Photo by Hamed Saber
To put it bluntly: if you’re known, it’s easier to promote and sell your work. It’s a fact that JK Rowling sells more books than Tess Gerritsen, even though in my humble opinion JKR has nothing on Tess. But Ms Rowling gets a lot more publicity and that helps her secure that “Richest Writer in the Universe” spot. Any wanna-be writer who takes their writing seriously should make sure they get as much publicity and interact with as many people as possible. All of them could be potential readers of your books.
The question is how to achieve as much visibility as possible, while still maintaining your regular job, proper contact with your family and still writing your novels. Well I would say good time management skills, ability to prioritize and coffee, but I don’t want to sound like one of those people always giving lectures on business management.
Instead I want to give you ideas of where to start and how in small steps get people to like you and care about your work.
Web site
I feel like stating the obvious. Every writer who is serious about their work should have their own web site.
It’s a place where people can learn some basic information about you (often listed in “About” or “Bio” page) like when did you start writing, why do you like it so much and so on. It helps you establish that, in fact and contrary to a popular belief, you are a human being with a passion.
And when you finally publish your work, your web site is where your readers can easily find all your works no matter how many different publishers you have. I know writers who publish their books with four different publishers and if reader were to follow them to a publisher, they would miss out on all the books published with someone else.
Blog
Nothing helps you to connect like a blog. Regular posts about your life, funny anecdotes, complaints about the recent problems you have with your characters… Blogging can be about everything. Not only you keep writing (and that as we know helps to keep the writer’s block away) but blogging is also a great way of meeting new people and finding friends.
It’s good to blog for the sole purpose of blogging, though. Because if you blog with a secret agenda of selling your books, or ideas or anything, it will soon because an exhausting errand or worse, your readers will realize that your passion is somewhat fake.
Remember it’s okay to create a post “OMG! I got published LOOK!” and put up a link in the sidebar. However mentioning at the end of every post “see this book I wrote buy and review PLZ!” is simply annoying. Not to mention bordering on Spam. That won’t help you start friendly relationships with people who later on could support you and help you solve your plot problems.
Forums
Personally, I find forums overwhelming and slightly chaotic. But that’s because I prefer cozy, little groups of people who know each other well. But I’m a minimalist and prefer to have few small circles of friends than one huge group of people. However even with my personal preferences, I can’t deny, that forums are simply irreplaceable when it comes to establishing visibility for a writer. I experienced the magic when before NaNoWriMo 2007 I posted on their forums a link to my Random Prompt Generator.
If you like the format forums offer before posting, you should pay extra attention to both your profile and your signature. You should use both with caution. Don’t overdo it; there is such thing as “too much”. You’d be surprised how far you’ll get by simply placing a link to your website/blog/newest book. If people like what you write in your posts to the forums, they will follow the link and you don’t need a huge banner there.
Network sites
You know, MySpace, Facebook, StumbleUpon, and Digg. Places where you can friend people, exchange comments and basically have fun. Though I wouldn’t recommend signing up with all of them. That would make you lose your mind. But one or two (preferably ones you are already using) will help to get your name out there.
Remember
Don’t overwhelm yourself. You want to get some exposure online to promote your future work. It can’t take over your life, nor should it take you away from your writing. Self-promotion is something you can do at any given time. So you should make sure you have your priorities straight. Your writing comes first.
All Written Down 