(In)visibility - Debbie Bennett
I'm on Facebook, lurking in a writers' group, reading a few posts and making the occasional comment. I spot something interesting and I read further. It's a comment by a member of the group I don't know well and it sounds interesting - he makes a valid point and I like the way he says it. His name is Joe Bloggs Author, so I click on it to see who he is.
He has a cat as his header picture at the top of his page. Cute. Or maybe it's a picture of his wife and kids - whatever. We're not friends on Facebook, so if I message him to say hello, what kind of stuff do you write? it won't end up in his main message box and he'll probably never see it. So I click on the ABOUT link to find out a bit more. Hey, he's an author and I have nothing lined up to read next - maybe his book is worth checking out?
But ... nothing. No link to Amazon, no link to a website or blog. Not even an email. I could google him, but Joe Bloggs is a common name. I could hunt on amazon, but I don't even know what genre he writes in. I could ... hey, a comment from somebody else has just flashed up on my screen - let's go see what that's all about ...
Lost potential customer. Lost potential sale.
Later on, I remember Joe Bloggs, Author. He's not really grasped the basics of marketing, has he? Maybe he tweets, or maybe he posts links to his books occasionally. I don't know and I probably never will. But he doesn't understand that the worst thing - the biggest problem us independent authors have - is invisibility. It's not about spamming or bullying or in-your-face promotion. It's about building a platform, one brick and blog at a time. So you don't have a website/blog and you're not tech-savvy enough to build one? Blogger and wordpress are easy to set-up and even if you can't manage that, Amazon has given you an Author Page where you can upload a few words about yourself, maybe provide an email address so readers can get in touch, and link to your books. And then you can put a link to that page on Facebook and any other social media sites you haunt. You can put it on your business cards or your book postcards or bookmarks if you have them.
And then you put your links on your Facebook profile. Or on Twitter or LinkedIn or whatever corner of web you lurk. You don't lurk online? You have little choice these days if you really want to sell books as an independent writer.
Joe Bloggs, I don't know who you are and I'll have forgotten you by tomorrow. But today - right now - I might have bought your book, if only I'd known where to find it.
He has a cat as his header picture at the top of his page. Cute. Or maybe it's a picture of his wife and kids - whatever. We're not friends on Facebook, so if I message him to say hello, what kind of stuff do you write? it won't end up in his main message box and he'll probably never see it. So I click on the ABOUT link to find out a bit more. Hey, he's an author and I have nothing lined up to read next - maybe his book is worth checking out?
But ... nothing. No link to Amazon, no link to a website or blog. Not even an email. I could google him, but Joe Bloggs is a common name. I could hunt on amazon, but I don't even know what genre he writes in. I could ... hey, a comment from somebody else has just flashed up on my screen - let's go see what that's all about ...
Lost potential customer. Lost potential sale.
Later on, I remember Joe Bloggs, Author. He's not really grasped the basics of marketing, has he? Maybe he tweets, or maybe he posts links to his books occasionally. I don't know and I probably never will. But he doesn't understand that the worst thing - the biggest problem us independent authors have - is invisibility. It's not about spamming or bullying or in-your-face promotion. It's about building a platform, one brick and blog at a time. So you don't have a website/blog and you're not tech-savvy enough to build one? Blogger and wordpress are easy to set-up and even if you can't manage that, Amazon has given you an Author Page where you can upload a few words about yourself, maybe provide an email address so readers can get in touch, and link to your books. And then you can put a link to that page on Facebook and any other social media sites you haunt. You can put it on your business cards or your book postcards or bookmarks if you have them.
And then you put your links on your Facebook profile. Or on Twitter or LinkedIn or whatever corner of web you lurk. You don't lurk online? You have little choice these days if you really want to sell books as an independent writer.
Joe Bloggs, I don't know who you are and I'll have forgotten you by tomorrow. But today - right now - I might have bought your book, if only I'd known where to find it.
Comments
(But I'm dong to think hard about what you say, Debbie. I've never ever got round to doing my Amazon author thingie. Few people realise that Spartacus was the idlest slave of them all)
I'm going back to bed
I have to confess, I've always been pretty indifferent to who, what or where the author might be, so long as I like the idea of the book, and I've always supplied author bios in a grudging, dutiful sort of way, because publishers and others kept telling me I ought to. But I am an anti-social scroat, so should stop assuming that everyone is like me!
I am most fascinated by the author bios that say, "David Mitchell lives in Japan." For instance.
Or merely, "Sod off, who I am is my concern. Read the damn book."
Never seen the second one, so might use it myself.
Great post Debbie. Didn't think about FAcebook, since I use it mainly for my family and friends and Blogger for publicity.
Welcome to the place where I publish my fiction. I’m not going to tell you all sorts of fascinating things about myself, because it’s far too tempting to make stuff up or to boast, and I reckon you’re not going to believe that I won a grave-digging contest at age fourteen anyway. Besides, what good are those bios? They’re a smokescreen. Either you like what I write, or you don’t.
So make that three anti-social scroats.