Are You Ignoring This Simple Platform-Building Tool? How to Comment on a Blog

Whether you're planning to self-publish or go the traditional route, every author needs a "platform" these days.

Some authors obsess too much about platform and waste time on pointless overkill. (More about how to skip the time-wasting stuff in my post, 7 Ways Authors Waste Time Building Platform.)

But others ignore it entirely, often because they're not quite clear on what it means.

It's true that "platform" isn't easy to define. But Jane Friedman, former Writer's Digest editor has written extensively about it. She says when agents say they're looking for author with platform:

"They’re looking for someone with visibility and authority who has proven reach to a target audience."

They'll probably start with "visibility". The first thing any agent, editor, reviewer, blogger—and even many book buyers—will do when you approach them is put your name into Google and hit the "search" button.

The results of that search are a good indication of your platform.

If you don't appear on that first page, or nothing comes up but your letter to the editor supporting John Edwards' Presidential primary campaign, or that picture of you partying at Señor Frog's in Mazatlán on your Spring Break in 2005, your career is not going anywhere.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but:

• The agent won't read those carefully honed pages. 
• The blogger won't invite you to guest post.
• The reviewer won't read your book.
• The buyer won't pony up the $2.99 for your fabulous novel. (I know. Less than the cost of a latte, but buyers are tight-fisted in these days of the free ebook.)

I can hear the moaning now, especially from my fellow Boomers:

• "But I'm still working on my first novel!"
• "I don't have time for all that social media stuff!"
• "I'm a serious literary writer. I'm not going to waste time on childish things."
• "I'm not going to take up blogging at my age."
• "I'm already on Facebook. Isn't that enough?"

But there's something quick, easy and relatively painless you can do right now to raise your search engine profile that won't take more than a couple of minutes from your writing time.

Ready for it?

Ta-da!

Comment on blogs. 

With your real name. (Or whatever name you write under.)

Yup. Comments on high profile blogs get your name onto that Google search page. Also on not-so-high-profile blogs that have been set up by somebody schooled in SEO.

I'm not just talking writing blogs. Any blog that interests you will do (although I strongly advise against anything controversial, because you're going to alienate half your potential readership.)

But I know writers new to the world of social media have lots of reasons for not commenting on blogs. I hear them all the time.

1) "I can't even find the comments half the time!"

If you're my age, the whole concept of blogging may be new for you. I remember being frustrated when I first started. Sometimes I'd find comments, and sometimes I wouldn't. Sometimes I'd land on one post with a thread of comments after it, but sometimes I'd get a whole string of posts with nothing but a thingy at the end saying "37 comments".

Here's the little trick "everybody knows" so they don't bother to tell you—

Click on the "37 comments" (or whatever number) and that will open the post in a new page where all the comments appear at the end of the post. Some blog formats make you hunt around in the sidebar for the "comments" link, but it's there. Keep looking.

Some blogs, like this one, will allow you to reply to a particular comment if you hit the "reply" button under that comment.

Or you can leave a general comment if you hit "reply" at the bottom of the whole thread. (On some Wordpress blogs the reply button is at the top of the thread.)

Click on the header (title of the blog) and it will take you back to the comment-less stream of blogposts.

See? It's not so hard when somebody tells you what to look for.

2) "Why should I comment on Nathan Bransford's (or Kristen Lamb's, David Gaughran's or The Passive Guy's) blog? They never comment on mine."

Nathan has well over 5000 followers of his blog. (He doesn't post the widget anymore, so I've lost track: it's probably over 10K now) He also has 100K followers on Twitter, and 10K in his Google circles. If he spent all day, every day, doing nothing else, even sleeping, he still could not keep up with all his followers' blogs. And remember he's doing it all for free.

But if you comment on his blog, Google will notice YOU, because his blog is on their radar and your name has become part of his "content".

That means you get a bump in YOUR search profile. He doesn't benefit that much from one more comment, but YOU do. The same is true of a comment here.

3) "I'd rather send the blogger a personal email and get a personal answer."

Sure. That's fine. Sometimes the blogger will have time to give you a personal answer. I try to answer them all, even though it gets pretty time-consuming.

But my e-mailed answer is no more personal than my answer in a comment thread, and nobody will see it but you and me.

Last week a number of people sent me personal emails saying they liked the blogpost, and of course I appreciated it. We always like to hear that people are benefiting from our posts.

But I noticed several writers mentioned their own books. Some of the books sounded fascinating.

So let's stop a minute and think about this: what's better for YOU?

• Getting your book title in front of me, the world's slowest reader, who has 500 unread books in my TBR list.
• Getting your book title in front of the 44,000 people who read this blog last month.

Are you seeing why it's better to put your feedback into a comment?

Plus, if you have a question, you can be pretty sure other readers have it too. If I answer in the comments, rather than in a personal email, that's helping ALL our readers, not just you.

4) "I can't figure out how to leave a comment. They want some kind of ID and I don't know how to jump through all those hoops."

Okay: this is a biggie. New tech can be daunting, especially for Boomers. And nobody likes to be rejected, especially by a machine.

Blog software likes people who have blogs, so if you have a blog ID you're in without a problem (usually. For some reason a handful of Wordpress bloggers get blocked from this blog and I don't have a clue why.)

But there are two simple things you can do that can give you IDs that allow you to comment on almost all blogs even if you have no Web presence right now.


1) Get a Gravatar ID

2) Join Google Plus


But before you jump in, make sure the name you're using is the "brand" name you want for your writing career.

First Google yourself (put your name in "quotes" for a more accurate search.) This will tell you if your name is already in use. If your name is as dirt-common as Anne Allen, you don't even need Google to tell you there are hundreds of thousands of women using that name too. There are three Anne Allens in my small town doctor's practice alone.

To stand out, I added my middle initial. Everywhere I go on the Web, I'm annerallen. There are other Anne R. Allens but not as many, and at the moment Google gives me top billing.

Making your name unique is especially important if you share it with somebody famous. So if you're called Rush Limbaugh, Lindsay Lohan or Justin Bieber, choose a pseudonym or trot out a middle name, initial, or use a nickname. Try Rushton Q. Limbaugh or Elle Lohan or J. Montague Bieber.

You want to make this decision before you start to set up your profiles, or you're going to be adding to the other Justin Bieber's platform, not building your own.

And don't use a cutsie moniker. Unless you plan to write all your books under the nom de plume  "scribblersally", "pufferballsmom", or "#1belieber" you don't want to comment on blogs with that handle. Use your professional name, because you're building a professional platform.

Gravatar (which stands for Globally Recognized Avatar) is affiliated with Wordpress, so if you have a Gravatar ID, you can comment on any Wordpress blog and your picture will show up with your comment. (A big plus—you're trying to get visible, remember?) Lots of Blogger blogs will accept a Gravatar/Wordpress ID too. So this is where I'd start if you're brand new.

It's easy. Just go to Gravatar.com and post a profile. Have a short bio prepared (info on how to write an author bio here), and choose a photo from your files before you go. The best kind of photo is a friendly, smiling picture of yourself in tight close-up. If you don't have an author photo, you might be able to crop an existing photo (You can crop for free at PicMonkey ), or even use a selfie, as long as it's professional and friendly looking.

And please do use a picture of yourself. Not your cat. Not a baby picture or a cartoon. It needs to be a grown-up picture of you. With clothes on. Beachy photos end up looking like porn spam in thumbnails. Even if you write erotica, save the skin for your website.

Here's more advice on how to sign up for Gravatar from Joel Friedman.

Google Plus isn't hard either. Most people think of Google Plus as a slightly geeky version of Facebook, but you don't actually have to use it for socializing. Simply putting up your profile will get you into Google's databanks. Remember you're trying to get the Google search engine to notice you, so that's a good thing.

If you don't want the hassle of dealing with another social media site right now, simply turn off all "notifications" and they won't bother you. But you'll have a nice profile where people can find out about you, Mr./Ms. Writer, with links to your website/book pages/and any blogs you contribute to.

Make sure you put "writer" in your "employment" even if you're not getting paid to write yet. If you flag yourself as a writer,  it will come up in that Google search. Plus you'll be circled by other writers you can network with when you want to get more social.

In a guest post written for us by SEO expert Johnny Base, there's a video showing you exactly how to sign up.

He has you start by getting a gmail address if you don't already have one. It's a great idea to have a dedicated email address for your writing business, anyway. The only hard part of any of this is choosing a good password and then remembering it. And that's true of anything on the Web, alas. And if you already have a gmail account, you're halfway there.

5) I don't know what to say!

I understand. Writers are shy persons. We'd rather lurk in the shadows. I lurked for months before I started commenting on blogs. That's fine. Do lurk for a while if you're just starting in the blogsphere.

But eventually you'll probably feel moved to say something.

Most bloggers will put some questions at the bottom or the post to invite comments. Good questions will invite you to share your own opinions or experiences with the topic. For some examples of great comments, look at the comment thread from last week's post. Our peeps came up with some wonderful ideas and shared interesting experiences.

You don't have to heap praise on the blogger. Bloggers like praise as much as anybody, but it's best to say something that adds to the discussion. That doesn't mean you should be confrontational or put the blogger down, either. (That's a good way to get deleted.) But say something like,  "Love these 10 tips for getting your cat to eat dry food and I'd like to add a #11..."

Or you can say, "I understand what you're saying about blogging nonfiction only ...but I blog daily cat haikus, and I have 400 followers who love them." You can even include a link to the blog. Every rule has an exception and if you're it, let people know.

You can even say something like, "I'm glad you say it's okay to be a slow writer. It took me 23 years to write Love is a Cat from Hell  but I finally launched it last week." Don't put in a link to a retail buy page, but a mention of your book is fine.

Or, "I love what ScribblerSally said about Maine Coon cats in her comment." This can bring the added perk that ScribblerSally might click on your name to find out more about you and your cat. If you've joined Google Plus or Gravatar, that will take her to a profile with an address for your blog and an email address. She may follow your blog or even buy your book.

You can also say, "I've quoted this post on my blog today and we're having a lively discussion." It's okay to link to the blog here, too. Make sure you always link back to the original blog.

The most useful comments add something to your "authority". Remember what Jane Friedman said in her definition of platform. So if you can say stuff like, "I was in law enforcement for 20 years and this is what really happens when somebody reports a missing cat..." Or "I'm a social worker who also writes cat haiku and I have proof that cat poetry has healing properties," that will add the most to the discussion.

Plus that little fragment of text that comes up in the Google search of your name will show your name and "I was in law enforcement for 20 years..." A huge help to agents, reviewers, and other people who are trying to find out if you're a reliable person they want to work with.

A good blog comment can be anything from 10 to 300 words. I wouldn't go much longer. If you feel the need to go on and on, you probably have a blogpost of your own there.

Other than that, almost anything goes, with a few caveats:

1) Don't spam. Bringing up your book when it isn't relevant to the discussion is spamming. Ditto links to your website or buy pages if they don't illustrate a relevant point. Begging people to read your blog is spammy, too.

2) Don't be a troll. Saying insulting things about the blogger or other commenters, or using language that's inappropriate will get you deleted. Ditto political diatribes or religious screeds. Be professional and polite.

3) Don't use emotional blackmail. Don't say, "I just followed this blog, so now you have to follow my five blogs, like my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter and get me a double caf latte while you pick up my dry cleaning." If you demand any kind of quid pro quo for a comment or a follow, you'll look like a doofus to the whole community. Remember everybody who reads the blogpost will see your comment.

4) Don't whine. Dissing Amazon, agents, the publishing business, or trash-talking a bestselling author will generally not work in your favor. Ditto complaining about how nobody reads your blog. Getting your blog noticed by search engines involves many factors: SEO, tech savvy, Tweetable headlines, and original, general-interest content. Nobody owes you readership.

Besides, every author does not need a high profile blog. You simply need a place where fans can find you.

5) Don't expect Nathan Bransford or Kristen Lamb to follow you back or critique your blog. Not because they're snotty. Blogging doesn't work the same way Twitter and Facebook do. If you follow a blog, it shows up in a "dashboard" rss feed, and the number you can follow is limited. (And they can never be deleted as far as I know. If anybody knows how to delete a dead blog from an rss feed, let me know!)

Also, people who get thousands of emails a day can't subscribe to everybody's blog by email or visit every blog. Inboxes get stuffed and carpal tunnels get injured. Nobody has more than 24 hours in their days.

6) "How do I know if it's a 'high-profile blog'?"

To find the big blogs in the publishing industry, just go around to a few writers' blogs. Many will have a "blogroll" in the sidebar. Here's a great example on author Meg Wolf's blog.

If you're planning to publish traditionally, agent blogs are a good place to comment. Rachelle Gardner's and Janet Reid's have big followings (although I see Rachelle's comments have fallen off in a big way: no idea what's up with that.) Writers Digest editors have a number of high ranked blogs: Chuck Sambuchino's Guide to Literary Agents is a biggie.

I use Nathan Bransford's blog and Kristen Lamb's as examples of great all-purpose writing blogs, because they host helpful, nurturing communities, and both of them are generous, savvy industry professionals. But there are dozens of other great blogs for writers, both indie and trad, too many to list here. Don't try to read them all.  Choose one or two to follow and drop in on others when you see them mentioned elsewhere.

1) Followers. Blogs that have more than 500 followers have probably been around a while, so the search engines will have found them.

2) Comments. Blogs with a lot of comments are probably being read by a lot of people, since less than 10% of readers comment.

But many top blogs do not get many comments. Joel Friedlander's and Jane Friedman's don't, but they're a great place for Google to find you.

3) Check out the blog with Alexa It's the most-used website ranking system worldwide. Just copy the url (web address) for any website and paste it in their search window.

Or you can download an icon for your own toolbar (go to "toolbar" on the Alexa site and choose the one for your operating system.) It takes seconds to install, and then you can click on it to automatically see the ranking of any website you visit. Also, if you have the Alexa icon on your toolbar, your own site will rise in the Alexa ratings more quickly, because they'll know you're there.

Alexa lists the top five websites in the world as #1 Google, #2 Facebook, #3 You Tube, #4 Yahoo, #5 Baidu (the Chinese language search engine.)

A blog with an Alexa rating of 500K or less is getting a lot of readers, since there are tens of millions of websites. (Alexa measures all websites, not just blogs.) Our ranking right now is 140K (28K in the US), which we think is kind of crazy for a couple of Boomer authors, but we sure are pleased. But we don't beat Nathan B. at 133K or Kristen Lamb at 112K (way to go Kristen!)

4) But don't just comment on the biggest blogs! Comment on the blogs that interest you. Comment on you favorite author's blog. Comment on cat blogs. Or food blogs. (But avoid the snark-infested waters of political blogs unless you're using a pseudonym.) Alexa ratings rise and fall, but your comment is forever. It may be picked up years from now by some search engine that hasn't even been invented yet.

And be aware that a smaller blog with an engaged audience can be much more useful to you in the long run.

For more info on how to research blogs, check out this great post from Brian Dean at Boost Blog Traffic.

Commenting on blogs is also a great way to make friends. And in the end, that's what a platform REALLY is: how many people feel they "know" you well enough to want to buy one of your books.

What about you, scriveners? Are you out there lurking, not knowing how to comment on a blog? Does this help? Does anybody remember when they made their first blog comment? Was it scary? How did you learn the basics of blogging? What writing blogs are on your "must-read" list? And does anybody know how to delete a dead blog from your Blogger feed? 

LURKERS: WIN A FREE EBOOK!

If you DO jump through all those hoops and make your very first comment on this blog, you'll be eligible to win a copy of HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE. Just mention "this is my first comment on a blog" and I'll go to random.org to choose a winner to gift with a copy of the ebook. (Or another of my titles if you already have it.)

If you don't have any ID the Blogger elves like yet, and you'd like to make a comment on this blog, email me through the address on our "Contact us" page. Sorry we can't allow anonymous comments. We get so much spam, we either had to block anons or put on the dreaded "CAPTCHA" prove-you're-not-a-robot thing. We decided blocking anons was the lesser of two weevils. 

Book Deal of the Week

No Place Like Home 

99c this month on Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CA, and Nook

"A warp-speed, lighthearted comedy-mystery"...Abigail Padgett

"A fun, charming novel about the rich and less so" ...Karen Doering

"A cross of dry British humor and American wackiness, and it all adds up to a fun read." ...Deborah Bayles

Coming up on the Blog

Next week, we're going to have a visit from Pam Van Hylckama Vlieg, senior agent at the cutting-edge literary agency, Foreword Literary. She'll be talking about the role of agents in the new publishing paradigm.

OPPORTUNITY ALERTS

THE NEW GUARD FICTION AND POETRY CONTESTS entry fee $15 $1,000 prize for fiction in any genre. Up to 5,000 words: anything from flash to the long story. Novel excerpts are welcome if the excerpt functions as a stand-alone. $1,000 for an exceptional poem in any form. Three poems per entry. Up to 150 lines per poem. Deadline July 14.

Writers' Village International Short Fiction Award. Entry fee £15. This is a biggie. Stories in English up to 3000 words in any genre from anywhere in the world. £3000 First Prize. Judges include iconic mystery author Lawrence Block and Whitbread & Orange short-lister Jill Dawson. £4500 ($7200) in total prizes. The top 50 contestants also get a free critique of their stories. Deadline June 30th.

The 11th Yeovil International Literary Prize Prize categories for unpublished novels, short fiction, poetry. Agents and publishers pay attention to this one. Entry fee £11 for novels. 1st prize £1000. Deadline May 31st.

Flash Prose Contest $15 entry fee. WriterAdvice seeks flash fiction, memoir, and creative non-fiction running 750 words or less. Enlighten, dazzle, and delight us. Finalists receive responses from all judges. First Place earns $200; Second Place earns $100; Third Place earns $50; Honorable Mentions will also be published. Deadline April 18th.

Writers Digest Self-Published Novel Awards. First prize is $3000, plus free tuition to the Writers Digest Writers Conference, promotion in WD and a marketing consult. Many second, third and hon. mention prizes. This is a pricey contest, with entry fee of $99, but a win can open a lot of doors. Fiction or nonfiction. Send bound books only. Early Bird Deadline April 1st

Why Your Grandma Wants an E-Reader for the Holidays (Even Though She Doesn't Know It)

If you're reading this blog, you're probably relatively tech-savvy. But now that we're in the midst of holiday season, most of us are running into the inevitable friends and relations who are threatened by new technology and maybe even hostile to the whole idea of e-books and e-readers. Some of them are probably your grandparents.

Full disclosure here: I'm not a grandparent. I could be, if I hadn't neglected that interim step of having actual children. What I am is a Baby Boomer: a person born between 1946 and 1964—the demographic known in unenlightened circles as "old."

I'm also not naturally drawn to technology. My relationship to most machines is the same as your cat's relationship to the vacuum cleaner: Danger! MAKE IT STOP!   

I've got some Boomer friends who think the e-reader is the spawn of the devil. They say ebooks and self-publishing are robbing us of our cultural heritage. I understand their fears. I worked in bookstores for much of my life. Every time a bookstore goes out of business I feel a sense of personal loss.

Plus I love being surrounded by tangible, hard-copy reading material. My house looks like a library. Books are my best friends. (My mother tells me that when I learned to read, I said, "now I'll never have to be lonely again.") I don't think I'll ever stop buying paper books. When I adore something I've read on my Kindle, I sometimes buy it in paper too—so I can really "have" it.

Electronics can die and get glitchy—and nothing's more infuriating when you're engrossed in a novel than to get that "low battery" message plastered across the page.

Paper feels "real". You can touch it and hold it and yes, sniff it. (Much fun is made of "book-sniffers" but scientists say the smell of old books is related to the smell of vanilla, and stimulates a comfort zone in your brain.) You can also keep a new paper book waiting on your night stand and study the cover art, read the blurbs, and anticipate it in a way you can't with a list of titles on your e-reader. Plus you can loan a beloved paper book to as many friends as you like.

But I urge even my book-sniffing Boomer friends to welcome the age of the e-book.

Why?

1) Learning new technology keeps us young.

I have lots of Boomer friends who avoid technology. They may use a computer for email and shopping, and they might even have a smart phone—but they're mostly annoyed by all of it. Especially if they learned a bunch of tech stuff in the early '90s and now it's all different and their hard-earned knowledge is useless. Everything keeps changing too fast and they don't like it.

Yes, change can be terrifying, but it's what keeps us alive. As Dylan said, "he not busy being born is busy dying." 

There's scientific data to back this up. Doctors tell us that embracing the new keeps our brains active and healthy.

And let's face it, nothing says "geezer" like complaining about "newfangled gadgets" and waxing nostalgic about the good old days. All the hair dye, yoga, and kale smoothies in the world won't make you seem vibrant and healthy if you have a negative attitude and a sour expression on your face.

Besides, if you're a Boomer, you belong to a generation that has always embraced change.

As Mark Penn said in his 2007 book Microtrends, "Boomers reinvented youth in the 1960s and economic success in the 1980s; they are not about to do their senior years by someone else’s formula. According to a 2005 survey by Merrill Lynch, more than 3 in 4 boomers say they have no intention of seeking traditional retirement."  

2) The e-book revolution is ending age discrimination against older authors.

Traditional publishing has always dictated that young authors are the most desirable. Even when I was in my forties, I was advised to keep my age secret when querying, because publishers don't want to invest money building a "brand name" for an author who doesn't have a potential forty-year trajectory for churning out product.  

But this attitude eliminates a huge number of writers—especially writers with wisdom and life experience to share. As social media guru Kristen Lamb says. "A large percentage of writers have waited until the kids are out of the home and out of college to begin pursuing their dreams of being authors."

But ebooks and social media are changing all that.  We now live in an age when there is infinite "shelf" space, and "long tail" niche marketing reigns.

New genres like Boomer Lit can appeal to specific demographics now that every book published doesn’t have to be a potential blockbuster of one-size-fits-all scope.  And authors don't have to self-publish if they write for a niche. The Big Five probably won't be interested in a BoomerLit book unless it's written by Cher, but you can still go the traditional route with a small or digital-only press.

3) Older readers get to read books about their own issues.

For the past fifty years or so, traditional publishing has dictated that female protagonists in popular fiction must be under thirty-five. Men can be a little older, but the main characters have to be young people with young problems. (Literary fiction can be about old guys with prostate issues, but usually only if the author writes for the New Yorker.)

None of this is surprising, since the "gatekeepers" of traditional publishing are mostly 22-year-old interns at New York literary agencies.

(And I can't help wondering if some editors weren't scarred by being forced to read Silas Marnerin high school. George Eliot's aged curmudgeon has a lot to answer for.)

Thing is: older people have more time to read. And most of us are hungry for books that address our own life situations, not just who goes to the prom with the hunky vampire.

As Kristen Lamb says, older authors are "writing books they’d like to read: romance novels with a sixty-year-old protagonist finding love, not a twenty-two-year-old….Now there are options. Seventy is getting younger every day and the emerging e-commerce marketplace doesn’t care how old we are or how many books we write."

4) E-readers offer physical advantages to the older reader.

•  Adjustable fonts. I'm getting to the stage where I can't read books with tiny fonts, and I'd be much more comfortable with large-print books, if I weren't too embarrassed to be seen reading them. With an e-reader, all it takes is the click of a button to adjust the font to our own vision requirements.
•  Lighter Weight. A friend told me she stopped enjoying reading hard-cover books a few years ago because of arthritis in her hands. But she loves that e-readers are easy to hold and getting lighter all the time. The new Nook GlowLight weighs only  6.2 ounces.
• Immediate new books. When I finish a book I love, I get an empty feeling. I often want to read another book by that author immediately, especially if it's the next in a series. But as we age, getting out to a bookstore can be more of a hassle. (And I stopped night driving when I realized it felt like driving by Braille on dark winter nights.) With an e-reader, you can have the new book in minutes.

5) E-books have got more people reading now than ever before. 

People who might not go into a bookstore to procure entertainment are now reading books on their phones, iPads and tablets. Ebooks are cool.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, "the average reader of e-books read an average of 24 books in the past 12 months compared to 15 books for non e-book consumers."

And as Alex C. Madrigal wrote in the Atlantic last year "Our collective memory of past is astoundingly inaccurate. Not only has the number of people reading not declined precipitously, it's actually gone up since the perceived golden age of American letters. "

6) Because of the new paradigm, independent bookstores are making a comeback.  

E-books are not killing indie bookstores. Big-box bookstores and their cozy deals with Big Publishing did that in the 1990s. Indies that survived are now having an increase in sales, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Here are some ways e-books are actually helping independently-owned bookstores:

• Amazon is now selling devices and ebooks through indie bookstores with "Amazon Source".
• Kobo has been selling its e-readers through independent bookstores for at least a year (If you listen to NPR in the US, you've heard their ads.) 
• Now that the marketplace isn't a monopoly of the Big Five and their cozy relationship with Big Box bookstores that sell advantageous shelf space to the highest bidder, the small independent bookshop has a more level playing field.
• Newsletters like E-Book Bargains UK that advertise bargain e-books to global markets also carry ads for indie bookstores.

7) Paper books aren't going anywhere.

It's not a question of either/or. You can have your Kindle and paper too.

Only about 30% of book sales are e-books, and that percentage seems to be leveling off as an October report from the Book Industry Study Group reported.

Here are some of their findings: 

• Four years of consumer data shows clearly that e-book consumption has reached mainstream readers and has expanded well beyond early adopter 'power readers,' but that physical books remain a popular format for many consumers, especially in certain categories.
• Consumers are very interested in "bundling" print and digital versions of a book, with 48% of survey respondents willing to pay more for bundles. 
• Consumers do not distinguish between e-books published by traditional houses and independently published options when making buying decisions.

The E-Age may seem scary to those of us who remember when the most tech-heavy thing a writer had to do was change a typewriter ribbon, but it's one of the best times in history to be a writer—or a reader—so we need to learn to embrace the new technology.

What about you, Scriveners? Did you have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age? What advantages are you finding to reading electronic books? Do you have friends and family who don't "get" e-books?

Note: If you enjoy this blog, we'd love for you to nominate us for the Top 10 Writing Blogs at Write to Done.

Book Bargain of the Week

And when you buy Grandma that e-reader, here's the perfect book to load on it. Only 99c on Amazon for the holidays. Roxanna Britton, a biographical novel, is the story of my own great, great grandmother, written by my 92-year-old mom, Dr. Shirley S. Allen.
My mom is in hospice now, and I'm here at her bedside. It makes her happy that her well-reviewed book will live on after she's gone.

Update: Shirley Seifried Allen died at 8:45 PM on Sunday evening, December 1st. As fierce and practical as her great-grandmother, my mom donated her body to the University of San Francisco Medical School and left large donations to the San Francisco Public Library and the Food Bank as well as many other charities. You can sign her Facebook page here.
I can't begin to say how very much I will miss her....Anne

"If you love historical novels about women "making it" in the mid-1800's, you will NOT want to miss this one! I loved EVERY minute of reading about "Sanny's" life and making her own way and place in a time when women were considered having less than the status of "slaves." I also loved this book because it shows how the status, influences, opinions and upbringings can make or break a family and its heritage...and just how influential the women are who guide each. 
HIGHLY RECOMMEND!"...Shawna Newton

***

"This has become one of my all time favorite stories of "real" people. Ms. Allen's adept use of dialogue and her clear eye for drama and suspense kept me compulsively turning the pages. Her evocation of a bygone era, rich with descriptive details--the historical Chicago fire is one vivid example--is absolutely brilliant. I will never forget Sanny and her family, especially her struggle and her daughters' struggle to become individuals in a male dominated world. But it is family that triumphs in the end; and the need for it to survive resonates most deeply in my mind and heart. An excellent novel that I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys reading true stories about people who not only overcome adversity with grace and integrity but through strength of character also prevail. Well done, Ms. Shirley Allen!"...Ann Carbine Best

Opportunity Alerts

The Lascaux Prize for Short Fiction: Stories may be previously published or unpublished. Length up to 10,000 words. Entry fee is $5, and authors may enter more than once.The editors will select a winner and nineteen additional finalists. The winner will receive $500 and publication in The Lascaux Review. Both winner and finalists will earn the privilege of displaying a virtual medallion on blogs and websites. Deadline December 31, 2013.

Boomers: The Huffington Post's Huffpo50 is publishing short fiction! The rules: You must be 50 or older to enter. Writers can submit only one story per year, and all pieces must be 5,000 words or less. Send your original submissions, as well as your contact details, to 50fiction@huffingtonpost.com

CRAZYHORSE PRIZES IN FICTION, NONFICTION, POETRY $20 fee (includes subscription). This is a biggie, well worth the fee. This venerable literary magazine has published the likes of John Updike, Raymond Carver and Billy Collins. Winners in each category receive $2,000 and publication. Submit up to 25 pages of prose or three poems. All entries considered for publication. Submissions accepted in the month of January 2014 only.

The Ladies Home Journal essay contest. Theme: The Best Decision You Ever Made. First Prize is $3,000 and the chance to have your essay published in the Journal. You're free to interpret the topic in whatever way you like. Essays will be judged on their emotional power, originality, and the quality of their prose. They should be no more than 2,000 words. More info and submission form on the website.

DRIFTLESS REVIEW ANNUAL FLASH FICTION CONTEST $15 ENTRY FEE for up to three stories. Each short-short story limited to 500 words. $500 prize. Deadline December 31

Dark Continents Publishing's Guns and Romances anthology. They're looking for previously unpublished short fiction from 3500-9000 words. Any genre as long as there's a tough protagonist, weapons, and... at least one reference to music. Sounds interesting. Payment rate is a one-off of $20 per story plus a percentage of the ebook royalties. Publication estimated in late-2014. More info on the website. Closing date for submissions is February 28, 2014.

Are Your Family and Friends Sabotaging your Writing Dreams?

Writers participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) may discover that friends and family aren't entirely enthused by your decision to disappear into your computer for a month. (I have a secret suspicion that Chris Baty invented NaNo in order to escape those painful family Thanksgiving dinners.)

But at any time of year, some people in your life will find it difficult to relate to your passion to write. A few will even sabotage your progress, often subconsciously, but sometimes with the deliberate intent of steering you onto another path "for your own good."

Kristen Lamb wrote on her blog this week about a minister of her church who told her she "had a better chance of being hit with lightning than becoming a published author." And that she "needed to be an adult and pursue a 'real' career."

Squelch.

What's a new writer to do?

One thing that can help a lot is networking with other writers. That's where blogging and social media can be helpful. Kristen's "WANA tribe" (We Are Not Alone) is a community where writers can find mutual support. Another is Alex J. Cavanaugh's Insecure Writers Group, which he wrote about on this blog a couple of months ago.

Online or in-person, writers' groups can be a godsend. I'm lucky enough to live in a town with a fantastic writing community called the SLO Nightwriters. It has members at all writing levels, from fledgling first-timers to New York Times bestsellers. National organizations with local chapters like RWA, SCBWI, and Sisters in Crime can also provide welcome support.

A good writing group will also save you from the mistake so many new writers make: asking friends or family members to read a work in progress.

The urge to share your work with loved ones is natural. I did it myself early in my career. If you're lucky, you may get some helpful suggestions, but you're more likely to get evasive looks and polite platitudes—or worse. Much worse.

Here's my cautionary tale: my WIP was having problems with flow, so I gave it to a friend who had praised my published work. I thought he might be able to pinpoint what wasn't working. But as a non-writer, he had no idea what “rough draft” meant. After he finished the typo-strewn ms., he phoned immediately, telling me to toss the book because it was a “mess that nobody would ever want to read.”

I tried to get him to tell me exactly what he didn’t like, but he kept ranting, giving no specifics. After he screamed "show, don't tell" about ten times, I have to admit I hung up on him. (Years later I realized I'd asked him at a very bad time in his life. He'd just lost a beloved job and my career was on the rise. His own dreams were in shatters, which made him into a Dream-smasher.)

I shelved the book. I figured whatever was wrong, it must be pretty terrible.

Years later, when I opened the manuscript again, I realized it wasn't that bad. I'd let one uninformed person's opinion kill a project I'd spent years of my life creating. I did a quick polish and sent it to my publisher. The editor suggested a new opening chapter and a handful of tweaks. It's now part of my boxed set that's been a humor bestseller on Amazon for 20 weeks.

But the friendship died. And since then, I've never let a non-writer see a draft of anything.

Critiquing and editing require experience and expertise. Anybody can say "I hate it," but it takes an expert to say. "This doesn't work because of ___ and____."

Recently freelance editor Holli Moncrieff wrote about the problem of friends critiquing friends on Michelle D. Argyle's blog. Holli and Michelle think even friends who are writers may not be the best people to critique your work. As Holli says, "there are enough people in the world who will tell you that you suck without having to hear it from a friend."

No matter how much you want to share your WIP with your real-life friends, it's not a good idea. Do try to enlist emotional support—although even that is not always forthcoming—but realize that finding a friend who's also a fan of your writing is a stroke of good luck, not something to expect.

And the truth is, a lot of people in your life may find your new interest threatening. If you’re not emotionally prepared, they can derail your project, stifle your creativity, and undermine your self esteem.

They may not be as heavy handed as Kristen Lamb's minister or my Dream-smasher friend, but they’ll work to sabotage your confidence in dozens of subtle—or not-so-subtle—ways.

They can do it for a variety of reasons. The most obvious is that your new passion can feel like a rival. Writing robs your loved ones of time you used to spend together.

Or your friends may be secret wannabes who have stifled their own creativity out of fear of failure. People like this may try to make you feel like a failure in order to justify their own fears.

Or they can just be at a bad time in their lives like my friend. In any case, it's best to be prepared.

Here are some non-supportive types to watch out for, and tips on how to deal with them:

Dream-smashers

These are the know-it-alls who specialize in discouragement.

• Like Kristen's minister, they’re full of statistics showing the odds against being successfully published. 

• They’ll send links to articles with dire warnings about carpal tunnel syndrome and back injuries due to long sessions at the keyboard.

• They have an unending supply of stories about suicide and depression in writers.

They may appear to be supportive at first, and may even express an eagerness to read your WIP—only to give entirely negative feedback.

• They always “know” some rule that you’ve broken—probably mis-remembered from their 5^th grade grammar class. (Like my "show don't tell" friend.)

• They’ll criticize your premise in a way that’s also a personal attack: “nobody wants to read about women over 50/washed-up athletes/teenagers with disabilities.”

• They often try to hijack your story. They'll criticize anything in your work that doesn’t promote their own world view, and suggest the story would be much better if the hero were more like them.

These people have given up on their own dreams and want you to do the same. Encourage them to write their own books, take an art class or start a new creative hobby.

Crazymakers

Creativity guru Julia Cameron described these people as “storm centers…long on problems but short on solutions.”

They are the drama queens, emotional vampires, and control freaks who crave your full-time attention and can’t stand for you to focus on anything but their own dramas.

Writers are magnets for these people because we tend to be good listeners.

• You tell your Crazymaker friend your writing schedule, but she’ll always “forget,” and show up at exactly the time your story is on a roll. She’ll draw you into a weepy tale of woe, saying you’re the “only one who understands.”

• Have a deadline for a difficult article? That’s the moment Crazymaker will stomp into your office and confess the affair he had four years ago when you were on a relationship break. 

• Got an editor waiting for a rewrite? That’s the week Crazymaker calls to beg you to babysit her sick child because she can’t take off work. After all, she has a REAL job

Crazymakers need to be center stage, 24/7. Nothing you do can be of any importance: your job description is “minion.”

Politely resign from the minion department. If they're capable of real friendship, they'll get the message. If they don't, you're probably better off.

Groucho Marxists

The Groucho Marxist manifesto is, to paraphrase the great Julius Henry Marx: “I do not care to read a book by a person who would accept me as a friend.”

Groucho Marxists are your family members and buddies who assume your work is terrible because it was written by somebody they know.

These are the folks who feel compelled to ridicule and belittle your work, whether they’ve read it or not. No amount of success will convince them you’re any good. Their entire world view is based on the premise that success is impossible, so why bother? By aspiring to something more, you're violating their belief system, and no matter what you do, they will feel compelled to treat you like a failure

• You get a story published. Groucho can’t be bothered to read it. But he’s always bringing you stories by other writers in your genre, “so you can see how a REAL writer does it.” 
• You get your big call from that agent. Groucho will try to convince you she’s a scammer. Why would a real agent represent a nobody like you? 
• You sign with a publisher. Groucho thinks he's heard a rumor the company is about to go under: look how desperate they must be if they’d publish your book.
• You self publish a book. Groucho will give you a heated lecture on how self-publishing is destroying the culture with a "tsunami of crap." 
• You get a good review. Groucho doesn’t have time to read it. But he has lots of time to research other pieces by that reviewer to show the reviewer has terrible taste. 
• You win a Pulitzer. What? No Nobel?

 These people are highly competitive and feel your success will make you “better than them.”

Remind them of their own skills and accomplishments and reassure them that any writing success you achieve won’t change your relationship.

It’s hard enough to live with the constant rejection we have to deal with from agents, editors, and reviewers, so when you’re attacked in your personal life, it’s tough to hang on.

We need to erect strong boundaries and be fierce in defending them.

But if you’re serious about your work, the people who really care about you will learn to treat your time and work with respect.

The others will evaporate. Chances are you won’t miss them.

The best way to get good feedback on your work is from other writers, through critique groups and beta readers. Even if you're not lucky enough to live in an area with good in-person writing groups, the Internet age provides wonderful opportunities to find good critiquers online. Two great resources are CritiqueCircle.com and SheWrites. And GalleyCat has a great new sign-up system for finding the right critique group.

What about you, scriveners? Have you run into any of these negative types in your writing journey? How did you deal with them? 

Previews of Coming Attractions!

Ruth and Anne have a boxed set coming out this week!

Chanel and Gatsby: A Comedy Two-fer

Available RIGHT NOW for  NOOK and KINDLE. 
Kobo and iTunes to come shortly

Smart chick lit for chicks who weren't born yesterday.
Ruth Harris and Anne R. Allen: together again for the first time!

Need something to keep you entertained while traveling home for the holidays? Ruth and I have put together two of our most popular comic novels for the price of one!

Due in December

The Lady of the Lakewood Diner
a comedy

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be...

Who shot Morgan le Fay? The Lady of the Lakewood Diner is the story of a six-decade friendship between an aging rock star and her childhood best friend--the owner of a seedy diner in Central Maine. She just might be the only person who can figure out who's been trying to kill the rock diva. Think Beaches meets Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

How to be a Writer in the E-Age: a Self-Help Guide

Advice for writers from Anne R. Allen and Amazon #1 Bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde

Updated edition with all new-material.

Not another guide to self-publishing. This is a fun, friendly book about how to plan your writing career and make the publishing choices that are right for you, as well as take care of yourself along the way.

Opportunity Alerts

Glimmer Train Press Short Story Award for New Writers Entry Fee: $15. A prize of $1,500 and publication in Glimmer Train Stories is given quarterly for a short story by a writer whose fiction has not been published in a print publication with a circulation over 5,000. The editors will judge. Using the online submission system, submit a story of up to 12,000 words with a $15 entry fee during the month of November. Visit the website for complete guidelines. Deadline: November 30, 2013

J.F. POWER PRIZE FOR SHORT FICTION NO ENTRY FEE. The winner will receive $500. The winning story will be announced in February, 2014 and published in Dappled Things, along with nine honorable mentions. The word limit is 8,000 words. Deadline is November 29, 2013.

DRIFTLESS REVIEW ANNUAL FLASH FICTION CONTEST $15 ENTRY FEE for up to three stories. Each short-short story limited to 500 words. $500 prize. Deadline December 31

The Lascaux Prize for Short Fiction: Stories may be previously published or unpublished. Length up to 10,000 words. Entry fee is $5, and authors may enter more than once.The editors will select a winner and nineteen additional finalists. The winner will receive $500 and publication in The Lascaux Review. Both winner and finalists will earn the privilege of displaying a virtual medallion on blogs and websites. Deadline December 31, 2013.

CRAZYHORSE PRIZES IN FICTION, NONFICTION, POETRY $20 fee (includes subscription). This is a biggie, well worth the fee. This venerable literary magazine has published the likes of John Updike, Raymond Carver and Billy Collins. Winners in each category receive $2,000 and publication. Submit up to 25 pages of prose or three poems. All entries considered for publication. Submissions accepted in the month of January 2014 only.

Social Media Secrets Book Marketers Don't Tell You—Part I: How to Avoid Twitter-Fritter and Facebook-Fail

First: many thanks to Indies Unlimited, which named this blog to its 10 Blogs and Websites Every Indie Should Know. If you're an indie, or thinking of going indie (self-publishing or small-press), do follow them for great tips and news from a very savvy team of writers.

Most writers these days know a good book isn't enough to get you successfully published. Any agent, editor, or book reviewer is going to Google you first—often before they'll even read to the end of your query. Certainly before they request a partial or a book to review.

What comes up on that Google search can make the difference between getting an agent, publisher and reviews—or languishing in obscurity.

Yes, of course it's possible to become a successful author without an online presence, the same way it's possible to get hired for a corporate job if you write your resume on parchment and send it by carrier pigeon.

But your chances are a whole lot better if you conform to established standards.

A couple of months ago, I wrote about how authors spend too much time doing meaningless busy work trying to "build platform." 

But I didn't say authors can ignore social media entirely. Social media is our most important tool for getting our books discovered.

Being on social media takes you out of the confines of your own backyard and puts you into the global marketplace. It makes the difference between hawking your book on a local street corner and getting it in front of millions of readers all over the world.

Thing is: we need to learn to use this tool effectively.

Unfortunately, a lot of marketers don't seem to know how to do that, so they bully authors into wasting a huge amount of time playing meaningless number games.

Understandably, some authors are getting annoyed. Last week, much-lauded literary author Benjamin Anastas quit Twitter and vented in an eloquent blogpost. It got a lot of cyberink and sparked some interesting pieces by Jane Friedman and Porter Anderson.

Mr. Anastas voiced his many quarrels with Twitter, most of which boiled down to: Twitter is no good for selling books, and therefore a waste of time.

Thing is, he's right on the first point, but not on the second.

To me, it sounded like somebody saying he was going to get rid of his phone because it's not good for selling aluminum siding to strangers who are just sitting down to dinner.

Mr. Anastas is a smart man, so I suspect the problem is he was never told what Twitter is really for. (Maybe because his marketing department doesn't know either.)

So...ta-da!

Here is the big secret about Twitter: 

It is not a direct marketing tool. It is a method of communication.

Kinda like a phone. Here's some stuff Twitter IS good for:

1) Quick communications with a large number of people. 

Example: When I was in despair trying to get this blog's Feedburner email program to work last week, I Tweeted asking for help. Within minutes, I had several suggestions, plus a step-by-step guide for converting to a free Mail Chimp email service. (Thanks, Molly Greene!)  I hope I've done it right. Do tell me if you've subscribed and you're still not getting your email notices, or if it's missing from your rss feed.

2) Getting up-to-the minute news from anywhere on the globe.

Example: When there was a tornado in Tuscaloosa, and I wanted to know if my Tuscaloosa friends were OK, I went to #TuscaloosaTornado and found hundreds of real-time Tweets telling what neighborhoods had been hit.

3) Giving your friends a shout-out (and occasionally yourself.)

Example: When I saw that a friend who's a newly minted agent had been mentioned in Publishers Lunch, I Tweeted it, with a @ message to her. It was the first she'd heard of it, so it was a two-bird stone. I informed her of the good news and at the same time let a lot of people know about her new agency.

And yes, you can toot your own horn occasionally. You can certainly Tweet "my book was just nominated for a RITA" or "I got a rave review from Big Al."

But only do this a few times. Imagine you're phoning your friends with the good news, not cold-calling everybody in the phone book.

However, the most important Tweets might be for a friend's triumph. This week, a Tweep posted a link with an @ message congratulating us on our Indies Unlimited kudos. I thought—"what a nice thing for her to add a special Tweet to me. Who is she, again?" I visited her blog, was intrigued, and bought one of her books.

Yeah. That's how it works.

4) Connecting with people. 

Example: Somebody asks a question on this blog. I take some time with the answer and want to let the commenter know there's an answer waiting. If her name leads to a Twitter profile, I tweet her a heads-up. Yes, I could send an email or DM, but a Tweet lets other people who might be interested know the post is there, too. I might add a hashtag like #blogging if that's what it's about.

That way we've made one connection on the blog and another through Twitter. That means we'll take more notice of each other the next time we meet online.

5) Sharing information and talking about it.

This can be anything from Tweeting a tsunami warning for your patch of coastline to links to your own newest blogpost or an article about the new Veronica Mars movie (especially if your tweeps are mystery lovers.)

Example: A few days ago I Tweeted a link to an article about the copy of J.K. Rowling's pseudonymous book that sold for $6000+ and added I thought this thing was getting silly. A few people Tweeted back their responses, including Tweep AJ Sykes who said "Agreed. Or maybe it's ugh-greed."

Clever and funny. And I remember him saying some wise things in a comment on Jane Friedman's blog last week. So now he's on my radar as a clever, funny guy. I see he writes steampunk. Not my genre of choice right now, but I ever make the steampunk plunge I know where to go first.

See how that works?

• Notice I did not say anything about telling strangers what you had for lunch. 
• Or hammering them with "buy my book" messages. 
• Or Tweeting endless snippets of text from your opus. (I know marketers love that, but it's so overdone it's all just noise to most of us.) 

Yes, you can tweet that a great book is free or on sale. And that book can be yours, but don't do it more than three times a day. In between other stuff.

And you can Tweet other people's books, too—but only if you genuinely think your followers will like it. Tweeting books you haven't read may seem to be "friendly" to your fellow authors, but it's not friendly to your Tweeps. And it can backfire if it's not a book you'd recommend to a real life friend. Somebody who writes violent thrillers has no business asking a writer of children's books or cozies for a Tweet. It's OK to say no.

Especially since simply Tweeting book titles at strangers does not sell a lot of books anyway. That's what Benjamin Anastas was right about.

But exchanging information can make connections. It's those connections that will get you known so that somebody might want to buy your books some day.

But you don't have to spend a lot of time on those connections. Mr. Anastas complained of Twitter being a time suck—and it certainly can be. But only if you let it.

And that's another way Twitter is like your phone. A phone can't dominate your life if you don't turn it on. Don't dump the phone, just don't pick up if you don't want to talk.

And those marketers who say you should be adding 20 random Tweeps a day so you can amass half a million followers?

That's like saying you should buy a phone with the numbers of 500,000 strangers programmed into it.

If they don't want to talk to you—what exactly is the point?

For more on Twitter—especially for newbies—see my post on Twitter for Shy Persons.

And for some info on how some clever people are making Twitter more useful for book marketing, check out Julie Valerie's review of BookVibe.  It's a new program that analyzes Twitter streams for book discovery. It sounds as if there still are some bugs in it, but it may mean that Twitter will be a better place for direct marketing in the future than it is now.

Now for some Facebook secrets…

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on Facebook. I'm kind of a Facebook hater. But that's partly because it's taken me so long to learn to use it. For at least a year I didn't post anything but links to my blog, bits of publishing news, and announcements of my book launches (Yeah, I launched 7 in a year, plus 3 anthologies. I guess I didn't have much else to talk about.)

But this year I started posting literary cartoons, inspirational stuff about books, and a few jokes. All of a sudden, I started having fun conversations on FB.

And this week I saw a great post from Kristen Lamb that gave me an a-ha moment.

It solidified all the stuff I've been learning by trial and error for the past six months. (Lots of error.)

1) Don't just "friend" people.

BE a friend. Connect with people in a non-phony way. NOT writer to fan. Person to person.

2) A personal "friend" page is more valuable than a "like" page.

You can stop humiliating yourself begging for "likes." They mean absolutely nothing if people don't make return visits. And why do you want that Christian picture book writer to like your BDSM erotica page, anyway? It will do nothing for you and will signal Facebook to send some very unwelcome advertising her way.

People would rather be your friend than worship at your feet. Don't expect people to "like" you if you don't do anything likeable.

3) Nonstop bragging isn't especially likeable. 

How weird is it that I have to say that? But I do. That's because marketers tell us to advertise 24/7. When what we should be doing is joking around and getting to know people.

4) LOLCats, Oprah-quotes, and funny stuff from George Takei will sell more books in the long run than all those "book launch party" pages, pleas for tweets, or those links to Publisher's Lunch. (Yes, I'm seriously guilty of that last one.)

As Kristen said in her post: "People can’t connect emotionally to yet another DBW article about how Barnes and Noble’s stock is tanking. They CAN however connect to kittens, Sharknado, tales of missing socks, superheroes, kid stories, pet stories, Mayhem and Grumpy Cat."

5) Facebook author pages don't get much traffic because you can't use them to interact with people. They just sit there saying "worship me." All most of us do is post news about our books. Which snoozifies pretty much everybody if it's non-stop.

Here's Kristen again. "There are writers who seriously believe that Facebook is out to get them because their fan pages are being hidden. NO. It’s just that, in the Digital Age, there is a steep price for being boring."

I wish I'd read Kristen's post three years ago when I started on Facebook. I've wasted a lot of time being boring. Here's another quote:

"Engage us, talk to us, stop selling to us and guess what? We will like coming to your page. And we will have fun and "Like" stuff, comment and SHARE your content." It's worth reading her whole post.

6) The most important Facebook pages aren't your personal pages or your author page. (Or those endless promotional "event" pages.)

They are your friends' pages.

If you visit your friends' pages and make them feel like equals rather than minions, and encourage them through their triumphs and crises, the way you'd like them do do for you, they will reciprocate.

And they might even be interested in reading your next book.

Yeah. That's how social media works. It's, um, social. And as with all social interactions, the best rule is always the Golden one.

In August, I'm going to post Part 2. I'll be talking about how blogging revived my career, and I'll divulge the #1 blogging secret no blogging guru will tell you. 

So what about you, scriveners? Have you been feeling the way Benjamin Anastas does about Twitter? What do you think you could teach marketers about social media? Any tips to add about Twitter and Facebook?

THIS WEEK'S BOOK DEAL 

Sale extended! 99 cents for three hilarious mysteries. Thanks everybody, for keeping it in the top 50 in comic fiction on Amazon for five weeks!

Available on Amazon US, NOOK, and Amazon UK

"The Best Revenge, Ghost Writers in the Sky and Sherwood Limited are hysterical. Anne Allen will keep you laughing throughout, but in the meantime she dabbles her fingers in some topics worth some serious thought: sexism, weightism, lechery, murder, duplicity, homelessness & poverty to name a few. If you love to laugh, you'll like these three books. If you love to think, ponder AND laugh, be ready to fall in love"... C.S. Perryess

OPPORTUNITY ALERTS

1) The Alice Munro Short Fiction Contest. Entry fee $25 adult, $10 Teen. $2000 (Canadian) in prizes. 5000 words or less, unpubished work. More info at Alice Munro Festival Short Story Competition Deadline August 1.

2) Quirk Books "Looking for Love" contest. They offer a $10,000 prize for the best quirky love story of 50,000 words or more. Visit the Quirk Books website to download the entry form or for further information. Quirk Books was founded in 2002 and publishes around 25 books each year. Their bestselling titles include Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Entries close October 1.

3)  The Huffington Post's Huffpo50 is now publishing short fiction!   The rules: You must be 50 or older to enter. Writers can submit only one story per year, and all pieces must be 5,000 words or less. Send your original submissions, as well as your contact details, to 50fiction@huffingtonpost.com.

4) COMPOSE Literary Journal. Submissions are open for their Fall 2013 issue.  This prestigious journal was founded by Suzannah Windsor, of Write it Sideways, and she's put together an amazing editorial staff. They are looking for art and photography as well as poems, literary short fiction, novel excerpts and essays. Must not be previously published (that includes anything that has appeared on your blog.)

We love your comments! If you can't get through Blogger's hoop-jumping, send me an email at annerallen dot allen at gmail dot com and I'll post it personally.

How To Get a Book Published: A Step-by-Step Guide with Links to FREE Information for the New Author

The Interwebz can provide a wealth of information for new writers. In fact you can find pretty much everything you need to know to become a professional, publishing writer here on the Web, absolutely free.

But you'll also find a bunch of time-wasting bad advice that can lead you astray. When you’re a beginner, it’s hard to know who to listen to.

We decided we'd devote a page on the blog to some info for the writer looking to know the basics about how to get published. Thanks much to Janice Konstantinidis, the webmaster of the SLO Nightwriters for the suggestion!

This is not meant to be a comprehensive list: just a jumping-off place.

A new writer has a whole lot of options–and more are springing up daily. Nobody can say which publishing path is right for you. But we can steer you toward some blogs and websites that might help you decide and suggest some posts from our archives you might find useful

We’d love for readers to add their own recommendations to this list in the comments. We’ll incorporate your suggestions into a permanent page on this site.

OK: How do you get a book published?

Follow these steps and click through the links:

1) Learn about the publishing business

First, remember there is nothing wrong with writing as a hobbyist. You do NOT have to get a book published to call yourself a writer. (Do you have to join the PGA tour to call yourself a golfer?)

But if you do decide to publish, you need to be aware you are entering an industry. Whether you self-publish or traditionally publish, it's important to know how the business works.

We recommend reading Galley Cat, the publishing news round-up site.  It reports both traditional and indie news, and posts a self-publishers bestseller list.

Publisher’s Lunch, the newsletter for Publishers Marketplace, is the place for up-to-the minute news on what’s going on in traditional publishing. You can subscribe here. It’s free (Publishers Marketplace is not.) No matter how you publish, it helps to know what is selling right now, and who the players are.

We also are avid readers of the Passive Voice, which gives a round-up of some of the most important publishing stories of the day (and occasionally runs excerpts from this blog—thanks Passive Guy!) But be aware the comments tend to be weighted toward indie publishing.

2) Get short pieces published first 

Think outside the (full-length) book.  If you don’t have any stories, poems, reviews or essays in the archives, start writing them. It’s very, very hard to sell one book when you have no track record, no matter what publishing path you choose.

Then when you're working on your opus—or you’re editing it—you can also be sending stories, poems and essays to journals, local newspapers, blogs, anthologies, contests and websites in order to build your reputation as a professional writer. Again, this is important whether you self-publish or go the traditional route.

A great place to find vetted journals, anthologies and contests is C. Hope Clark’s Funds for Writers. Poets and Writers magazine also has an excellent list of contests, grants and awards.

But do check to make sure you’re not being taken in by bogus contests and fake anthologies. Always check them out at the Writer Beware blog. Bookmark that one. It's a must-read for all writers.

For more info about why you should be writing short pieces, check our archives:

Why You Should Be Writing Short Fiction
Short is the New Long

3) Finish your book 

Don't waste time worrying about publishing until you've got something to publish. Preferably several things.

Beginning authors are urged by some marketing people to start marketing long before they’re ready. Some seem to think authors should start “building platform” in the womb.

We think this is dumb. Learn to write, read informative blogs where you can network with other authors, and let yourself build up a body of work before you start trying to market yourself.

When you're starting out, it's better to read blogs than to write frantically on your own. Commenting on high-profile blogs is one of the best ways to get your name known.

Unfortunately, social media is writer’s block’s best friend. Not only is it endlessly distracting, but all the information on writing can also turn you into a perfectionist who keeps rewriting chapter one and never gets on with the story.

There are more great blogs on craft than we have room to mention here. It will depend on your book, genre and writing style which ones will resonate. One of my favorites is Janice Hardy's The Other Side of the Story. 

Some of our more popular posts on craft are:

10 Things Your Opening Chapter Should Do: A Checklist
12 Signs Your Novel isn't Ready to Publish

If you’re blocked and having trouble finishing and it’s anywhere near November, try barreling through during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo.) You can get lots of support from these folks. They help you let go of your perfectionism and get that book onto the page. There are now NaNos in the summertime, too.

4) Get your work critiqued 

And polished.  And critiqued some more. Then have it proofread. If you can exchange proofing with other writers, that can save you a lot of money.

A real-life critique group is great, because authors tend to be solitary and we need some human contact, but there are excellent critique groups online. We recommend  CritiqueCircle.com,  SheWrites or networking through My WANA, QueryTracker.net, AgentQuery.com, or Nathan Bransford’s forums.

But take care of yourself as you’re being critiqued. Realize there’s a little bit of the “blind leading the blind” going on with peer critiquing.

Also, your first critiques can feel like going through a meat grinder. For some self-protection techniques you might want to read these in our archives:

Bad Advice to Ignore From Your Critique Group
Should you eliminate “Was” from Your Writing? Why Sometimes “the Rules” are Wrong

5) Visit lots of blogs, online groups and forums to explore your options.

But avoid groups or forums where everybody tells you you’re a moron if you self-publish/Big 5-publish/small press-publish or whatever. People who believe in one-size-fits all are, um, morons.

You need to choose the right path for yourself and your work, and that’s going to be different for every writer.

Start with this post by Jane Friedman on how to get published. Jane is the former publisher of Writers Digest books and one of the most savvy people in the business.  This was pretty comprehensive when she wrote it in 2011, and most of the info still stands. Jane doesn’t post as much as she used to, but her blog is still one of the best. I love reading the insider publishing scoop from CNN's Porter Anderson there every Thursday in his Writing on the Ether.

A great blog for writers leaning toward the trad route but wanting to keep options open is agent Rachelle Gardner’s blog

Former agent Nathan Bransford's blog is one of the friendliest and most helpful place for newbies, and his archives are gold.

If you’re pretty sure you don’t want to go with mainstream corporate publishing, you’ll want to read Joe Konrath’s Newbie’s Guide to Publishing and David Gaughran.

If you’re leaning indie, the Writers Guide to Epublishing  (WG2E) is friendly and helpful with nuts and bolts issues, and welcomes trad-pubbed authors as well. (And Ruth Harris posts there once a month.)

A free site that's great for Romance writers is RomanceUniversity.

A great place to find blogposts that answer your specific questions is the Writers Knowledge Base, compiled by mystery author  Elizabeth Spann Craig. And if you're on Twitter, follow @ElizabethSCraig for the best links to writerly blogs on the Web.

If you’re pretty sure you want to go for that Big Publishing contract, Agent Janet Reid’s blog is great. Ditto Kristen Nelson’s Pub Rants. Also, the archives of Miss Snark are full of valuable information. And if you're looking for an agent, Chuck Sambuchino's Guide to Literary Agents blog is a must-read.

For YA and children's writers, you can read comprehensive agent profiles from Casey and Natalie at Literary Rambles and you'll also get lots of great info at Adventures in YA and Children's Publishing.

The Savvy Author's Newsletter also has excellent advice and it's free. They have a nice, friendly community as well.

6) Get yourself on social media...slowly

My personal recommendation: start a blog first. But don’t go nuts posting. Once a week or even once a month is OK to start, but the sooner you start one, the better. Search engines take a while to find you and you want Google to know who you are by the time you finish that opus.

A new writer's blog shouldn't be about marketing something you haven't published yet. It should be for networking and making friends. For information on what to blog about you might want to check my post on What Should You Blog About? 

For all social media advice, I highly recommend Kristen Lamb's Blog  (She also has great info on craft, presented in a fun, humorous way.) Plenty of bestselling authors owe their success to Kristen.

I also love Molly Greene’s blog for social networking tips.

In our archives: How Not to Blog (and the rest of my How to Blog series)
And Twitter for Shy Persons

7) Network with other writers

The writers you meet on your way up are probably also on their way up.  This is a business where who you know matters.

A person in your critique group today may be an agent or a bestselling author a year from now. I know many, many successful authors who got their agents through online networking. I know even more who found their designers, publishers, and most avid readers through social media.

You can network on blogs, forums and the many, many booky websites like RedRoom.com, LibraryThing.com, Goodreads.com, Shelfari.com, Reddit.com, Kindleboards.com, etc. and writers groups on LinkedIn and Facebook, plus the hundreds of writing forums.

BUT: Beware any group where you see snark or groupthink. There is horrific bullying going on in some of these sites. The nastiest seem to be the oldest. See my post on Gangs of New Media.

Absolute Write, some LinkedIn and Goodreads groups, and the Amazon forums are NOT recommended for that reason. I especially warn against the Amazon forums. They are rabidly anti-writer. The self-appointed enforcers will punish you for breaking their murky rules of conduct with all the self-righteous sadism of the Taliban slaughtering a schoolgirl. Don't go there.

The Amazon forums are not to be confused with the Kindleboards, where writers are welcome as long as they don't do any promotions.

The most friendly and safe forums are the personally moderated ones like Nathan Bransford’s forums, SheWrites (for women writers) and Kristen Lamb’s WANAtribe

Do NOT join more than two or three forums or groups. If you don’t find simpatico folks, move on. This is for making friends, NOT selling books.

Remember you are looking for friendship, moral support and an exchange of useful information.

8) Cultivate a patient attitude

This is a marathon, not a sprint.  I know you’re dying to get published, but believe me, it takes time to learn to be a writer. Malcolm Gladwell said it takes 10,000 hours to learn to do something well, and that sounds about right.

And I’m not just talking craft. You need to learn to take criticism with grace and never let them see you sweat.

If you think your critique group is bad, wait until the Amazon Forum Taliban hits you with 2 dozen one-stars because one of them knows your stalker ex-girlfriend who says you ditched her a week before the prom.

And you DO NOT WANT TO PUBLISH TOO SOON. It's the number one mistake new writers make.

That includes putting your book on your blog. Blogging is publishing. Lots of impatient newbies decide to blog their rough drafts. You don’t want to do that if you have any aspirations to being a traditionally published writer. Here’s Rachelle Gardner with a great post on the subject.

9) Learn to write a great query, synopsis and hook

Anybody wanting to traditionally publish needs to learn to write a query and a synopsis.

And sorry, self-pubbers, you do too. You’re going to be querying reviewers, bloggers, bookstore owners, etc throughout your professional life.  You have to be able to tell people about your book in three sentences or less.

Learn this now.

Best place to learn how to query: Janet Reid’s Query Shark blog.

Another is Nathan Bransford’s archives. Here's his great post on How to Write a Query Letter.

For an overview of Hooks, Loglines, Pitches check in our archives.

10) Decide what publishing road you want to take and start your career.

If you want an overview of your choices, check out my post on "Who are the Big 6? Answers to the not-so-dumb questions you were afraid to ask"

Then you can take one of any of a number of paths:

* Send out queries to agents if you want to try for a Big 5 contract. Find the right agent to query through AgentQuery.com and QueryTracker.net. And always, always, always visit the agent's own website to read the guidelines before you query.

or

* Query editors at small and independent digital presses if you want a publisher but prefer not to go corporate. You can find a list of literary small presses at Poets and Writers. I'd love to have a list of small and indie digital presses for genre fiction but they pop in and out of business so often it's hard to keep up. If anybody knows of a good list, please let us know!

or

* Submit to digital imprints of the Big 5 that do not require an agent (but before you sign a digital press contract, read Writer Beware on the new digital imprints and their contracts.) 

or

* Hire an editor and get your book polished up to self-publish. For nuts and bolts info on how to do that, read the archives of David Gaughran’s Let’s Get Digital. For a list of vetted editors try the Editorial Freelancers Association.

If you’re not tech-savvy and need help in self-publishing, we’ve heard good things about BookBaby.com and Draft2Digital.

Smashwords is also a great way to get on a number of platforms. And CEO Mark Coker has lots of great info on his blog. He's super-savvy and 100% pro-author. And people tell me Mark Coker's FREE book on formatting is a must read for every self-publisher.

11) Learn that rejection is part of the process

Scathing critiques, agent and editor rejections, terrible reviews: every single author who's ever lived has had to endure them.

Right now, go to the Amazon bestseller list. How many books do you see that you really, really want to read right now? Be honest.

Not that many, right?

Does that mean the other books aren’t good?

No. It means you personally didn’t feel like reading them today.

That’s what an agent does every time she looks through her queries. She has to choose what she personally likes. You could be the next F. Scott Fitzgerald, but if she’s in the mood for vampire erotica, you're getting a rejection.

From her. There’s always somebody else.

For some great insider info on what rejection really means, check in our archives:

11 Reasons Why Writers Get Rejected—And Why Only 3 of them Matter by Ruth Harris
Rejection: Why it Doesn’t mean What You Think it Means by Catherine Ryan Hyde

If you want more info on the care and feeding of the writers’ soul, as well as lots of in-depth information about the publishing process, you might want to spring for a copy of How to be a Writer in the E-Age by Catherine Ryan Hyde and yours truly. Not free. But a bargain at $2.99 for the ebook.

And don’t forget to have fun. Publishing is a journey. It’s important to enjoy yourself along the way.

Oh, and what can you do right now, this minute? You can write your author bio. It will make you feel like a professional and you can have it ready and waiting the first time one of those stories gets accepted.

Here's our post on How to Write an Author Bio Even if You Don't Feel Like an Author...Yet.

OK, Scriveners: What can you add to our list? Any must-read blogs that helped you on your road to publication? Any forums where you found BFFs? We welcome all your suggestions. 

BOOK DEAL OF THE WEEK

Food of Love--a comic thriller about dieting, chocolate, and a small nuclear bomb

Usually $2.99, now only 99c on Amazon , Amazon UK and NOOK 

"This hilarious page-turner packs a profound satirical bite. It's a Hollywood romp that provides romance, mystery, and an honest confrontation with the human condition. Food of Love is a funny and powerfully healing book." ...Lucia Capacchione, PhD, bestselling self-help author, Recovery of Your Inner Child

OPPORTUNITY ALERTS

1) Quirk Books "Looking for Love" contest.  They offer a $10,000 prize for the best quirky love story of 50,000 words or more. Visit the Quirk Books website to download the entry form or for further information. Quirk Books was founded in 2002 and publishes around 25 books each year. Their bestselling titles include Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Entries close October 1, 2013

2) A site for KOBO READERS: TrindieBooks.com This Canadian site is the KindleNationDaily for Kobo. Really nice folks, affordable rates, and their ads are FREE if your book is free for Kobo. Reach some of those voracious Canadian readers. Kobo is the most popular ereader in Canada.  Submit your book here. 

3) Escargot Books is expanding its catalogue and are now accepting submissions. Crime fiction (dark thrillers to cozies), women’s fiction, wealth and fitness, children’s, sci-fi and dystopian. All books will be published in digital format. Some books will be chosen for print and/or audio as well. Escargot Books does not offer an advance, but they offer higher royalties than traditional publishers, especially for direct sales from our website, as well as editing, formatting, promotion, and the company of bestselling authors. They have some big name authors and a good track record. Here’s their online submission form

4)  A Room of Her Own contest for women writers. Entry Fee: $15. Four prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Los Angeles Review. Submit a poem of no more than 36 lines, a short short story of up to 500 words, a story of up to 1,500 words, or an essay of up to 1,500 words. Visit the website for complete guidelines. Deadline: July 31, 2013

5) Advertise to British readers with EbookBargainsUK. Listings will be half-price through July and August and anyone listing then will get a credit for a free listing for September onwards (excluding the Holiday period December 20 – January 10). ALSO: They will be launching Ebook Bargains Australia, Ebook Bargains New Zealand, Ebook Bargains Canada and Ebook Bargains India soon, offering authors a chance to target their ebooks at readers through local stores in those countries. Inclusion in these international email newsletters will not cost you anything extra! The one small listing fee will get your ebooks in all five newsletters, reaching five of the biggest English-speaking markets outside the USA.

If you're in any of those countries, do sign up for their newsletter. It brings links to free and bargain ebooks—at the bookstore of your choice—in your inbox every morning. You can subscribe here.

We love your comments! If you can't get through Blogger's hoop-jumping, send me an email at annerallen dot allen at gmail dot com and I'll post it manually.