This question arose today from a conversation with Isaac Marion. We were chatting about incessant prodding done by agents, marketers, social media experts, hungry raccoons pretending to be social media experts, and a slew of other people who think they know what kind of an online behavior leads to better book sales. As you have guessed, this prodding is aimed at writers. Its message is simple. "Sprinkle your marvelous thoughts online in a liberal layer, daily, smear it on so thick that others will sink into oblivion." Now, to decode this "simple" message, here is what they mean. Blog regularly, tweet regularly, Facebook regularly, fart regularly (and, preferably, artistically). And here is why this makes me angry.
Read MoreWhere to upload your self-published book
Jeremy Gratton, a fellow writer, asked me to make a list of all places where I upload my self-published books once they're ready. Ready for reading, that is. Reading, buying, being used as a doorstopper. Well, I suppose not a doorstopper, because we're talking mostly about digital books here, unless you want to crush your Kindle. Anyway, last year I've written a blog post about navigating self-publishing platforms, but it's a bit outdated, so I suppose a new post is due. On where you put up your glorious baby, your bloodied and checkered and dappled with tears tremolo of a soul, your all and everything and precious and...yeah, I know, I know. But we all feel that way about our books, don't we? I know I do.
Well then. Where the hell do you put it online after everything is said and done? (Or, rather, written and edited and proofread and formatted and stuff?)
On the shiny coruscated Internets, that's where.
Read MoreDealing with online trolls
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.
Read MoreWriter's online presence
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.
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