July 2, 2015

The social media engage/disengage battle

Yesterday I caught myself on noticing how "I'll just check my phone real quick" turned into 30 minutes of lost time. I'm usually pretty diligent about sticking to the routine of DO NOT ENGAGE ONLINE UNTIL YOUR WORK IS DONE, but I'm only human so I slip. For some reason this particular slip really got under my skin. It was evening and I was so tired that I had no energy to exercise or to meditate. My day was packed and I hoped to combine the two into one biking session with my eyes closed. It didn't happen. I got upset. As a result, I didn't sleep well.

Meditating clears my mind. Without it it's like a bee drunk on vodka mixed with beer, buzzing around and around and around my skull until I want to drive my head through the wall and be no more (in other words, slide down the wall into a brainless bloody morass). I thought checking my phone would only take a few minutes. Ha ha ha. When I glanced at the clock, I nearly dropped it. It wasn't a few minutes like I thought it would be. It was 30 fucking minutes. I have robbed myself of exercise, of mediation, and of a good night's sleep. So today, as I'm typing this, I'm not even going to look at what's happening on the sparkling internets until this post is done.

September 15, 2014

Catering to your true fans

by Ksenia Anske

Hey, indie writers? This is what marketing your self-published books is about. It's about catering to your true fans, even if that might upset some people. As you're aware, I'm doing a cleaning spree on Twitter, unfollowing most accounts, so I'm left only with about 2K of those that I really want to follow and read. After being on Twitter for almost 5 years, it's not easy. In fact, it's ruffling some feathers, as you might have seen in the comments to this post about dealing with online trolls.

Why am I doing it?

I'm doing it to cater to my true fans. I used to be afraid to say this word, "fans." It felt odd. Weird. Exhilarating, and yet still weird. Me, having fans? How could I? I'm a nobody. It felt somehow self-serving and egoistic by saying it. Slowly, I've gotten used to the idea that I do have fans. And they are true fans, fans who send me money when they themselves are struggling financially. Fans who support me in my darkest moments, dragging me out of my gloomy murderous moods and spanking my ass to get me back to writing. Fans who are patiently waiting for my next book to be published, who have already read every single draft of that book and have pre-ordered it and donated me more money on top of it. Fans who have sent me messages, saying they will travel to my first book reading this Friday, even though they don't live in Seattle.

September 13, 2014

Dealing with online trolls

by Ksenia Anske

Well, today was interesting. I woke up and saw a tweet in my Hootsuite thingy (I use it to manage my Twitter account) from a woman whom I have unfollowed a few days ago in my Twitter cleaning spree. She mentioned me to another person, a man whom I have unfollowed yesterday (and who bitched me out, and to whom I was nice in return, trying to give him love). She called me a scammer, and she said that I begged my followers for money to go to Russia to see my sick mom, and that they gave it to me. It's true that people gave me money, here is that blog post, but I didn't beg. My followers ASKED ME if they could help. And I set up a way for them to do it.

Both of these people said various things to me that are not even very interesting to recall here.

Now, I am a very calm person.

In fact, since about 5 years ago I wanted to kill myself and didn't, I became very calm. Like, very very calm. Calm like a chilled fucking oyster. But this has sent my blood boiling.

September 3, 2014

Some social media lessons for writers

by Ksenia Anske

I've been doing something crazy these last few weeks. I've been cleaning up my Twitter, like, REALLY cleaning it up. If you have followed me on social media from the very beginning, you will recall that I have started out from nearly nothing, have built up quite an audience, and then have slowed down. I've been doing this for 10+ years (social media), so I know the automation tools and the various ways of "boosting" your numbers for show. I've been guilty of doing it for myself. Hey, it's so awesome watching your Twitter followers grow! And even cooler to brag about it to others, exaggerating a little, like, oh yeah, I have almost 70K followers on Twitter. Then give that nonchalant look like I don't care. So vain, ugh, I want to puke. I have even written a blog post on how to grow your Twitter numbers and what not to do on Twitter. Over time I have realized that these numbers don't do me any good. They don't exactly equal book sales. Plus, I'm not being honest with people. And being a writer is all about ripping off your skin and showing raw heart underneath.

So. I have decided.

FUCK NUMBERS.

August 2, 2014

Writer's online presence

by Ksenia Anske

Marcelle Liemant asked: "You are a marvelous blogger and you have a very distinctive presence in everything you do online. I was just wondering how you inject so much of your personality into your blog posts/tweets etc. It's actually not such an easy thing to achieve!"

I am? Really? REALLY?? Thank you, darling, thank you! Now, what a wonderful question, and what an easy answer I have for you. You will be tittering with silly laughter. Notice one thing we're talking about here.

Writer's online presence.

Online presence.

Presence.

There you go. This is the magic word.

I actually get asked this quite a lot and I can't remember the last time I answered it or blogged about it, so you're lucky to get a fresh perspective (I expect freshly baked cookies for that). People assume there is a magic pill for everything, or they can get a magic wand and wave it and... KABAM! ...glittery shit will start flying in all directions and suddenly everyone will be loving them and buying all their books and writing them 5-star reviews and sending them life-size chocolate ponies (not that I have anything against that, I don't want to hold you back if you have a pony for me). Well, sadly, it doesn't work like that at all. What people see as glittery and shiny and alluring and seductive hasn't become that overnight. It was years in the making, and those years were riddled with cloying empty efforts and mistakes and episodes of guile and guilt and blood welling out of the writer's eyes and ears and every single pore. Only...nobody's got to see it. Well, a few people did, the very first ones who stumbled upon said writer, looked down upon her misery, and sauntered on.