Liz's Ten Commandments
I recently posted 3 of my 10 commandments of Social Networking as authors or editors or anyone really who wishes to sell anything be it a book, a service, a beer, using the dreaded and wonderful world of Social Networking.
Here is that post.....carry on to the end if you wanna see the REST of the Commandments...
A Life Lived PubliclyBy Liz Crowe
Click here for a link to the original post
In this day and age of full frontal confessions, utterly revealing personal information and daily barrages of miniscule details via the blessing/curse of “social networks,” is it any wonder that those of us who are even the slightest bit in the public eye feel a tad exposed?
I mean, it’s more or less expected—even required—that we maintain at least a facebook or a twitter presence, preferably both, and tack on a Pintererest board or three, a tumblr account, a you tube persona, a goodreads author page, and, in varying order of how important you find them: a google plus account, a reddit avatar, a skype number, an Instagram account, and a Vines connection. PLUS all the zillions of groups within facebook and on the yahoo groups circuit—it truly is hard to know which of these things are worthwhile and which are annoying to the people you keep whacking over the head with your daily updates.
I’ve seen it all (and made my own mistakes at it as well). The successful author who maintains their sedate “fan page” with an update or two per day and nothing else. The mid-major who runs contests on goodreads and links them to their facebook and twitter accounts, while posting them in their 3 or 4 carefully selected yahoo groups. The up-and-comer self-published Next Big Thing who is a twitter expert savant, having conversations and hooking editors and big publisher attention with merely the prowess and careful selection of his tweets. The newbie who posts pretty much every single step she makes through the day, so that we all know when she had coffee, took a potty break, folded laundry and wrote 645 more words on The Next Great American Novel—or the next 50 Shades, whatever comes first.
The bottom line is, as an author at any one of these levels, you have got to be “out here,” engaging, chatting, promoting, then chatting again, exposing yourself to overt criticism along with the kudos and fan grrrl squees and OMGees of release days, cover reveals and contract announcements. It’s not an easy thing to navigate and some authors have gotten themselves in a heap of trouble overstepping and directly criticizing peers (or people they wish were their peers), or reader groups, or in other ways sabotaging their actual work (writing books) by bitching and moaning and crying about “the unfairness of it all.”
I surely do not have the answer to this dilemma. However, I would offer the following 3 rules of thumb about social network usage to newbies and mid-majors alike (all you twitter savants can carry on because I swear I have NO idea how you do it). In no particular order other than they need numbering AND to be read with tongue tucked firmly in cheek:
1. Thou shalt not complain about anything other than the weather on thy networks.· Nobody cares how hard you worked to write, edit, revise and publish your novel. Get over yourself. Just write, edit, revise and publish and let the work speak for itself (or not). Then move on to your next book. Sales and readers as fans speak the loudest.2. Thou shalt not criticize other authors on thy networks· We all have authors who make us want to gouge our own eyes out when we see they’ve sold yet another 8 zillion copies of their horrific dreck. Tough sh*t. Don’t criticize them in public. Save it for your coffee clatch, your crit group, your mom and dad and your spouse or your bartender. Anything else makes you look petty and jealous. Believe me this is the hardest one for yours truly. But I will write the bitchy, whiny, “why her and not me?” post, stare at it, then delete it. “Delete” is your best friend.3. Thou shalt not promote thine own sh*tty life on thy social networks· Save it for your therapist. Your life is GREAT, you are a SUCCESS, you LOVE WHAT YOU DO, and even though you might not have those elusive letter and word combos “NYT” or “USAtoday” or even “Podunk Backwater Gazette Best Selling Author” behind your name it simply does not matter because you write for the sheer LOVE of writing. This sounds harsh but it’s way too tempting to get into the machinations of a crappy marriage, rotten kids, crumbling or struggling career, especially late at night, when you’ve had too much booze on your social nets and it just doesn’t do your image as Professional Author any good to be crying into your beer over your cheating spouse or shop lifting teenagers. Live the dream, or at least fake it like a boss.So there you have it. Three of Liz’s cardinal rules-slash-commandments of living your life in public. If you will excuse me, I have to go delete a few things off my Facebook timeline….Happy Reading!
(preacher's kid, bear with me)All right then...~cracks knuckles~ who is interested in my other seven, hmmm?
Even if you are not, here they are (remembering where my tongue is planted):4. Thou shalt not commit Spam-age You are a published author. You are also your own publicist and promoter. This does NOT MEAN that all you ever do on the 'nets is "buy me, read me, blog me, or I will cry." You do these things (sans the "or I will cry" referencing Commandment #1). But you are also there to engage people, as in with a conversation, using something OTHER than your own books to do so. Talk about your favorite TV show, your garden, your cats (if you must) but talk about something else. Think about it as a 3:1 ratio. For every 3 promotional posts you post one completely NON promo, informational or interesting tidbit but not about your sh*tty life (referencing Commandment #3).
5. Thou shalt not let thine twitter feed get stale Twitter, as you will come to learn, is a a different creature than Facebook, or even Pinterest. It is meant to be more "live" that is to say, "active." Nothing is more annoying that glancing over at a twitter feed someone has embedded in their blog or website to see something like "Merry Christmas 2012!" when it's, like June 2013. Or worse, "Happy release day to me" when that day was 6 months ago. Keep it fresh. Put an app on your smart phone, get up every morning and put 5 quick updates (remembering the ratio rule). Then do the same at noon, and again before bed. It's like vitamins, or exercise. Gotta do it. So just get over it. If you do not, then do the rest of us a fav and delete the dang thing off twitter. You are clogging up the works with your laziness.
6. Thou shalt not suck up This one is a double-edge sword. I love to be sucked up TO. Truly, nothing turns my muse's crank like opening up Facebook or twitter to a gushing new fan. But the sucking up thing is not you telling an author how much you enjoyed their latest book. I do that too, then I let it go. Allow me to open up and confess however, that I tried this, on a small scale, on twitter with a Big Time You All Know Her Publisher Person and with an agent. It was an unmitigated disaster, mainly because, you know, I got all "know it all" about craft beer which pissed one of them off (what? she named a macro beer as "craft." I can't have that sort of mis information floating around can I?). My point is this: make your contacts to the Bigs, shoot them the ocassional response to something they toss out in an obvious bid for responses. But don't suck up (or give them advice about What Not To Drink).
7. Thou shalt not post photos of thine body parts
I do not care how proud you are of that navel piercing, save it for your family members. Now, of course, those of you who make a living from posting body parts (cover models I'm talking about here) please, post away and be sure and tag me so I can study them. If you have an author persona that is aided by you showing off your piercings and tatts, do not let me stop you...if that is working. If you post them and can't seem to make connections with new readers you might reconsider your strategy. You are online as an author to do one thing: make money. If showing off your bits (even if you think it helps reflect what a bad a** you are) is not increasing your bottom line, consider backing away from that sort of post.
8. Thou shalt not expose thine politics
We all have opinions. We all take sides. We all either like what's happening with our government or we do not. We believe in God, or we do not. We believe life begins with a gleam in Papa's eye, or we do not. You are entitled, nay, encouraged in our modern political culture to take a side and talk about it, a lot. However, I can guarantee that whatever side you take, 50% of the people out there will disagree with you. If you have an author (or any other professional) persona on line, keep your politics away from it. My advice, for those who require a platform for their views on anything remotely controversial (i.e. "politics and religion") is to have a separate Actual Person Profile on Facebook or twitter that in no way can be linked to your author or professional fan page or profile. Consider it thusly: If you take a stand by simply re-posting someone's goofball meme about the Tea Party, or the liberal controlled media or whatever, you have in one click, alienated as many as half of your potential readers. Keep it neutral. Or pay the price in lost royalties.
9. Thou shalt not fib
If you state on your facebook page, your twitter feed or other source that you are "working all week on a new project, writing, editing, revising" or whatever and won't be "around" for the duration, you really ought not be messing around on said networks commenting, posting, and tweeting. Consider the potential reader base out there, with its vast options and opportunities to read books that you did NOT write as your boss. If you tell you boss you are out sick or your grandma died and you need a week off and then post photos from a semi orgy in Las Vegas or from your fishing trip in the Gulf of Mexico you'd better be posting pix of grandma's funeral really quick. Once something is ON the internet, it is ON the internet and can be FOUND again. It's called "screen shots." Your boss sees the photos, strokes his chin and tries to square that with your reason for absence...just like your potential readers and fans see your ranting about "needing time to work! Please just back off and let me work!" and then spot you cavorting around in groups, promoting or chatting....yeah. No.
10. Thou shalt not hook up
This is also a touchy subject as we all know stories about happily married folks who met "on line." However, venues like Facebook and twitter truly are not meant to be dating services. And frankly, no matter how private you might think are being, flirting online will bite you in the a**. Especially if you are TRYING to sell books. "But Liz!" you whine, ignoring commandment #1 again. "I write books with sex in them! I want to put out there how sexy I am!" And I say to you, IF you are trying to be an Author who makes real money from writing books you should carefully consider the image you are portraying of yourself. If you want to be seen as a sexpot who writes sex books, be my guest. But the majority of published and pre-published authors I know who do indeed write books with sex in them, are more about being taken seriously as a person who writes books, not as a person who claims that their "sexiness" makes their books that much better. Oh, and Commandment 10.5: don't assume anything about the people you are communicating with, good or bad. But realize that assumptions ARE being made about you, constantly. You are Now a Public Person, dear published author. Get over thinking you have anything like privacy left to you, unless you work hard to maintain it. It's tempting to spew everything about yourself online. Resist it. Trust me.
So there you have it! Liz's (and no one else's, as in "my opinions and observations and my blog" so if you disagree, feel free to spare me righteous indignation).
Love ya!
Liz
HOUSE RULES IS FREE! The Stewart Realty prequel novella you just GOTTA read to get a real glimpse at our man Jack Gordon, the uber-hero of this best selling series!
Get it free here...
Get it for just .99 here...
and here...
and here
Here is that post.....carry on to the end if you wanna see the REST of the Commandments...
A Life Lived PubliclyBy Liz Crowe
Click here for a link to the original post
In this day and age of full frontal confessions, utterly revealing personal information and daily barrages of miniscule details via the blessing/curse of “social networks,” is it any wonder that those of us who are even the slightest bit in the public eye feel a tad exposed?
I mean, it’s more or less expected—even required—that we maintain at least a facebook or a twitter presence, preferably both, and tack on a Pintererest board or three, a tumblr account, a you tube persona, a goodreads author page, and, in varying order of how important you find them: a google plus account, a reddit avatar, a skype number, an Instagram account, and a Vines connection. PLUS all the zillions of groups within facebook and on the yahoo groups circuit—it truly is hard to know which of these things are worthwhile and which are annoying to the people you keep whacking over the head with your daily updates.
I’ve seen it all (and made my own mistakes at it as well). The successful author who maintains their sedate “fan page” with an update or two per day and nothing else. The mid-major who runs contests on goodreads and links them to their facebook and twitter accounts, while posting them in their 3 or 4 carefully selected yahoo groups. The up-and-comer self-published Next Big Thing who is a twitter expert savant, having conversations and hooking editors and big publisher attention with merely the prowess and careful selection of his tweets. The newbie who posts pretty much every single step she makes through the day, so that we all know when she had coffee, took a potty break, folded laundry and wrote 645 more words on The Next Great American Novel—or the next 50 Shades, whatever comes first.
The bottom line is, as an author at any one of these levels, you have got to be “out here,” engaging, chatting, promoting, then chatting again, exposing yourself to overt criticism along with the kudos and fan grrrl squees and OMGees of release days, cover reveals and contract announcements. It’s not an easy thing to navigate and some authors have gotten themselves in a heap of trouble overstepping and directly criticizing peers (or people they wish were their peers), or reader groups, or in other ways sabotaging their actual work (writing books) by bitching and moaning and crying about “the unfairness of it all.”
I surely do not have the answer to this dilemma. However, I would offer the following 3 rules of thumb about social network usage to newbies and mid-majors alike (all you twitter savants can carry on because I swear I have NO idea how you do it). In no particular order other than they need numbering AND to be read with tongue tucked firmly in cheek:
1. Thou shalt not complain about anything other than the weather on thy networks.· Nobody cares how hard you worked to write, edit, revise and publish your novel. Get over yourself. Just write, edit, revise and publish and let the work speak for itself (or not). Then move on to your next book. Sales and readers as fans speak the loudest.2. Thou shalt not criticize other authors on thy networks· We all have authors who make us want to gouge our own eyes out when we see they’ve sold yet another 8 zillion copies of their horrific dreck. Tough sh*t. Don’t criticize them in public. Save it for your coffee clatch, your crit group, your mom and dad and your spouse or your bartender. Anything else makes you look petty and jealous. Believe me this is the hardest one for yours truly. But I will write the bitchy, whiny, “why her and not me?” post, stare at it, then delete it. “Delete” is your best friend.3. Thou shalt not promote thine own sh*tty life on thy social networks· Save it for your therapist. Your life is GREAT, you are a SUCCESS, you LOVE WHAT YOU DO, and even though you might not have those elusive letter and word combos “NYT” or “USAtoday” or even “Podunk Backwater Gazette Best Selling Author” behind your name it simply does not matter because you write for the sheer LOVE of writing. This sounds harsh but it’s way too tempting to get into the machinations of a crappy marriage, rotten kids, crumbling or struggling career, especially late at night, when you’ve had too much booze on your social nets and it just doesn’t do your image as Professional Author any good to be crying into your beer over your cheating spouse or shop lifting teenagers. Live the dream, or at least fake it like a boss.So there you have it. Three of Liz’s cardinal rules-slash-commandments of living your life in public. If you will excuse me, I have to go delete a few things off my Facebook timeline….Happy Reading!
(preacher's kid, bear with me)All right then...~cracks knuckles~ who is interested in my other seven, hmmm?
Even if you are not, here they are (remembering where my tongue is planted):4. Thou shalt not commit Spam-age You are a published author. You are also your own publicist and promoter. This does NOT MEAN that all you ever do on the 'nets is "buy me, read me, blog me, or I will cry." You do these things (sans the "or I will cry" referencing Commandment #1). But you are also there to engage people, as in with a conversation, using something OTHER than your own books to do so. Talk about your favorite TV show, your garden, your cats (if you must) but talk about something else. Think about it as a 3:1 ratio. For every 3 promotional posts you post one completely NON promo, informational or interesting tidbit but not about your sh*tty life (referencing Commandment #3).
5. Thou shalt not let thine twitter feed get stale Twitter, as you will come to learn, is a a different creature than Facebook, or even Pinterest. It is meant to be more "live" that is to say, "active." Nothing is more annoying that glancing over at a twitter feed someone has embedded in their blog or website to see something like "Merry Christmas 2012!" when it's, like June 2013. Or worse, "Happy release day to me" when that day was 6 months ago. Keep it fresh. Put an app on your smart phone, get up every morning and put 5 quick updates (remembering the ratio rule). Then do the same at noon, and again before bed. It's like vitamins, or exercise. Gotta do it. So just get over it. If you do not, then do the rest of us a fav and delete the dang thing off twitter. You are clogging up the works with your laziness.
6. Thou shalt not suck up This one is a double-edge sword. I love to be sucked up TO. Truly, nothing turns my muse's crank like opening up Facebook or twitter to a gushing new fan. But the sucking up thing is not you telling an author how much you enjoyed their latest book. I do that too, then I let it go. Allow me to open up and confess however, that I tried this, on a small scale, on twitter with a Big Time You All Know Her Publisher Person and with an agent. It was an unmitigated disaster, mainly because, you know, I got all "know it all" about craft beer which pissed one of them off (what? she named a macro beer as "craft." I can't have that sort of mis information floating around can I?). My point is this: make your contacts to the Bigs, shoot them the ocassional response to something they toss out in an obvious bid for responses. But don't suck up (or give them advice about What Not To Drink).
7. Thou shalt not post photos of thine body parts
I do not care how proud you are of that navel piercing, save it for your family members. Now, of course, those of you who make a living from posting body parts (cover models I'm talking about here) please, post away and be sure and tag me so I can study them. If you have an author persona that is aided by you showing off your piercings and tatts, do not let me stop you...if that is working. If you post them and can't seem to make connections with new readers you might reconsider your strategy. You are online as an author to do one thing: make money. If showing off your bits (even if you think it helps reflect what a bad a** you are) is not increasing your bottom line, consider backing away from that sort of post.
8. Thou shalt not expose thine politics
We all have opinions. We all take sides. We all either like what's happening with our government or we do not. We believe in God, or we do not. We believe life begins with a gleam in Papa's eye, or we do not. You are entitled, nay, encouraged in our modern political culture to take a side and talk about it, a lot. However, I can guarantee that whatever side you take, 50% of the people out there will disagree with you. If you have an author (or any other professional) persona on line, keep your politics away from it. My advice, for those who require a platform for their views on anything remotely controversial (i.e. "politics and religion") is to have a separate Actual Person Profile on Facebook or twitter that in no way can be linked to your author or professional fan page or profile. Consider it thusly: If you take a stand by simply re-posting someone's goofball meme about the Tea Party, or the liberal controlled media or whatever, you have in one click, alienated as many as half of your potential readers. Keep it neutral. Or pay the price in lost royalties.
9. Thou shalt not fib
If you state on your facebook page, your twitter feed or other source that you are "working all week on a new project, writing, editing, revising" or whatever and won't be "around" for the duration, you really ought not be messing around on said networks commenting, posting, and tweeting. Consider the potential reader base out there, with its vast options and opportunities to read books that you did NOT write as your boss. If you tell you boss you are out sick or your grandma died and you need a week off and then post photos from a semi orgy in Las Vegas or from your fishing trip in the Gulf of Mexico you'd better be posting pix of grandma's funeral really quick. Once something is ON the internet, it is ON the internet and can be FOUND again. It's called "screen shots." Your boss sees the photos, strokes his chin and tries to square that with your reason for absence...just like your potential readers and fans see your ranting about "needing time to work! Please just back off and let me work!" and then spot you cavorting around in groups, promoting or chatting....yeah. No.
10. Thou shalt not hook up
This is also a touchy subject as we all know stories about happily married folks who met "on line." However, venues like Facebook and twitter truly are not meant to be dating services. And frankly, no matter how private you might think are being, flirting online will bite you in the a**. Especially if you are TRYING to sell books. "But Liz!" you whine, ignoring commandment #1 again. "I write books with sex in them! I want to put out there how sexy I am!" And I say to you, IF you are trying to be an Author who makes real money from writing books you should carefully consider the image you are portraying of yourself. If you want to be seen as a sexpot who writes sex books, be my guest. But the majority of published and pre-published authors I know who do indeed write books with sex in them, are more about being taken seriously as a person who writes books, not as a person who claims that their "sexiness" makes their books that much better. Oh, and Commandment 10.5: don't assume anything about the people you are communicating with, good or bad. But realize that assumptions ARE being made about you, constantly. You are Now a Public Person, dear published author. Get over thinking you have anything like privacy left to you, unless you work hard to maintain it. It's tempting to spew everything about yourself online. Resist it. Trust me.
So there you have it! Liz's (and no one else's, as in "my opinions and observations and my blog" so if you disagree, feel free to spare me righteous indignation).
Love ya!
Liz
HOUSE RULES IS FREE! The Stewart Realty prequel novella you just GOTTA read to get a real glimpse at our man Jack Gordon, the uber-hero of this best selling series!
Get it free here...
Get it for just .99 here...
and here...
and here
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