Being Yourself on the Internet
Posted by Meg
Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are great ways to promote your work as a writer and get in touch with fans. Sites that allow readers to review books, such as Goodreads and Amazon, also allow a community of fans and readers to discuss books. Lately, though, there has been some controversy about authors not using these social platforms in the most considerate ways causing a lot of people to talk about how authors are behaving badly.
Blogger Mike Douton from Stuff and/or Junk suggests that we start focusing on those authors that are behaving well instead, and I tend to agree. He mentions Peat, Saladin Ahmed, Cat Valente and Chuck Wendig as excellent authors to keep up with on Twitter. He remarks that he dislikes when his feed becomes full of people’s nagging tweets to read, read, read their book! But, for new authors, Twitter and Facebook are some of the best ways to foster a network of fans and spread the news of your publications.
So, where do you draw the line between promoting and throwing it in everyone’s face? Mike gives some pointers on how to promote your work without being turning people off. It can be hard when you’ve put so much time and effort into creating a book, to not talk about it all the time. But I think, especially with the amount of personal information on the Internet today, fans, readers, bloggers and authors all want to know a little bit more about you. They want to relate to your life and get to know you as a person. Mike phrased it well: “I won’t stop reading your books if you’re a good writer but boring on twitter, so don’t feel the need to preform either. Just be a regular person.”
Who are some of your favorite authors that use social media well? We want to hear about them!
On Twitter? Use the hashtag #authorsbehavingwell to note some of your favorites!
And don’t forget to submit to our latest contest. Have ideas about what’s going down in Peat’s next book, The Daylight War? Submit a custom cover to win some awesome prizes including five rare Great Bazaar booklets. The contest ends at 11:59pm on October 15th. Make sure to check out the prizes and guidelines before entering.
I agree on what Douton says about authors on twitter. I’m also really happy to get to know them better since 10 years ago you had almost no information about the author and no idea of the person that is behind the books. I must admit that it also influences my reading experience when I read a book by an author that I like as a person…
I started reading the Demon Cycle because of a review by Patrick Rothfuss. I pretty much like his social media appearance, its a mixture of promoting his own books, promoting other great books and his sharing bits of his personal life. I mean you don’t need to be a social media whore exposing everything 😉 but it’s nice to “get to know” an author.
Another example is Jim C Hines, I wrote on his FB page that I really enjoyed his book and he said thank you. Certainly an author cannot say hello to every fan (at least if he has a few^^) but it’s quite cool to see that authors are talking to their fans at all.
And of course Peat himself, he’s doing a great job 🙂
Hi,
I have to agree with Firyar:
I really like Patrick Rothfuss’ appearance. He’s personable, not intrusive and quite funny.
And I started to read your books because of his recommendations, too =)