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Social Media to the Max!

July 8, 2010 By 2 Comments

There’s a cartoon showing two Native Americans standing on a mountain looking at another mountain from which clouds of smoke are rising. One says to the other: “Makes you wonder how we ever lived without it.”

One editor at a major house went from loving Twitter and editing a book about it to ignoring it because of the signal-to-noise ratio. His interest was worn down by the gap between the number of tweets he saw and their value.

Delivering Value

Using social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and author communities like Red Room to build an online network of people interested in you and your books is essential. Building and sustaining that network requires you to get people to know, like, and trust you. This will take time, patience, and persistence. How can you transform noise into signals and earn the respect of potential book buyers?

  • Delivering value with the information you provide and the information of others you share
  • Being responsive to those who contact you
  • Being creative by offering what only you can provide
  • Being consistent 
  • Separating personal from professional communications by having a fan page on Facebook and a personal address on Twitter
  • Balancing the time you devote to social media with your other efforts 

The more valuable you make yourself to people, the less you will have to sell what you create. Your online community will know that your books will be worth their time and money, and worth letting their online community know about.

What Social Media Won’t Replace

Social media can enrich your life, but it can’t replace

  • Writing books that deliver
  • Meeting you; readers want both kinds of connections, and the relationships that your books will lead to will be best enjoyed in person
  • All of the other growing number of  ways you can connect with readers online that I’ve mentiond before, including: a blog, posting to blogs, articles or short stories, videos, podcasts, and a Web site
  • All of the ways you can connect with readers off-line such as talks, teaching, other events, bookstore and media appearances
  • The private pleasures of experiencing your books in whatever form works best for your readers around the world:

              * the feel, smell, and beauty of a well-designed book

              * an audio book or MP3

               * an E-book

                * serialization

 I hope you find the wealth of possibilities for sharing your ideas and getting responses to them inspiring and exhilarating. Someday you’ll wonder how you ever could have lived without them.

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Writers Do it One Word at a Time

March 26, 2010 By 5 Comments

No good book is ever too long. No bad book is ever too short.

            –Anonymous

Hemingway rewrote the last page of For Whom the Bell Tolls 39 times. When someone asked him what the problem was, he replied: “Getting the words right.”

The book that tells how to do this most concisely and that most affects my writing is The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White, Jr.  The rule on composition that guides my writing is number six: “Omit needless words.”  This is the ultimate rule of writing, because if you eliminate needless words, the only words you have left are those you do need.

As powerful as it is brief, this rule is a testament to the power of less. Your time-starved readers, online and off,  make being relentlessly rigorous about your prose more imperative than ever. It means that:

  • Form is as important as content.
  • Every word you write must justify your readers’ most precious asset: their time.

This timeless, universal rule challenges you to make your writing impeccable. It doesn’t mean that what you write has to be short, only that you must serve your readers well or you’ll lose them faster than ever.

You also have to make your work a pleasure to read by ornamenting it with grace notes—warmth, passion, life, humor, inspiration, and stories that help you achieve your literary goals. The more people you want to reach, the simpler and more enjoyable your prose must be.

Every word you write must pull its own weight both in communicating your message and strengthening its impact.   It’s a disservice to your idea and your readers to present  your work before it is ready.

Agents and editors read for a living. They can tell from the first sentence whether someone can write. The first weak word or idea will make their editorial antennae quiver. If it’s not too serious, they’ll keep reading but with an uneasy, usually justified, dread that enough transgressions will follow to justify a rejection.

Michelangelo believed that his statues were waiting for him inside blocks of marble waiting for him to chip away at until he liberated them. The idea for your book is a block of marble inside of which the best embodiment of your idea is waiting for you to bring it to life. So keep chipping away at your idea until it becomes the reality you want it to be. Only your last draft counts.

Comments and questions welcome.

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