Should writers blog?

Yesterday I was scrolling through a writing forum and I read a post by an author whining about blogging. Specifically she was moaning that writers are increasingly being urged to blog, to tweet, to engage in social media. Did writers really have to write blogs, she said?  My answer was pretty simple:  if you don’t like blogging, don’t do it.  Doh.  Horses for courses and all that. 

But then I thought a bit more about it and I started to scratch my head.  This is a writer speaking. A WRITER. Someone who uses words; who communicates with words; who presumably loves words. And I was really puzzled. 

People often ask me why I blog.  After all, writing is my day job.  I’m a journalist and an author. Words pay my bills. Well, in theory. J So why on earth would I want to spend my spare time writing for free?  Er, because I enjoy it.

This blog is my place:  the place I can rant, moan, emote, pontificate, whine, laugh, throw all my toys out the pram, whatever… There is no editor telling me to cover this and that; no marketing department asking me if I'm reaching my demographic.

A blog post – 500 words or thereabouts - takes probably half an hour maximum to write.  It’s a limbering up exercise, if you like, before I flex my fingers and start on the usual writing work of the day.

Hmm, maybe not a good reason...

‘But what should I write about?’ say the reluctant author bloggers.  Holy crap!  Look around you. What excites you? What interests you? What flirts with you? What tugs you by the shirt-tails?  If I had the time I could probably write four or five posts a day.  Seriously.  Because life is interesting. People are interesting. The world is interesting.  Isn’t it?  Surely, I wonder, it should be, and above all if you're a writer. 

I think maybe the problem comes because writers feel they should write about writing (yawn). Or they should be reviewing books (which is all well and good but it’s bloody time-consuming) or interviewing other authors (which can be interesting and is something I do occasionally – but not all the time).  But why?  Why should you limit yourself to anything? 

Blog alpaca! 

Some people are very focused in their blogging.  They write purely about parenting, or food, or pets, or fitness, or politics or knitting or gardening or…hell, I dunno.  Alpacas or juggling.  Niche.  And niche is nice if you can do it.  Niche can be madly commercial.  A guy I knew made a tidy living out of baseball mini-league or whatever it’s called.  And all power to his bat.  But you have to be one of those single-minded people, someone with a particular hobby or a focused passion (or, alternatively, your blog is your business and so you’re talking work).  Personally I can’t do that.  I get bored staying on message. 

But let’s think about writers and blogging again.  What purpose does a blog serve a writer?  Why might a blog be a “good thing” for a writer?  On one hand, it’s a showcase. Firstly, it shows the raw state of your writing, without any editing.  Trust me, the copy of even some of the most famous writers looks a bit ropey round the edges before it’s knocked into shape by editors (I would name names but, having been discussing  Online Defamation Law with some lawyer friends, I’ll be cautious…) Secondly, it shows you’re flexible, that you can write up a storm on any bloody thing you choose.  I’ve been given journalism work via my blog. I’ve been approached by agents because of my blog.  I’ve been taken on amazing trips (giving me huge inspiration for my writing) because of this blog.

Connect with your audience...

On the other hand, it’s a way to connect with your readers.  A lot of people who read my books also check out the blog. At first I worried that my honesty, my fallibility, would put them off.  But it seems not.  I think blogging is maybe a way of giving a bit of yourself; of showing what makes you tick; that you’re approachable, human.  Of course, as an author that might be exactly what you don’t want to give away.  In which case I’d say, why not share other aspects of your work – poetry, short stories, character sketches. Or share some of your inspiration – music, other people’s words, images.  If people love your writing, they will want to know more. Why not be generous?  Oh how I wish more of my favourite authors would blog, or be more generous in their blogging.  

And then, on the one foot (having run out of hands). Blogging as sales ploy?  Hmm.  Do people buy my books because of my blogging?  I doubt it.  I don’t mention my books that much.  Maybe I should.  But then, see, blogging becomes just a form of marketing and that’s boring again.  However I’m sure that some people’s blogs encourage readers to buy their books. Why wouldn’t they?

Can I squeeze out another fecking poem?

Then, the argument continued, aren't there too many blogs out there already? Aren't blogs just self-indulgent waffle, word-wanking?  Well, maybe.  But then again, you could say that about a lot of writing in general, couldn't you?  Someone said that they would rather spend their time writing their fiction, or coming up with a poem or whatever. And that's a good argument. Providing you are writing those things.  I dunno about you, but I have a limit on sustained creativity of the novel-writing kind. And I sure as hell couldn't sit writing poems all freaking day. 

Anyhow.  I ask myself again.  As a writer, should you blog?  No, of course not. No should about it.  Do what you bloody well like!  Should you want to blog? Well now, that’s a different question altogether.  What do you think?   

So you wanna self-publish?

Self-publishing, eh? My books have always been published by mainstream publishers so I've had people making all the major marketing and sales decisions for me. I wrote the books and that was it. But so many people are now launching into self-publishing and I'm now republishing my old non-fiction books as e-books. So I asked Jake Barton if he’d write a guest post. Jake was another writer I met on Authonomy who has become a good friend. He has also achieved prodigious success with his self-published books.  So, without further ado, over to the maestro...

Jake Barton writes... 'Self-publishing has moved on from the days of being sniffily regarded as ‘vanity publishing.’ What other motive for publication is there? Kindle, eBooks, changed all the rules. All the mainstream publishing houses are dashing to get involved or risk being left behind. In a digital age, the pace is relentless. Remember the fuss when the CD appeared? It became the norm, in no time. Now, it’s all downloads. Massive change, in next to no time.

Jake Barton - the bestselling author prepares for a back flip

With the onset of eBooks, a rash of companies have sprung up, offering to handle all the fiddly bits of self publishing. For a price (typically £99 and they retain 60 percent of your royalties). It’s an option.

Certainly, the conventional publishers have only themselves to blame for all this competition. Many still insist on hard copy: actual typed sheets of paper, to be sent out, only for the author to wait for months and then receive a rejection slip. I know this, only too well. I suspected I had a viable novel, but failed to convince a publisher. I looked at the dawn of the new Kindle phenomenon and thought, ‘Why not?’ I’m the ultimate Luddite. Really. Yet even I, with help from cleverer friends, managed to self publish. I have four books out now and that first book has sold 60,000 copies this year.

So, what to look out for? This isn’t about ‘rules.’ I don’t ‘do’ rules and was told by a noted critic that my writing ‘breaks all the rules.’ It’s intended as thoughts about what works and what doesn’t, when offering a book to a potential reader.

Editing. The book should be edited to within an inch of its life by this stage. Every error removed, every typo spotted and rectified. Even books where an army of proofreaders check every word, every line, aren’t immune to mistakes creeping in – I spotted five errors in a John Grisham novel, elementary mistakes, recently – but the smaller publisher or Indie writer has to be certain the book is as good as it can be when it reaches publication stage.

Formatting.  You will need to format your book but it's not as hard as it might seem. Look at Amazon’s guide to preparing a book for Kindle  

One of my favourite writers has the best guide to Kindle submission I’ve come across so far in her blog. Read this, and read her book, Daisychains of Silence, too!  [I concur, heartily… J]

I’d also recommend a talented man I met on Authonomy who writes ‘how to’ books on this and other subjects and has a blog where he talks about the subject. Check out Jason Matthews here 

Yes, fine, but all this effort counts for nothing if nobody ever gets to read the book. Three elements are crucial. Title, cover and pitch. All vital but the latter is crucial.

The title. Titles – the hardest part of a book for me. Relevance is essential, eye-catching too. Don’t worry too much if you pick a title and then find it elsewhere - as with song titles, there are very few unique titles about. Short and snappy is best.

Sold 60,000 copies this year alone.

The cover. The cover picture doesn’t have to cost the Earth. Although you’ll have no problem finding someone to make a cover for you, expect to pay a considerable sum for this. You may already have an appropriate photograph you could use or look up royalty free images online, see what’s out there. Be careful of copyright on images; if in doubt, ask the ‘owner’ of the image. My latest ‘paper’ book, I did the cover myself, just using Word. No fancy design packages necessary. Bottom line, your cover should be eye-catching and effective even at the size of a postage stamp which is all the Amazon site permits. It should also reflect the title. Common sense.  

The pitch, the blurb, call it what you will; it’s the key to getting your book noticed. It’s what everyone looks at in a book shop when looking to buy a book. The back cover, inside the front page, the position may vary, but the tiny piece of information telling us what the book’s about, what to expect, is often all we have, all we need, to make a decision: buy the book or move on, look elsewhere. A browser on Amazon has seemingly endless choice, but the same principle applies. It’s the author’s opportunity to sell themselves to a prospective reader. To say, ‘Buy me. Not the others. Buy me,’ to a browsing potential purchaser.

My first book, Burn, Baby, Burn reached the Amazon Top Ten this year despite having no publicity department to support it and an author without a clue about marketing. When hundreds of people a day are buying a book by an unknown writer, there has to be a reason. In my case, it was the pitch. I’d already decided I would write a ‘commercial’ book, but I had to ensure those browsers didn’t just glance at it and move on to authors they already knew. Here’s the ‘attention-getting’ passage from the pitch for Burn, Baby, Burn.

‘Marcus was special. He’d always known it. Even at the age of six when he’d decided to kill his father. His privileged background should have produced a doctor, an academic, perhaps a diplomat. Instead, he killed people for fun’.

See, it works, doesn’t it? It focuses on the villain as he’s the one character readers will always remember in this genre. It says, ‘This is me. I’m interesting. Read about me.’ Or I hope it does as that was my intention. The sales figures of the book suggest I got it right.

The pitch is all the potential reader has before them when browsing the vast expanses of Amazon’s bookstore. In that blurb, just a few lines, lies the success or failure of your offering. Get the pitch right; make it enticing enough to compel the casual browser to click on your book, that’s the real secret.

Price. The price structure is almost infinitely variable. An author can change their price point in an instant. Nothing is set in stone. I looked at the books that were selling in vast quantities Many were household names, authors with a loyal following whose readers clamour for the next book, but there was the odd ‘Indie’ writer without any track record as a published writer there too. A few of the established names set a premium price point. Fair enough. But what I found most interesting were the established authors at the top of the charts who offered their work at the lowest possible price point. If that worked for them, why not for me?

Offering a book at the lowest price point brings casual readers, impulse buyers, into the equation. It will always be a balancing act – more sales at a lower return against fewer sales at a higher return.

Gay vampires eh?

I decided on the lowest point for a specific reason – chart positions. Charts are vital to success on Amazon and readers are undoubtedly swayed by charts. If we see a book that’s successful it sparks our interest.

Getting into the All Books Top 100 was never even on my mind in those early days. Since then I’ve had two books in the Top Ten. There are an almost infinite number of sub-charts, all of which have an effect on the buying public. A reader can search for his/her area of interest, find books that reflect that interest, with a couple of mouse clicks. Whether it be Thrillers, Short Stories, Japanese Poetry or Gay Vampires there’s a chart for it.

Categories. When you finally enter your book to the Kindle site, you’ll be prompted to choose its ‘category.’ This is an important stage as it helps you to find one of those elusive charts. My third book was languishing as a ‘Thriller’ but because I’d made a careful selection of categories, it charted very well under ‘Female Sleuths,’ thereby gaining attention.

Marketing. There’s a dedicated forum on the Kindle site where you’ll find answers to just about any question and can also give your book a mention. As for ‘marketing,’ at which I’m utterly useless, use your blog. If you haven’t got one yet, think about getting one. Use Facebook, Twitter and other means to engage an online audience. If you can cope with it, try your local paper, radio, TV station – tell them what you’re doing; that there’s a new author in their area. Nothing to lose.

The Kindle experience has been wonderful. Complete strangers read my books; plucking them from the vast range on offer. That was nice.  If you’re thinking about ‘Kindling’ – what’s stopping you? Worried a traditional publisher won’t want to see your work? Don’t be. In my experience, the reverse is the case. Since I posted my book on Kindle I’ve been contacted by three agents and three publishers, all very keen to discuss a future partnership. Evidence of a saleable product will have that effect. I’m not rushing into anything. Why should I? Do I need them? Not really.'

Thanks, Jake...  I would just add that you can buy Burn Baby Burn by clicking on this link...

And check out all his other books on his Amazon page. 

He also has, though it pains me to say it, a very good blog... Ramblings of a Deluded Soul.  Check it out.

And don't forget to click the links on the right-hand side of my blog for more fabulous self-published books. ;) 

Can Twitter sell books?

I write books. A lot of my friends write books. Tons of people I vaguely know write books. Let's face it, everybody's bloody writing books by the look of my Twitter feed. 

And it seems everyone is publicizing them on Twitter because that's what we've been told is a Good Idea, thanks to posts like this and many others.

Anyhow, I read this blog post this morning by this guy I'd never heard of before, The Red Pen of Doom (yeah, right) who reckons that 'The Twitter' is not for selling books.  In fact, he insists, social media is not an effective marketing tool. End of. It's a long, long, looooong post and he goes in for a bit of a slathering lovefest over literary agent Nathan Bransford and then spends a lot of time comparing him with some woman called Snooki.  And then he does a bit of maths which, let's be very honest, I skated over.  But, the bottom line as he sees it (to save you trekking through it all) is this:

"You could spend three years building a popular writing blog and getting to 10,000 Twitter followers or 100,000 followers and it wouldn't be as useful as 10 minutes on a cable reality show with a weekly viewership of 3.5 million."

Well, okay.  Put like that...

Then he goes on to say. "Social networking - it's not social media, kids - is for meeting people. For having a dialogue, not a monologue where you spew links to your blog and ask people to buy your book."

Ouch.  

"If you want to reach a mass audience, you must use the mass media.  Must.  Not "should." Must. IT IS REQUIRED."

Oh Red Pen of Doom, you really are a bit of a pompous arse, aren’t you?  J But some interesting points there.  Anyhow, I posted the link up on The Twitter (I’m warming to The Twitter) and there was a bit of a flurry of despond and spluttering and naysaying.  A lot of ‘what’s the point?’ and ‘but it can go viral’ and ‘well, it sure as hell ain’t working for me’. 

And The Amazing Frankie pointed me to a blog post which had me in stitches and has some damn good points (read it! It’s far more entertaining than TRPOD).  

But really, when authors become publishers, how do they market themselves?  How do you market yourself? Do you market yourself at all?  Should you?

If you’ve got a mainstream publisher, of course, they do it for you.  Well, that’s the general idea and they do - to a point.  It very much depends on who you are and how much money they’ve shelled out on your advance.  I was reading the lament of a mid-list author in The Author the other day about how her books sank without making too much of a ripple because of lack of enthusiasm, shall we say.  

It’s demoralising, innit? You've won the Holy Grail - a pukka deal with a mainstream player and, even then, you sink without trace?  And then, just to add salt to the wound, even if you do get an enthusiastic publicist, very few are imaginative. Which is where, you'd think, social media should come in.  Which is where authors (wildly creative, surely, by their very nature?) by and large should come up trumps. Yet they don’t.  By and large, they just shove tweets out there, saying Buy My Book. 

Do you buy books because of something you’ve read on Twitter?  Honestly? I don’t. Or very very rarely. And only if the author or their publisher is saying stuff that engages me, that interests me, that makes me think or touches a chord. Not if they're just endlessly yelling Buy My Book!  

So, where does that leave you/me/us as writers who would like to sell books?  I don’t entirely agree with TRPOD. I think social media can be useful; I think it’s part of the package. When authors say they won’t use social media I think they’re being precious and, frankly, a bit daft. It’s a platform, it’s there, use it.  There is always that blissful off-chance that your oevre will suddenly go viral and whizz around the globe like a speeding snowball gathering adoration and dosh as it rolls. 

But mainly I think The Twitter and The Facebook and The YouTube and so on are primarily places to show readers that you’re human, to glimpse the real person behind the blurb and the photo-shopped author pic taken ten years ago. Unless, of course, your book requires you to be a Deep Person of Mystery. In which case, you need acolytes. *smile* 

But is social media, however well executed, enough?  I don’t think so.  I think TRPOD has a point that, in the flurry to embrace what we used to call ‘new media’ we’re forgetting old media.  So how do you do that if you haven’t got a press department with a hotline to the book editors?

Forget the book editors, I’d say.  Sending your precious CreateSpace or Lulu copies to book editors on the nationals is a waste of time, energy and money (unless you have a REALLY strong hook to hang it on or it divulges the secret sex life of royals or namedrops pop stars, in which case I'd suggest you go first to Max Clifford and get a good lawyer).  Honestly, I’ve worked on the papers and I’ve seen the book editors' offices – you need crampons and rope to climb over the parcels to get to their desks.  Check ‘em out – they all have killer biceps!

Think, think, think.  Think tangentially.  Think features, rather than reviews.  What is the theme of your book (yes, I'm talking fiction as well as non-fiction)?  Does it tie in with any current news stories?  If so, big that up.  Think local. Start with local newspapers, magazines, local radio.  Think precision.  Tailor your pitch to the publication – why would their readers be interested?  Think specialist.  There are magazines catering for absolutely everything nowadays, every bizarre mouse-hole of human existence. Got a caravan in your book?  Take your pick of caravan titles.  Set in the country?  Hellfire, you’re spoilt for choice.  Parcels play a key role in your manuscript?  Hey, Packaging News might love a break from discussing paper weight. 

Thing is, you never know what gets picked up and taken to a wider, larger audience. Press breeds press.  The big TV shows look to the nationals. The nationals look to the regionals and the regionals look to the locals.

What I’m saying comes down to this, I guess.  Bottom line. If you want to sell books, don’t overlook any form of marketing.  Think outside the box. Be creative.

Do I do it myself?  Nah, course I don't. Mainly cos I’m rubbish at self-publicity and, hey, I never follow my own advice. *smile* And anyhow, my books are all in my past really.  I put a bunch of them out on Kindle because people kept emailing me asking why they were out of print.  So they’re there. If people buy ‘em, that’s great. If not, no big deal. I kept the price cheap cos, hey, they’ve already earned their keep.

Future projects?  Hmm.  That depends.  But I promise you this: they won’t just involve whacking out links on Twitter, that’s for sure.