15. In addition to tickets, you will need to buy at $3 festival entry button.)

Sample show program

3) August 1-16 Edinburgh Festival Fringe theater festival

Dates/times (all shows start at 7:05 pm or 19:05 using local 24-hour time)
- Mon-Sat, Aug 4-9
- Mon-Sat, Aug 11-16

Location
theSpace @ Surgeon's Hall
Nicholson Street, EH8 9DW
Edinburgh, Scotland
Directions

Tickets, more information
(tickets are 8 British Pounds, or about $12; there may be other fees)

Sample show program

4) Boston-Area Appearances

Dates/times
- May 1, with Judah Leblang at Somerville Public Library (details)
- Events calendar with more listings.

5) Watch Videos Excerpts from Recent Performances

- Opening scene: "Chronically single? You've got lots of company"
Content warning for adults situations, black tongues, sadistic medical professionals.

- "The Day I Was Almost Gay"
Content warning for prescription drug abuse, gooey sunburns, and men kissing on the lips.

Thanks again!

--rr

Google+ for Writers and Authors

2014-04-29T19:02:00.002-04:00

The social media site Google+ can help writers promote their work three ways: by letting writers interact with online groups frequented by potential readers, by increasing writers' visibility in Google searches, and by allowing writers to host free online video calls using a feature called Hangouts.

Note: Google+ recently got bad press because of management reshuffling that has led to predictions that the site might disappear. Other pundits believe the site will stick around but in a diminished form. The tips below use features that will likely remain intact regardless of management changes at the company. (Six months ago, pundits predicted Google would shutter a product called Feedburner -- this has yet to happen. I use Feedburner for this blog)

Posting to Google+ Groups

I am not a fan of spending time on social media sites trying to develop a huge number of followers. The main reason: The sites can change their rules, hold your followers hostage, and force you to pay to reach them. (For more on this, see my article on Facebook Pages for Writers) As a result, I prefer to spend my time connecting with people in social media groups.

Google+ has a lot of offbeat groups you won't find on Facebook or Linked In. For my fiction and humor, I found a group called Cynical Singles filled with funny, smart people with bad attitudes. For my nonfiction (marketing for writers), I found a group called Literary Agents Hate Kittens, which is also filled with funny, smart people with bad attitudes.

Tips on Posting to Google+ Groups
- Search for groups the same way you do on other sites: search on your topic, verify that there are lots of active members, look for intelligent posts, and read the group's rules to make sure it's OK for you to post links to your work.
- When posting one of your articles or blog stories to a Google+ group, make the post longer than what you'd typically post in Facebook or LinkedIn groups. For Facebook and LinkedIn, I post the headline and a link -- and that's it. For Google+, I include half of my article with a link at the bottom that directs people to the rest of the story. Google+ allows for longer posts.
- When someone comments or gives your post a +1, give their comment the same, comment on their comment, and follow them -- you may have found yourself a fan.

When posting one of my pieces to a LinkedIn group, I copy and paste the headline and article url, and LinkedIn takes care of the rest.

Ditto with posts to Facebook groups.

When posting to Google+ groups, I copy half to two-thirds of the article and include a link to the rest of the piece at the end of the post. (see red arrow)

Boosting Your Visibility in Google Searches

Google and Google+ have interrelated features known as Social Search, Google Authorship, and Author Ranking that claim to make you more visible to search engines. The features are relatively easy to implement by tweaking your Google+ profile (easy) and tweaking your blog or Web site (a little more involved.)

Definitions and Details

Social Search: When one of your followers on Google+ performs a search, relevant articles created by you will appear higher in their search results.

Google Authorship, Author Ranking: Articles written by you that appear in a Google search will include your photo and information from your Google+ profile.

For example:

I implemented Google Authorship by connecting the bio used in my blog to my Google+ profile.

With Google Authorship implemented, my smiling face appears in searches. Does that mean people are more likely to click my stuff?

Note: I implemented these changes a while ago and have noticed no increase in search traffic. Would my traffic have dropped off had I not implemented them? Don't know. But I'm the superstitious type and prefer to appease Google search algorithms.

More than you want to know about these topics and how to implement them:

From Google

From Social Media Examiner

From Search Engine Journal

Google+ Hangouts

This features lets you easily create free video chats, which could be useful for talking to book groups or other gatherings of potential readers who are on Google+. A feature called Hangouts on Air, lets you create lectures, webinars, and other events that can be broadcast to the general public. Setting up Hangouts on your Google+ account requires a Web cam, downloading some software, and some fiddling around. Hangouts on Air adds another layer of complexity because the feature uses your Youtube account.

Note: I have not used Hangouts extensively, but plan to in the coming months.

An opening screen for setting up a Google+ Hangout. Here, you choose who you want to invite to your video Hangout. You can invite up to 10 people. Adding more people requires a feature called Hangouts on Air and your Youtube account.

A Hangout in action: It will take some work to make a Hangout look professional, but tools (red arrows) can help. If you got a mug like mine all the tools in the world might not help.

Instructions for setting up Hangouts

Interesting Uses for Hangouts

More on Google+

Getting Started Guide

Why Writers Should Bother with Google+

Tips and Tools for Advanced Google+ Users

More on Social Media for Writers

Using Groups to Find Readers

Building a Writing Platform: My Results for 2013

Why Facebook is Not Your Friend

Google+ Art at top of page: By B!ttu (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

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Web Marketing for Writers: Best Sites, Blogs, Resources

2014-04-21T18:33:00.001-04:00

Thirteen web sites to help writers save time, increase their audience size, and boost their online presence. These popular web sites cover blogging, social media, and publishing trends.

Social Media Resources

Jonathan Loomer Digital
An excellent resource for using Facebook to market your work.

Social Media Examiner
Lots of good marketing advice for small businesses, such as writers and authors. Also a good source for keeping up with changes to Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Social Media Today
A little hypy and geeky for the average writer, but worth checking in on periodically.

LinkedInsights
News, tips and tricks for using LinkedIn, which can be a good tool for non-fiction authors.

Blogging

Copyblogger
The authority on using a blog to market your work, build an audience, and get people to buy your stuff. Lots of articles on how to get started with a blog.

SEOMoz
Another geeky resource that is unecessary for the average writer, but still a great source of information on search engine optimization, social media, and other forms of online marketing.

Orbit Media
Another good resource offering advanced tips on using your blog to attract readers.

Other Web Marketing Resources for Writers

Publicity Hound
Joan Stewart offers tips and advice for promoting yourself online and off. She also offers advice on dealing with and attracting coverage from mainstream media

Jane Friedman
A great source for trends in marketing and publishing in general.

Anne R. Allen
My personal favorite, Anne Allen and co-blogger Ruth Harris offer straight talk on what works and what doesn't for online marketing and social media. The constantly ask: Are you wasting too much time on social media?

The Book Designer
One of the best resources for self-publishers.

Blogcarnival.com
A list of blogs looking for content. The site is organized by topic: Writing about flowers, dogs, comedy? Find a blog that will post links back to your blog. A good way to increase the exposure of your web site or blog.

Authority Publishing
Good book marketing tips for non-fiction writers.

Most Popular Web Marketing Posts from this Blog

- Facebook for Writers: Gripes, Tips (Part 1)

- Twitter for Writers: Strategies for 2014

- Building a Writing Platform: My Results for 2013

Top art attribution: Trophies by Wammes Waggel (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons

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LinkedIn for Writers: Tips, Recent Changes

2014-04-08T10:50:00.000-04:00

LinkedIn can help you promote your writing two ways: By letting you connect with potential readers in Groups and allowing you to email all or some of your Connections. This post will discuss using Groups for promotion and recent changes that can render them useless.

What's New on LinkedIn

- When you post an Update, only a fraction of your Connections will see it.
- LinkedIn is releasing a blog-like feature that lets some users post updates that reach a much broader audience on the site. At present, this is a very exclusive club.
- Piss off the moderator of one Group and he can ban you from posting in his Group -- and any other group you belong to. (Yes, you read that correctly. More on this below.)

Though I have about 2,000 Connections, only about 50 see my Updatess.

Posting in Groups

Posting links to articles you've written in appropriate Groups can entice readers to your blog or Web site. Here's how to do it without pissing off Group moderators.

1) Find Appropriate Groups

If you're writing non-fiction, search LinkedIn for Groups interested in your topic. I write about marketing for writers, so I've found Groups created for writers looking for tips on how to promote their work.

For fiction writers, the process is trickier. LinkedIn is a business-to-business site. In writing your novel, did you learn anything that may be of interest to business or non-fiction types? If you wrote an historical novel, maybe you learned about a particular historical period. If you write about science fiction, maybe you learned about about astronomy or physics or technology. Search LinkedIn for groups on these topics.

My novel involves travel. I found some travel groups, but they were mainly travel agents and knew more than I did, so this didn't work for me. Hence, I do not use LinkedIn to promote my fiction.

2) Evaluate the Groups

- Is the Group active with different people posting and commenting? (If a group has only posts from one person, say, the Group moderator, skip it.

- What are the rules? Does the Group allow people to post links to their blogs?

- What are other members posting? If they're posting just a headline and an article link, then you can, too. If others post a description of the article -- or even most of the article -- in the "Add more details" box then should do as they do. Often, a Group's rules will specify what you can post and whether it can go in the Discussion section. If blog posts must go in the Promotion section, the Group may not be useful.

- If you post a link to your blog, check back the following week to see if it went live. In the Group, click on your picture or the "Your Activity" link. Then look under "Discussions You've Started." Nothing there? Look in "Pending Submissions."

Note: Posting to writing groups and asking people to buy your book is not a good way to sell books! But it is a good way to be labeled a spammer.

3) Pending Submissions: When You've Pissed Off Someone

If week after week your posts are sitting in "Pending Submissions," you may have been black-balled by a moderator who didn't like your post or considers you a spammer. If people are "Liking" your posts and commenting, you're in the right place.

Unfortunately, if a moderator doesn't like your posts and black-balls you, any posts to her Group -- or any other Group -- will sit in "Pending." The moderator of each Group will have approve your post for it to go live in their Group. In some Groups, however, moderators never check "Pending Submissions" and you're screwed.

What can you do?

- E-mail each moderator, mention that your posts are "Pending" in their Group, and ask if you've you done anything wrong. In my experience, you will never hear either way.

- As of press time, LinkedIn claims that you'll only sit in the "Pending" penalty box for two weeks. I can't verify this.

- You will likely Not be subjected to Pending in all Groups. If you're stuff isn't posting in one Group, you may want to leave that Group.

More than you want to know on this topic.

The technical term for being black-balled is that you're a victim of Site-Wide Moderation or SWAM.

- Black-balled users create a ruckus (Forbes article)

- Another expert weighs in (LinkedIn Insights article)

- A LinkedIn Group devoted to this topic (note the Moderators warning about posting blog links in his Group!)

Are LinkedIn Groups Working for You?

As with any promotion tactic, the proof is in the Web traffic.

LinkedIn is working for me -- for now.

- Social Media for Writers: One Thing That Works

- Linked In Tips for Authors

- More Quick, Dirty Twitter Tips for Writers: Tweeting Tricks

Art attribution: Top image by Koreshky at en.wikibooks [Public domain]

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6 Tips to Boost Blog Traffic

2014-04-03T13:01:00.000-04:00

These six tips will help improve traffic to and within your blog. The tips include suggestions for enhancing navigation around your site, finding and choosing images, and a great suggestion for adding more e-mail subscribers.

Improve Navigation Around Your Blog

Most people who read one of your blog posts, never see the home page. Typically, they'll come to read an article they found in a Google search, saw on a social media post, or clicked in an e-mail forwarded by a friend.

Navigation refers to how visitors find articles on your blog. If you've written a lot of blog posts, most visitors will never see them.

Here are two ways to promote articles once people visit your blog:

1) Index or Category pages

These are pages you add to your blog that include lists of related articles. You should be able to group most of your posts into five or so major categories. These categories can be listed along the top of your blog as tabs. Tabs labeled as "About" and "More Articles" are not very enticing to most readers. Be more specific. On the top of this blog, my tabs include: Self Promotion for Writers, For Bitter Singles, Erotic Humor, Travel Humor, Trip Around the World.

When you click on, say, the Trip Around the World tab, you arrive at an Index or Category page that lists articles about my trip around the world.

Note: This Index page is not particularly pretty, but it lets readers know what kinds of other content I have. (click on the image below to enlarge it)


Clicking the Trip Around the World tab brings visitors to an	Index page		listing articles on travel articles.

You can also create Index pages that are not linked to a tab -- just create these pages as regular blog posts and include links to related articles. In the example below, if you click on the Travel Humor tab, you come to a list of funny travel articles. Within that list, you can click on "Revelstoke" and see a list of stories about my trip to Revelstoke, Canada.

2) Include listings of related articles at the end of every blog post.

This is the writer's version of "if you liked this article, you may like these other articles." Go to the end of this blog post for an example.

Pick Good Art

You need a nice image, photo, or graphic at the top of every blog post! Why?
- Blog articles will look more professional
- When you post a link to your blog on social media, it will look more appealing. (There's research claiming readers are more likely to click on links accompanied by a photo.)
- Images are available for free.

Tips:

3) Find free, legal images on Creative Commons

4) Crop and edit those images using a free, easy-to-use tool like Irfanview

5) Chose rectangular images -- they will look better when you post to Facebook or Twitter. More than you want to know about social media and rectangular images.

If the top art in your blog is a square, linking to it in Facebook will produce a small image (top example of microphones) Using a rectangular image will often produce a Facebook post with a larger image. (bottom example with Facebook image)

Note: if you're blog post consists of a video or audio clip, be sure to add a piece of art to the top of the post -- youtube thumbnails don't always appear when you post blog links on social media sites.

Add More Subscribers

6) Embed e-mail sign up/subscribe boxes in every post

I used to get two to three people signing up for my blog when I had the subscribe box in the upper right hand corner of my blog page.

Most visitors ignore information, such as the subscribe box (red arrow), in the outer columns of the page.

When I started inserting the sign-up box directly into each blog post, my sign-ups jumped to 20 per month. (For an example, see the sign up box at the end of this post. If you haven't already signed up, please do!)

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11 More Great Twitter Tips for Writers

2014-03-25T13:28:00.000-04:00

These Twitter tweaks for writers and authors show how to: unfollow people who are not following you back; automatically Tweet posts from your blog, Linked In, and Facebook accounts; suck up to important people; and use your Twitter profile to drive traffic to your blog.

The tips are organized into three categories: Followers, Tweeting, and Miscellaneous. If you missed last week's Twitter article, here is is: Twitter for Writers: Strategies for 2014

I) Followers

1) Follow influential people and writers in your industry

- Use Twitters search tool and search on key terms and hashtags

- Use a search tool like Tweepi to find followers with similar interests.

- Use Twitter's List feature to create lists of only your best, most important followers. Retweet their Tweets. More on this.

2) Follow their followers

- You should be able to follow 10 to 50 new people a day, depending on how many people you have following you.

- Twitter will warn you if you attempt to follow too many people: Heed the warning and stop following people for 24 hours. Twitters frowns on people who have few followers and follow lots of people. Try to maintain a similar number of followers to people you are following

- I have 4,000 followers and have been able to have follow about 4,200 or 200 more people than people who follow me.

- More on this:Twitter's policy tips on how to avoid having your account suspended.

3) How to unfollow people who don't follow you back.

Free tools such as Manageflitter used to make this process very easy. Recent changes to Twitter, which discourage bulk following and unfollowing, have made these tools trickier to use. But it can still be done. Here's how to do it with Managerflitter:


Step 1: After signing in to Manageflitter, click "Not Following Back." Go to the last page of the results -- people who have been ignoring you for the longest period of time. (arrow on upper right)


Step 2: Click the little box next to each person's name. Managerflitter let's you dump up to 100 people per day.

Step 3: Click "process now"

Step 4: Reclick the boxes on the left next to each person's name. Then check your Twitter profile to verify that you've dumped some people you were following.

II) Tweeting

4) Use images and photos -- correctly -- in your Tweets. Here's how.

5) Brown nose

When you retweet important people of folks with whom you want to curry some favor, include their twitter handle -- including the @ sign -- in your Tweet.

6) Tweet more often

- People "with 15,000 plus tweets have between 100,000 to 1 million followers," according to a post by social media expert Jeff Bullas.

7) Save time by prescheduling posts
Try a scheduling such as Hootsuite. Be sure to install Hootsuite's Hootlet, which lets you capture and Tweet Web pages while you're browsing the Internet. To find Hootlet: In Hootsuite, click the wrench icon on the left column to open the Tools menu. Then click on Hootlet.

8) More automation: Have your posts to Facebook, Linked In, Google+, and your blog automatically added to your Twitter feed.

- Facebook to Twitter

- Google/Twiter integration: Sign up for a free account at Manageflitter. Select Engagement from the top menu, then Google+ integration and follow the instructions.

- Linked In: Add your Twitter handle to your Linked In profile. Go to your Linked In home page, enter a status update in the "Share an Update" box. In the "Share with" box below your update, select "Public + Twitter."

- Twitterfeed

III) Miscellaneous Tips

9) Add a second link to your Twitter profile

In addition to the link at the end of my profile (randyrossmedia.com), I added a second link to the body of my profile (theloneliestplanet.com). For the body link, use the full url with http:// etc.

10) Are your Twitter efforts paying off?

One of my goals with Twitter is to drive traffic to this blog. This easy to measure with a Web analytics tool. Statcounter is one of the simplest, cleanest Web anaytics tools

Another goal is to beef up my Klout score, a measurement some employers and literary agents consider important. In my experience, adding followers and tweeting regularly boosts my Klout score more than my activities with other social media. More on Klout scores.

More Social Media Tips

-Twitter for Writers: Strategies for 2014

- Building a Writing Platform: My Results for 2013

- Quick, Dirty Blogging Tips for Writers and Authors

Art attribution: Top image "Twitter" by Esther Vargas Attribution-ShareAlike License

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Twitter for Writers: Strategies for 2014

2014-03-20T12:32:00.000-04:00

Twitter can be a good tool for finding new readers and connecting with influential people you don't already know. It can also be a colossal waste of time -- even more so because the site recently changed some policies that can affect writers promoting their work. This article discusses recent changes -- both bad and good -- and includes work-arounds and tips. As with any type of promotion, be sure to measure your results. For example, is the time you're spending on Twitter driving people to your Web site or Amazon page? You're checking your Web traffic stats regularly, right?

Recent Changes

1) Twitter is now encouraging you to include photos and images with your posts. This could be a good thing if you're handy with graphics software. If not, your posts may get lost in a tsunami of dopey pet photos other people post.

Note: Encouraging users to post photos is a social media trend: Facebook recently implemented policies encouraging its users to do this. Read about Facebook's tweaks and how to make the most of them.

2) It is now easier to add a stream of Twitter posts to your blog or Web page.

3) Twitter clamped down on tools, such as Manageflitter, that automate the time-consuming processes of following and unfollowing people. (Next week's blog will include a work-around for this.)

1) Adding Photos and Images

Research suggests that people are more likely to click on a post featuring a "picture" than one feature just a link or straight text. In October, Twitter added a feature called Image Preview that displays pictures in followers Twitter feeds. Previously, followers had to click on a link to see the image, now it just appears -- if it is properly formatted.

Two images I uploaded to Twitter and how they appear in a Twitter feed.Notice that the text post in between the two images gets lost.

- What counts as a picture? Anything that is saved as a graphics file such as a .jpg. So you could take a quote from your book, add a border to it, save it as a .jpg and that would qualify as a picture. A good article discussing pictures and images.

- How to format pictures so Twitter will accept them for Image Preview
* Images can be no larger than 3 MBs. (the images in my example are 50KB and look fine)
*As with Facebook, pick images that are rectangular. Some experts recommend formatting images that are twice as wide as they are high. That isn't always necessary: In my example above, the top image, a screen capture of my Twitter profile, is 440 pixels wide by 220 pixels high. The second image of me with the sheet measures 600 by 400)

- How to upload pictures: When you click on the "Compose a New Tweet" box, a camera icon appears. Click the camera and you'll be prompted to upload a file from your computer.

- Twitter also lets you add youtube videos to your Tweets. However, these will not show up as large images the way photos do. (To include a video, enter the youtube link into the "Compose a new Tweet" box. Include a snappy headline or other text to entice followers to click.)

- Images, as well as videos, inserted into Tweets are collected in the "Photos and Videos" box on your profile page. To remove items from the box, click on the arrow, click on the item, and then click delete, which removes the Tweet from your Twitter feed. Note: If you create a Tweet using a tool, such as Hootsuite, the image or video will not be added to the "Photos and Videos" box

The Photo and Videos box displays six recent items. To remove an arrow indicated by my red arrow.

- Simple tools for creating pictures and images: Items created in Powerpoint can be saved as .jpg files. Irfanview is easy to use and let's you crop, annotate, and resize images.

- For more detail than you want on adding images to Twitter

2) Embed Your Tweets onto a Web Page or Blog

My Twitter stream (recent posts) added to my Web site.

This capability isn't new, though Twitter has beefed up the features. To add your Twitter to a Web page.

On your Twitter page:
- click on Settings (the little gear in the upper right corner of the pages)
- click Widgets
- click create New
- Once you've finished, Twitter will generate somme code that you need to copy and paste onto you Blog or Web page.
- More on embedding your Twitter Timelines (your Tweets).

More Social Media and Twitter Tips for Writers

- Confusing Twitter Terms in Plain English

- More Quick, Dirty Twitter Tips for Writers: Tweeting Tricks

Note: the two posts above are older: some of the Twitter interface has changed, but the strategies still work.

- Facebook 2014: Gripes and Tips for Writers (part 1)

- Facebook 2014: Gripes and Tips for Writers (part 2)

Art attribution: Twitter image by Dennis70 (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

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Facebook for Writers: Part II

2014-03-10T17:32:00.001-04:00

This article discusses how to make the most of recent changes to Facebook. The tips include: reaching more friends and fans by creating better posts, using photos properly, and tweaking Facebook to increase your the Web presence (SEO) of your blog or Web site.

(Last week's post reviewed recent updates to Facebook and their impact on writers.)

Most of the tips below I have tried. Some I haven't but make sense. Others will work depending on Facebook's mood that day. Sorry -- there may be some trial and error involved. Fortunately, most of the tips are not that time consuming to implement.

I) Posting Tips

Overview

The goal of any Facebook post is to reach more of your potential readers whether through your Profile (personal) page, Author (Fan) page, or in groups to which you post. You also want to entice potential readers to your blog, Web site, or Amazon page.

My goal is to drive readers to recent blog posts, where they will hopefully sign up. That way, I know they're interested in my work and I can contact them directly without going through Facebook. (Facebook holds your friends and fans hostage, and forces you to pay to reach all of them.)

The Tips

1) Creating a Facebook-Friendly Blog or Web Page:

- Use at least one large image in your blog post or Web page you are promoting. Typically, when you post a link in Facebook, the social media site snags the largest image on your page to create a preview.

- Make sure that image in your blog or Web page has a rectangular shape and is about 560 pixels wide. (Facebook prefers images that are 560 wide by 292 high. Cropping and resizing can be time-consuming.)

Why you should care: If Facebook likes your image, it will appear larger on your page, Friends/Fans' newsfeeds, and in posts to groups. (Note: the resizing doesn't always work -- I resized the top image on this blog at 560 by 315 and it isn't displaying large enough in Facebook. Oh, well.)

How a blog with a large rectangular image displays in a Facebook preview.

If Facebook chokes on your image, you'll get a smaller, less attractive square-sized image.

How a blog post with a small, square image appears in a Facebook preview. Which post do you think a friend or fan would be most likely to click if they saw it in their Newfeed?

- A good, free tool for cropping and resizing images: Irfanview

2) Posting to Facebook:

- Whenever possible create Facebook posts that include an image as discussed above. Text-only posts will supposedly be seen by fewer people.

- Use the full url for links to your blog, Website, or Amazon page. Do not use a shortened version created with Bitly.com, Tinyurl.com, or any other url shortener. (I have not tested this, but it makes sense.) More on this from Social Media Examiner.

- Posting strategy 1: The Link Share

Post a link, wait for Facebook to create a preview of the post, erase the link text from your status update, and then write a description of the post. This is supposed to be the most effective way to reach more people. It also takes more time, particularly if you are posting the same link to different places: your Profile page, your Author page, and some Facebook groups.

A nice description of the Link Share technique from Amy Lynn Andrews

- Posting strategy 2: Copy and paste a short description of your post and a link to the blog or Web page you want to promote. This is what I do -- it saves some time. The preview also looks nice -- ie includes a large image -- if you follow a large rectangular image as mention in Tip 1 above.

- Posting strategy 3: If your image still appears small when Facebook creates a preview of your post, try uploading the image as a photo, then add descriptive text and your blog or Web page link. The drawback to this strategy: When friends or fans click on the image it will take them to the image. They will need to click the link to visit your blog or Web page.

Option 3: A more enticing post created by uploading an image from my hard drive to Facebook and then adding the link.

- Measure what works! For Facebook Fan pages, you could check the Reach. For Profile (personal pages), you could check how many Likes and Shares your post received. But the only measure that really matters is clicks to your blog post -- the number of visitors who came from Facebook as indicated by your Web analytics, traffic measuring tool.

II) SEO (Helping More People Find You When They Search the Web)

I have serious doubts about whether search engine optimization is still a good use of time for the average writer. (Search engine optimization is a slew of techniques designed to trick search engines, such as Google, into displaying your Web site more prominently when people search on topics related to what you write.)

Still, here are some quick ways you can use your Facebook Profile or Author pages that may boost your presence on the Web.

- Include links to your blog and Web site in the About sections of your Profile and Author pages.

- Include links to your sites in your photo descriptions in your Author pages.

More SEO tips for Facebook from Social Media Examiner.

III) Misc Tips to Get More Out of Facebook

- Using your Profile page instead of an Author Page? Divide "friends" into lists, so real friends don't see business stuff and vice versa.

- Let people who are not friends see your business-y posts by enabling the Follow Button on your Profile page. This is another feature that lets a Profile page act like an Author page -- and another reason you may not need an Author page.

- Post to Facebook on Thursdays and Fridays. Some experts claim that toward the end of the week, people spend more time on Facebook.

- Ask your Friends or Fans for their e-mail addresses. This way you can contact them directly without going through Facebook. Manage their e-mail addresses with a free tool such as Mail Chimp. Then send them a quarterly e-mail with major updates regarding your work. More on collecting and using e-mail addresses from Jon Loomer.

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Facebook for Writers: Gripes, Tips (Part1)

2014-03-03T17:29:00.000-05:00

Recent changes to Facebook make the social media site even less useful to writers looking to promote their work for free. This article includes an overview of the changes, plus some tips on how to use them to your advantage.

Full disclosure: Because of these developments, I'm spending less time promoting my work on Facebook.

Next week's post will focus on free tips and tricks for getting what you can out of Facebook.

Recent Developments on Facebook that Affect Writers

1) It's Harder to Get Your Posts Under the Noses of Readers
Most of your friends, fans, and readers see your Facebook posts in their Newsfeeds. Facebook has been restricting what appears in Newsfeeds. Posts from Pages, such as your Author or Book pages, may not show up at all.

Note: I have 2,000 Fans on my Author Page. A typical post once reached 300 of my Fans. Now it reaches about 50. More on Facebook reach for writers.

2) Casual Users Are Leaving Facebook
By contrast, heavy Facebook users are being more active. Upshot: Those individuals who post a lot of dopey photos and live their lives on Facebook are more active than ever. Think about your audience and their usage of Facebook. This could be another reason why your posts are reaching fewer people.

3) Facebook Is Using Scare Tactics to Keep Mobile Users from Seeing Links You Post
My goal on Facebook is to entice people to visit my blog. As a result, I post links to my blog posts on Facebook. Facebook users who click on my links may receive a warning that says something like "This link might be malicious ... Follow it with care."

4) A Profile (personal) Page Might Be More Useful than an Author Page
For years, the conventional wisdom was that you needed an Author Page. But Facebook has added features, such as a Follow feature, that let people you don't know or friend see posts on your Profile Page. By dividing up your friends using the Facebook List feature, you can make certain posts available to the general public or just your closest friends. A recent post on Profile vs. Author Pages.

5) New Posting Rules: Facebook Prefers Pictures to Videos or Text Updates
Use large, horizontal images in your blog and your Facebook posts will appear larger in people's Newsfeeds and probably get more clicks. Use smaller or vertical images in your blog, and they will appear as thumbnails that will be easy to overlook. Another workaround, is to upload the picture image to Facebook and then add a link going to your blog.

This blog post used a small image. Here's how it appeared when I posted it to Facebook

This blog post used a large. rectangular image.

In this example, I uploaded an image to Facebook and then added a link to my blog. The drawback here: If people click the photo, it goes to the photo. In the examples above, a click on the photo sends people directly to my blog. Next week, more options for making your posts look better.

More on Facebook Changes and Social Media

Six Reasons Your Facebook Postings May Not Get Responses

Why Facebook is Not a Writer's Friend

Sick of Social Media? Other Options for Writers

Building a Platform: My Results in 2013

Art Attribution: Top Facebook image by Maxi Gago (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

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One Writer's Platform (Part 2) Events and PR

2014-02-16T15:16:00.001-05:00

Blogging and social media are not the only ways to develop a platform or audience for your writing. In 2013, I spent a chunk of my book marketing time promoting myself with special events, such as lectures and public readings. The nice thing about special events is that the venue will promote you to local newspapers and online events listings -- they will do PR for you. Oh, and some venues will pay you.

Note: I did all this without having a published or even finished book. I plan to finish my novel and circulate it to agents in the fall. I swear!

See Part 1 of this article, "Building a Writing Platform: One Writer's Results in 2013"

Here's what I did and my results.

Special Events: 16 total in 2013

1) Lectures for Non-Fiction and Fiction

If you're writing non-fiction, lectures are a no-brainer -- you know your material, right?

My example: Since I have a background in online marketing and I publish this blog, I've lectured about social media and blogging for writers at a local adult education center ($50 per class) and appeared on a panel for a low-residency MFA program ($175).

Even if you're writing a novel, you've likely done a lot of research. Your novel probably mentions real people and places. That makes you somewhat of an expert.

My example: I'm writing a novel about a chronically single guy who takes a trip around the world looking to change his luck with love.

The novel involves world travel, something I know about. Prior to this year, I gave travel lectures at a local adult eduction center (I was paid $60 per lecture) as well as a local sporting goods/camping store called Eastern Mountain Sports (unpaid). In 2013, I was paid to read at a local youth hostel.

2) Public Readings

Even if you do not have a published, or even finished book, you can read at public venues -- along side published writers. In case, you missed that -- you can read like the big boys without a published book. And you can get paid for it. As evidence, see my list of public readings and lectures and upcoming events for 2014.

Where can you read?
- Literary events: open mics, salons, reading series, book stores.
- Public libraries: Many will pay you. I read with two friends in 2011 and we each got $100.
- Slams: Poetry slams, story telling slams -- I once read at a smut slam. Note: For slams you will need to memorize your material. Poetry slams generally want less than three minutes of material. Story slams want about five minutes. It takes me two weeks to memorize a five-minute piece -- and I'm old and senile.
- Comedy open mics: I "performed some of my memorized material at a local comedy club. An audience member threw a cup of ice at one of the performers. The other comedians left. I stayed and was declared the winner by default. I earned $50.
- Fringe theater festivals: A novel is 12 hours of material. In 2013, I boiled my unpublished manuscript down to a one-hour, one man show with the help of a drama coach. It took about four months to memorize 45-pages of material and to learn to use some props and gestures, as well as a few foreign accents to differentiate my characters.

Tips:
- Have a friend video tape your readings, and then upload them to youtube.
- Collect e-mail addresses at your events.
- If you like reading and performing, up your game by taking an acting class or at least getting feedback from someone you trust.

In two years of performing and some classes, I've gone from:

This:

To This:

Some Background

- I've been working on a novel for the last five years and plan to circulate it to agents in the fall.

- I self-published excerpts from the novel and have sold about 50 copies for $8 a piece. (My self-publishing endeavor: I had copies made a local copy shop. I also uploaded a PDF version, which I sell for $1 -- I've sold two of these.)

- I spend about one day a week on marketing and promotion. My goal is to develop an audience well before my novel comes out -- be it through traditional or self publishing

The Loneliest Planet by Randy Ross

Double Whammy? Querying in the Time of Covid and Identity Politics

for more details

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Marketing for Writers: Selling Books at Live Events

Selling books needn't involve begging

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Marketing for Writers: Tips for Virtual Readings on Zoom, Facebook Live, etc

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Marketing Tips for Writers: Twitter Hashtags

I) Why bother with Hashtags

II) Things to Try

1) Find and use hashtags employed by authors of books similar to yours.

2) Find hashtags related to themes or topics in your book

3) Find hashtags for your genre

4) Use hashtags used by the local press: arts reporters, book reviewers,

5) Create your own hashtag for a theme in your book or an upcoming event your hosting.

III) Tweet Etiquette for Deploying Hashtags

IV) More Marketing Tips for Authors

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Covid Query Process for a New Novel

What the Agents Said

My Book Marketing To Do List

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Pt 2: Debut Novelist's Rocky Road to Getting Published

The Query Letter

Querying Agents

Querying Tips (from someone who didn't get an agent)

<to be continued next week>

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A Debut Novelist's Rocky Road to Publication: Pt 1

<to be continued next week>

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The Query Letter and Synopsis: Lesser Known Tips

I) The Email Query

Small Stuff I Didn't Learn in Any Class:

II) The Synopsis: A Huge Pain

III) Other Tips

Related Links

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Find An Agent: One Writer's Strategy

I) Finding Appropriate Agents

Where to Look:

1) Ask friends and connections

2) Consider agents attending writing conferences

3) Find authors of comparable books

4) Search by genre or category

5) Visit sites where agents post what they're looking for

6) Consider social media long shots (Note: I haven't tried this yet)

II) Vet the agents

1) Check their recent sales on Publishers Marketplace

2) Visit agent's Web site for querying instructions

3) Look for dirt: Is that agent legit?

Related Links

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Facebook for Writers: New Features a Waste of Time?

Call to Action Buttons

Target Fans by Interest

Rooms

More Facebook Posts

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Email Marketing for Writers: Build Your List!

Why Email?

Tips for Building Your Email List

More Marketing for Writers

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LinkedIn for Writers: A Slick Trick to Reach Readers

Email Marketing with LinkedIn

How to Do it

1) Go to Your Connections

2) Target the Right Connections

3) Craft Your Message and Don't Be Annoying!

4) Before You Hit Send

5) Miscellaneous Tips

More LinkedIn Advice for Writers

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