Catherine Egan's Blog - Posts Tagged "facebook"
why social media is good for authors
Dear Blog,
Before my first book came out with Coteau books, the marketing guru there (yep, that is totally the official title: guru) suggested I develop a social media “presence” as it is called: ie. get a website, a facebook page (as opposed to a personal profile), get on twitter, try blogging, etc. For YA authors, this is pretty much par for the course these days. This makes for a whole cacophony of blogging, tweeting, facebooking authors, and when I first dipped my toe in I felt a bit queasy about the whole endeavour and skeptical that it was in fact a useful marketing tool.
I realized pretty much immediately that most authors don’t use social media as a marketing tool – or at least not primarily. Of course it’s important to be findable on-line, in case anybody is looking, but mostly writers use the various on-line platforms for community, for conversation, for validation / encouragement in the long space between books, and to let the fans they already have (more on that in a minute) know about their books. It is less about promotion and more about fun. Writing is a very isolating activity and being able to connect with other writers and readers has, for me, been the great delight of social media. It is not, for most of us, a particularly effective way to find or build an audience.
(I don’t know what sort of thing actually garners a readership for books – reviews, awards, bookseller recs, word-of-mouth, the same stuff as always I guess?)
HOWEVAH, while social media may not be a good way of finding new readers, I do think it is an excellent way of keeping your readers. Maureen Johnson (aka Queen Of Twitter) entertains her fans on twitter daily, and obviously has a blast doing so. When she has a new book coming out, those of us following her will know about it way in advance. I’d never given much thought to the idea of “keeping” your readers – Donna Tartt makes her readers wait a good decade between books and still, we flock out immediately to buy the newest, propelling it up the bestseller lists – but the rediscovery of two old faves this month brought home to me the fact that it is really very easy for readers to forget about authors between books, even authors they really liked, if they aren’t huge names being reviewed Absolutely Everywhere. It would be hard to miss a new book by Donna Tartt, but there are a lot of authors I enjoy whose new books don’t get that level of attention.
For example! Sometime in my twenties, I read and loved Hiromi Goto’s first novel, A Chorus of Mushrooms. Then, I don’t know, I didn’t hear about her next book, I guess. She slipped off my radar - until I read something in passing a few weeks ago that mentioned her deliciously creepy new YA novel, Half World. I might not have paid attention, except I recognized her name, and suddenly remembered loving her first book all those years ago. I bought Half World, and it is a weird, dark carnival of a novel, a wonderful read. She has three other books, written between A Chorus of Mushrooms and Half World, and a sequel to Half World. I’m going to try her short stories, Hopeful Monsters, next. Anyway, I found her on twitter and followed her. I found her blog. When she has a new book out, I’ll know about it.
The same thing happened, in an even more random way, with the author Jen Sookfong Lee. I read The End Of East when it came out in 2007 and thought it was great. Then I never heard or read another word about her, and I guess I wasn’t looking, until Carrie Mac, who I follow on twitter, retweeted a funny haiku and, again, I recognized the name. So I followed her as well. I read her new book, The Better Mother, and I reread The End Of East. She has a blog, she is on twitter = I won’t miss her next book.
So maybe my point (if I can claim to have such a thing) is that if there was any kind of marketing that really worked, I would have known about their books before now. Who is the target audience for these books, if not me? Who is a more obvious reader for your new book than a reader who loved your previous book? I really enjoyed the first novels by both of these authors and then I never even heard about their second books. I guess I wasn’t reading the right reviews or keeping up with new fiction from Canadian authors. I read a lot of books and I move around a lot so I don’t keep a lot of books, and I just… forgot them. Until now. So how is an author supposed to hang onto their readership between books? The New Answer is: twitter. Or facebook. Or tumblr. Etc.
Having said all that, I actually have “discovered” a few authors via social media. I read Karen Rivers’s books because I fell in love with her blog, I read Broken Magic because Eric Sipple was making early chapters available to subscribers to his blog, and I will probably read something by Maureen Johnson Queen of Twitter at some point because she is so endlessly entertaining on twitter that I figure her books have got to have some chuckles in them too. So I don’t mean to suggest that readers are not to be found via social media, only that I think it’s probably not worth the effort of “maintaining an on-line presence” if you’re only there in the hopes of catching new readers in your clever twitter-web.
A social media presence is totally worth the effort to keep readers that love your books in the loop, and it is totally worth it for the encouragement and friendship of other writers and readers on-line. It is also totally worth it if you are a self-obsessed ninny who just likes the sound of clacking your own words out on a keyboard. Yes, blog, I am talking about you. Sheesh.
Yours, author-stalkingly-(but-not-in-a-creepy-way-I-swear),
Catherine
Before my first book came out with Coteau books, the marketing guru there (yep, that is totally the official title: guru) suggested I develop a social media “presence” as it is called: ie. get a website, a facebook page (as opposed to a personal profile), get on twitter, try blogging, etc. For YA authors, this is pretty much par for the course these days. This makes for a whole cacophony of blogging, tweeting, facebooking authors, and when I first dipped my toe in I felt a bit queasy about the whole endeavour and skeptical that it was in fact a useful marketing tool.
I realized pretty much immediately that most authors don’t use social media as a marketing tool – or at least not primarily. Of course it’s important to be findable on-line, in case anybody is looking, but mostly writers use the various on-line platforms for community, for conversation, for validation / encouragement in the long space between books, and to let the fans they already have (more on that in a minute) know about their books. It is less about promotion and more about fun. Writing is a very isolating activity and being able to connect with other writers and readers has, for me, been the great delight of social media. It is not, for most of us, a particularly effective way to find or build an audience.
(I don’t know what sort of thing actually garners a readership for books – reviews, awards, bookseller recs, word-of-mouth, the same stuff as always I guess?)
HOWEVAH, while social media may not be a good way of finding new readers, I do think it is an excellent way of keeping your readers. Maureen Johnson (aka Queen Of Twitter) entertains her fans on twitter daily, and obviously has a blast doing so. When she has a new book coming out, those of us following her will know about it way in advance. I’d never given much thought to the idea of “keeping” your readers – Donna Tartt makes her readers wait a good decade between books and still, we flock out immediately to buy the newest, propelling it up the bestseller lists – but the rediscovery of two old faves this month brought home to me the fact that it is really very easy for readers to forget about authors between books, even authors they really liked, if they aren’t huge names being reviewed Absolutely Everywhere. It would be hard to miss a new book by Donna Tartt, but there are a lot of authors I enjoy whose new books don’t get that level of attention.
For example! Sometime in my twenties, I read and loved Hiromi Goto’s first novel, A Chorus of Mushrooms. Then, I don’t know, I didn’t hear about her next book, I guess. She slipped off my radar - until I read something in passing a few weeks ago that mentioned her deliciously creepy new YA novel, Half World. I might not have paid attention, except I recognized her name, and suddenly remembered loving her first book all those years ago. I bought Half World, and it is a weird, dark carnival of a novel, a wonderful read. She has three other books, written between A Chorus of Mushrooms and Half World, and a sequel to Half World. I’m going to try her short stories, Hopeful Monsters, next. Anyway, I found her on twitter and followed her. I found her blog. When she has a new book out, I’ll know about it.
The same thing happened, in an even more random way, with the author Jen Sookfong Lee. I read The End Of East when it came out in 2007 and thought it was great. Then I never heard or read another word about her, and I guess I wasn’t looking, until Carrie Mac, who I follow on twitter, retweeted a funny haiku and, again, I recognized the name. So I followed her as well. I read her new book, The Better Mother, and I reread The End Of East. She has a blog, she is on twitter = I won’t miss her next book.
So maybe my point (if I can claim to have such a thing) is that if there was any kind of marketing that really worked, I would have known about their books before now. Who is the target audience for these books, if not me? Who is a more obvious reader for your new book than a reader who loved your previous book? I really enjoyed the first novels by both of these authors and then I never even heard about their second books. I guess I wasn’t reading the right reviews or keeping up with new fiction from Canadian authors. I read a lot of books and I move around a lot so I don’t keep a lot of books, and I just… forgot them. Until now. So how is an author supposed to hang onto their readership between books? The New Answer is: twitter. Or facebook. Or tumblr. Etc.
Having said all that, I actually have “discovered” a few authors via social media. I read Karen Rivers’s books because I fell in love with her blog, I read Broken Magic because Eric Sipple was making early chapters available to subscribers to his blog, and I will probably read something by Maureen Johnson Queen of Twitter at some point because she is so endlessly entertaining on twitter that I figure her books have got to have some chuckles in them too. So I don’t mean to suggest that readers are not to be found via social media, only that I think it’s probably not worth the effort of “maintaining an on-line presence” if you’re only there in the hopes of catching new readers in your clever twitter-web.
A social media presence is totally worth the effort to keep readers that love your books in the loop, and it is totally worth it for the encouragement and friendship of other writers and readers on-line. It is also totally worth it if you are a self-obsessed ninny who just likes the sound of clacking your own words out on a keyboard. Yes, blog, I am talking about you. Sheesh.
Yours, author-stalkingly-(but-not-in-a-creepy-way-I-swear),
Catherine
