What's with All the Guest Posts?

This time last year, pretty much every post in this blog had to come from me, because I hardly knew any other writers, and the ones I did know didn't write very much. Since then, I've met a lot of great writers, mostly on Twitter. A few of them in particular keep teaching me things I find very helpful, or explaining important points much better than I could. There's also the fact that I've noticed my readers seem happiest (or at least most engaged) when I post frequently, and that can be time-consuming. So for all these reasons, I've decided to step back from being the primary writer for this blog, and become something more like an editor-in-chief.

This means you'll no longer see the words 'guest post' in the titles to the entries by other people, but I will still introduce them so you know who they are and can check out their websites, books or whatever.

Feedback is always appreciated, whether it agrees or disagrees. In fact, I believe honest discussion among people of differing viewpoints is one of the most effective tools for creativity and problem-solving.

If you're a fiction writer, or you have something to say that would benefit fiction writers, maybe you would like to write a post. Feel free to leave a comment on any post or email me at MaryJeddoreBlakney@yahoo.com.

How to Keep Your Author Blog a Secret

How often have you heard an author say, "I quit blogging because nobody reads my blog anyway"? I hear it a lot. Maybe I've heard it from you.

This blog gets anywhere from 10 to 40 visits a day when I do my usual routine. It would probably be a lot more than that by now if I hadn't had a family crisis this spring and had to neglect it for a few months, since traffic had been steadily building up to that point.

So if you're dying to be one of those authors who can proudly say, "Nobody reads my blog," I think I can help you. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Don't post blog entries too often. After all, why should you? Nobody reads them anyway. The great thing about this technique is that it's self-fulfilling: if anybody does wander onto your blog, he or she will see there's nothing new there, anyway. Not worth coming back.
2. Don't entertain or educate. Just blog about yourself and your books. After all, news about what other writers are doing belongs on the other writers' blogs, and knowledge is power, so you wouldn't give that away for free. Even if you make the mistake of posting every day, you can still effectively repel readers as long as you don't offer any valuable content. Oh, and it helps to gripe a lot, and make them feel guilty for not buying your books.
3. Do be impersonal. Readers visit blogs (and buy books) because they feel a connection with the author, so your goal should be to look like a know-it-all literary demigod that's probably made of plastic.
4. Do be unprofessional. Use your blog to badmouth your husband or launch cheap personal attacks on famous people. And don't forget to repeat any nasty rumors you see on Facebook. 
5. Do push your blog on Twitter and Facebook. Use a lot of CAPITAL LETTERS AND EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!! and tell all your tweeps how great your blog is, frequently. They'll probably unfollow you, but at any rate you won't have to worry about retweets, shares, listings and, worst of all, hits on your blog.
6. Don't be friendly on social media sites. Don't take an interest in other authors or let people think you are approachable, kind, likable or anything like that. That sort of behavior not only draws people to your blog; if you keep it up you will end up getting enthusiastic fans (if your writing is good). Your traffic will start to snowball, as people you've never even heard of will start promoting you to their friends.

I mentioned I have a routine that helps bring in traffic. Here it is:

1. I post regularly, every day if I can.
2. I try to mix up the content a little: some fiction, some writing tips, some glimpses of what life is like for me as a New Hamsphire fiction writer; plenty of guest posts or spotlights on other writers.
3. I try to be honest. I'm not Stephen King, and since you're not stupid, I would never get away with pretending I am. I'm good at some things and stink at others, so it's only logical that I should give advice where I can and ask for help where I need to.
4. I try to be respectful. There are certain sides of my personal life that you will never see here, including family squabbles (I have a very loving family, but nobody is immune to spats), things people tell me in confidence, etc.
5. I use Hootsuite to schedule hourly tweets, most of which link to blog entries. I try to use hashtags that will help the tweets be found by the people who want to read those posts, I mention any Twitter users involved, and I try to keep the tweets informative instead of sounding like an obnoxious midway vendor.
6. I also use Hootsuite to schedule other tweets that help other authors, and do not link to this blog. I think it's important to be a team player.
7. I use Tweetdeck to organize my Twitter feeds and interact with other people on Twitter. 
8. I post a link to my blog on Facebook only when I think a decent chunk of my Facebook friends would be interested. Otherwise, I shut up, because I don't want them to get in the habit of ignoring me.

Indie Writer Professionalism

One of my favorite times of the day is the hour I set aside for reading. The truism 'you can't write if you don't read' gives me the perfect excuse to lose myself in the magic of all those wonderful books on my Kindle shelf.

Theoretically. What really happens is usually more like this:

I climb the ladder into the loft just under the roof of my family's cabin. I arrange the pillows and, if it's chilly, throw a fluffy featherbed over my legs. I open the Kindle app on my netbook and select that indie book I'd downloaded, that I've been dying to get my teeth into. I convert the netbook to a tablet, lean back against the pillows and start to read.

And it's awful. So I go back to the bookshelf and pick out another book, and it's just as bad. I end up spending the whole hour looking for a book instead of reading one. Sometimes the beginning is boring and I plow through, telling myself to be patient and see if it gets better, but it doesn't. Sometimes the characters don't feel like people, or feel like six iterations of the same person. Sometimes the text rambles until I'm lost, or the sentences just don't make sense. Sometimes the meaning is clear but the narrative is so hiccuppy it takes work to trudge through a page.

Sound familiar? It probably wouldn't take many hours like that to make me swear off indie books and stick with the imprints, except that I believe in indie publishing: I think it's the future of the industry. And one of those indie books is mine. No wonder it's so hard to get readers to take me seriously. No wonder my friends look so surprised when they read my novel.

But my experiences with indie reading also force me to ask: how good is my own book? I'm not worried about the plot or the characters. I have confidence in my writing voice, and was lucky to have beta readers with experience, expertise and honesty. But the reviewers may have been comparing my novel to a batch of indies like the one I described above, beta readers aren't copy editors, and I'm a terrible proofreader of my own work because I tend see what I meant to type.

One solution I've seen proposed (often by free-lance editors, of course) is to hire an editor. That's a great idea, but first we have to figure out where the inventor parked his time machine (somewhere in the borough of Richmond, outside London, of course). I think most of us right now are lucky to have enough money to sleep indoors and keep our children clothed. But of course, after our professionally edited books go blockbuster, we'll have enough to hire editors. So we just have to run to the future ATM real quick, and we'll get right on it.

As Star Trek's Captain Picard used to say, "Options?"

Three of us indie writers were talking about this problem on Twitter, and decided to look into forming an indie writers' guild. A few of the potential benefits:

• Pooling our strengths (and compensating for each other's weaknesses). For example, I'm good at characterization and grammar, and would gladly trade services in these areas for help with marketing, cover art or shoring up a sagging plot.
• Working more efficiently. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to have thousands of individuals stumbling around in isolation, teaching ourselves the arts of book formatting, cover graphics, personal branding, blogging, social media marketing, video creation and whatever else. If we combine our efforts, we should all have more time to write.



Photo: writetodone.com

• Raising our reputation. It used to be acceptance by a recognized publishing house that distinguished the quality authors from the dabblers. But now that the recognized houses have pretty much turned into a handful of mega corporations that avoid debut authors as much as possible, it's time for a new method of distinction. Membership in a guild with reasonable standards of professionalism would seem to serve that purpose nicely.

It all starts with the first step, of course, and that's finding out what you think. So we created a survey. The more indie writers who take this survey, the better the guild will be, so please take it and invite your friends. It's only ten questions.

Survey: What Indie Writers Need

Marketing for Fiction Writers

A big thank you to all the Twitter users who keep retweeting my tweets! It makes a big difference and I really appreciate it. I used to say so, personally, every time, but now there are just too many of you. What a wonderful problem to have! I do keep a list of all your usernames, though, and try to recognize you every Friday. If I overlook anyone, please speak up.

Photo: lifehack.org

Which brings me to the subject of marketing for fiction writers. There seem to be two basic schools of thought out there, from what I've seen:

1. Since we work so hard and produce products of value, we should sell them for a good price (even though we still may have to be working for a penny an hour for a while, until things pick up) and vigilantly protect our stories from being pirated or unintentionally shared.
2. Since most of the readers we're trying to reach need all the cash they can come up with for things like mortgage payments and fuel, and since most of us writers aren't famous yet, we should distribute our work as widely as possible for free. We should connect with other writers and pass their work on as well so they'll do the same for us, and once we've gained enough exposure, the money will come. It could be in the form of ad revenue on our blogs, or a publishing contract, or Kindle sales, or something else.

I tried the first option first, for over a year, and it failed miserably. For about three weeks now I've been wholeheartedly trying the second, and my blog traffic has skyrocketed. I want to thank Rebecca Scarberry (@ScarberryFields) and Nadine Ducca for the advice that got me started.

I'm still a rookie here, so advice from veterans is always appreciated.

Networking as an Indie Writer

Photo: BNINH.com

Yesterday morning I went to a meeting. My friend Joe Lore of computer distributor Sunnytech asked me to sub for him at his Business Network International meeting. So I went, thinking I was there mainly to represent Joe and not myself or my writing.

But the format of the meeting let me do both. Everybody gives a one-minute presentation about their business, and I gave the presentation Joe sent me with, but I also had the chance to give one for myself. I chose to speak about my novel Resist the Devil.

I met a lot of interesting people, some of whom I hope to keep in touch with. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the members of BNI's Greater Salem chapter for not only making me feel welcome, but really drawing me in and letting me participate.

Tweet