On Having An Online Presence

As we're talking about authors and and publicity.... There's an article in the Grauniad by the president of the Royal Society of Literature, in part defending the institution against various claims.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'd never heard of (or have, but soon forgot about) the Royal Society of Literature.
 
Toby Frost said:
Scalzi's blog post seems to be just saying "There's nothing wrong with publicity", which seems true but obvious to me.

Traditionally, there have been two types of sales: ones that involve you personally, usually small numbers at events or via individual conversations (I'm fine at this) and those which are done through marketing that doesn't directly involve you (I'm terrible at this, as I have no skill in maths, statistics etc). Above a very small sales level, most sales would be done the second way.

What the article seems to be saying is that now, an author (especially a self-published one) is expected to sell books to anonymous people but through their own personality/performance/whatever the word is. I can (sometimes) persuade one person to purchase a book if I speak to him directly. I don't have the time or the skills to persuade large numbers of people to do that via my antics on Tic Toc or the like.
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Agreed on the focus of the article. Social Media, and the article, deeply focus on and incent the viral spike while either ignoring or denigrating the slow burn. As much as US culture currently spotlights the, Rise and Grind, mindset, the focus isn't about slowly building a pyramid, block by block: it's building to a tipping point where you go viral (while also celebrating a deeply unhealthy addiction with workaholism)

Hugh Howey was great about engaging readers and "personally" engage with readers to build a base (leaving behind that Wool came out over a decade ago in a very, very different self-pub landscape). I stumbled upon Wool very early, loved it, and left a rating on Amazon. He sent a quick, Thank you--what'd you like about it? I'm sure it was a copy and paste thing he did every day but it absolutely got me. I went from leaving a rating, to leaving a review -- I was listening to Nicolas Jaar and commuting on Boston' T while reading on my kindle and mentioned how the music really added creepiness and atmosphere to his book in the review. He again responded-- Wow, cool, I'll have to check that out. A week later he again responded and said, You're so right, that's super cool, thanks for sharing.

He used Amazon to personally engage with readers. From generic copy+paste --> Individual response --> Unprompted addition.

I get that's not possible for everyone (or maybe even possible anymore, via Amazon?) and that engaging with fans can be different for men and women, but, it's stuck with me as an engagement method I could handle.
 
ColGray said:
That's one portion of TikTok. Other portions are broader, funnier, or more bizarre. Everything around social media (performative people, funny people, people selling things, etc) all appear on TikTok in roughly equal measure.
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How do you find the other bits of TikTok? (Find as in locate, the name of the groups or however it goes.)
Especially the funnier bits, and the sff bits?
 
I'm mainly on Instagram these days, though I do like and comment on people's posts on Facebook. I do Instagram because I enjoy it; it allows me to dust off my old media/photography degree and have some fun with photos. (My account is mostly books I'm reading or pics from walks and outings.) If it ever stops being fun, I'll drop it.

Does it sell books? No idea. But I've read other authors that I've discovered on Instagram via mutuals, so probably? As for community, yes, it does give me a sense of community. I follow/am followed by a lot of authors I either know in person or have struck up online friendships with. Like Jo says, it's not about 'networking', it's about community. Being there for each other, cheering each others successes, etc. If I ever have actual readers following me, maybe the way I interact with people on Instagram will change, but probably not. Is my Instagram persona a brand? Not in the sense that I play up the sort of stuff I write. But I figure most people are on IG to get a feel for other people's lives, so I think I'm doing ok.

I think a lot of having a social media is finding your comfort zone. I like posting photos. I like looking at other people's photos. IG works for me. I don't post much at all on Facebook, because I get anxious at the pressure to post cool links to stuff or be clever, though I'm super happy to chat on other people's posts. I think before you try to build a brand, it's important to find your comfort zone. No point doing all the socials and hating it; better to pick one you actually enjoy and focus on that.

Mouth-to-mouth is still the best publicity out there. Luckily, that goes hand-in-hand (see what I did there? ;) ) with making friends and being part of a community.
 
Montero said:
How do you find the other bits of TikTok? (Find as in locate, the name of the groups or however it goes.)
Especially the funnier bits, and the sff bits?
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Mainly by liking stuff/upvoting/etc. The algo then feeds you more of a given thing or a given creator. I'm not on TikTok as I find I can rabbit hole easily, look up and wonder where the last hour went
 
Thanks. So it isn't like Chrons, with areas for Science, Nature, History etc where you press a link and go to a special interest area?
Are you saying it is one enormous ocean of stuff and if something bobs past that you like, you vote on it and gradually more things you like bob past?
Is it very picture or video orientated, or are largely text people like me also included?

I can rabbit hole too, not to mention get bewildered by stuff zooming past (Discord was a mixed experience) hence asking questions before going anywhere near.
 
Montero said:
Thanks. So it isn't like Chrons, with areas for Science, Nature, History etc where you press a link and go to a special interest area?
Are you saying it is one enormous ocean of stuff and if something bobs past that you like, you vote on it and gradually more things you like bob past?
Is it very picture or video orientated, or are largely text people like me also included?

I can rabbit hole too, not to mention get bewildered by stuff zooming past (Discord was a mixed experience) hence asking questions before going anywhere near.
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Yep. Stop and look at something for a moment and that’s you watching pimple squeezing forever.

You can use hashtags eg booktok to bring up specific areas

Video and image based
 
Toby Frost said:
One of the many miserable things in that article is the idea that, to succeed on social media, an author must dress up as a "writer" and be seen doing cartoon author things. I am a dull, non-photogenic middle aged man whose idea of writing is typing at a laptop. It's like that Monty Python sketch where a crowd excitedly watches Thomas Hardy writing a novel: nothing happens. I remember a "writer" on instagram whose ridiculously micro-managed photos included pictures of her wandering around a forest in a nightie. Because that's what writers do. I find this strangely sad, as if to do a job you've got to turn yourself into a silly caricature.
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Snap! Instant empathy with this post. I find the idea of self-promotion abhorrent. I similarly find talking with somebody who relates everything back to themselves or boasts about their achievements tiresome. I do like talking about ideas, particularly the big ideas. especially with someone who has something to say, but in that neutral zone that excludes personal anecdotes, or statements justified by unconditional belief, a stone wall that prevents any further progress. As Toby says, the idea of packaging yourself to please an audience, with the ulterior motive of getting them to buy whatever product you are trying to unload, be it a tin of beans or a novel, is both cynical and dishonest.
 
The big problem with social media is trying to get seen amongst a million other people. If you want to get something online for free about your written work you can use the Shepherd book site. There is minimal selling of your literary soul, you do it once and it's done. The site is still small, but aims to get much bigger. Because it's small, your science fiction listing is listed with only 1601 other authors, and counting. Soon the number will get much larger and even though the site isn't based on continual input, one listing among a few thousand is much easier to find than a hundred thousand which is what will happen. The premise is that your book is listed with 5 other books you get to choose with the idea being that they are great literary works that people will look at long before they look at your book. Or you can choose any 5 books, written by friends, newly published, whatever you want.
 
I once watched a course on Tiktok for authors, thinking I might brave that world in the hope of finding readers, even though the idea is hideous. After 30 mins, the provider casually suggested that to have any impact you needed to post 4 times per day. Per day!! Once I'd stopped laughing, which did take some time, I also stopped watching.

I don't mind creating the odd post for instagram but I will not be a product. People will either find and read my books or they won't, and that's ok.
 
Authors always had to promote and self-promote. The difference now is that it's so much more invasive. Most authors - in fact, most creative people, especially musicians - are sensitive, introverted, often shy (not the same thing). I found self-promotion impossible until about 2015, when I got over nerves, lack of confidence, etc, and began to do it. I learned quite a few lessons in a short time. @Jo Zebedee was right when she said the key to social media is to do one thing well. I think that's about right. I'm really beginning to enjoy online video interviews, believe it or not! I'm not sure why. It's just turning out to be more fun for me than it used to be. So, anybody out there with a video channel... send me a message.
 
There was a similar case on X (formerly known as Twitter) several years ago in the UK. An amateur naturalist posted that she had seen a tropical butterfly in her garden, asking what species it was. It wasn't a species native to the UK. She was totally denounced and made a fool of, while others said it was deliberate spam by her, and I think she was hounded so much that she was forced to leave the platform. However, I believe her completely. My neighbour's kids bought some tropical butterfly caterpillars online, fed them in a jar, with leaves that all came in a kit, and then released them as butterflies into the back garden. I doubt that they survived long enough to lay eggs, but they were certainly alive in the back garden.

It is human nature to be spiteful and nasty to other people, and people are entitled to free speech, but none of this happened when you mentioned it to a few mates down the pub or some friends over dinner. What most people still don't understand is that social media is not the same thing at all. Friends on social media are not real friends (present company excepted of course.) It's like walking down the High Street shouting from a megaphone. It's publishing what you think and all of your throwaway comments to the entire world. Now usually, most of the world couldn't care less what you think or say, but it is still there on record if they ever do, and it stays there forever.
 
Well said Dave. There are a number of aspects to the online world that are causing people to lose the natural conscience and decency that we're all born to inherit. It's changing human nature. I would cite: the anonymity, the lack of overall moderation, the scale compared with community society, and the absence of consequences. More thoughts here:
stephenpalmersf.wordpress.com

Towards Dystopia

A fascinating article in yesterday’s Guardian previewing the new Netflix film The Social Dilemma outlines the scale of the problem humanity faces in the internet: “… the tech industry’s tools, most…
stephenpalmersf.wordpress.com stephenpalmersf.wordpress.com
 
Dave said:
but it is still there on record if they ever do, and it stays there forever.
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I learned this a long time ago when something I said years before on a private dial-up forum started being quoted here and there across the web whenever a particular topic came up—despite the fact that at that point the original forum had been defunct for years. Fortunately, my statement wasn't anything that was likely to get me into trouble (and to date it never has), but what If it had been? It was a fairly terrifying realization that anything I ever said online, even in a relatively private venue, could come back to haunt me so long afterwards and after I'd more-or-less forgotten that I'd even said it. It gave a whole new meaning to the old maxim: put nothing into writing.
 
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