Social Media: is it any good?

Sometimes I think I waste my time on pointless social media activity when I could be writing more of the next story. But then I think I need Facebook and Twitter 'cos my readers are there. How else will they ever get to know about me? Without paying out good money I don’t know any other way to grow a readership for my blog and books, and paying out goes against the grain. If I were 25 and had a whole career ahead of me, then spending hard-earned money on promotion would be a good idea. But I’m not 25, so it isn’t.

(Note to self: read Chris Syme’s post: “Taming the Social Media Beast.”)

Social media is often useful. How else would I know the single dads and lonely widowers that proliferate on Facebook are scammers doing what is known as “catfishing?”

OTOH, the constant stream of words can get irritating, and that is a good time to take a break from both Fb and Twitter. I know I’ll drift back, but the rest does me good, and I get more writing done. And see more of my other half!

If readers want to friend me, I welcome them, but I don’t beg for “likes.” Authors often send out requests for me to like their page or book or whatever, but if the person and their work is unknown to me, then I don’t respond. If I have read the author and truly like their books, then I do.

“50 people who love your books and tell their friends about them are worth a whole lot more than 500,000 fake followers somebody bought from a click farm in Bangladesh.” (Until I read Anne Allan’s blog, which I dip into every now and then, I never knew about click farms anywhere.)

I often doubt that social media is any good for selling books. Endless “buy my book” Tweets, or repeated quotes from your books do not sell books anymore. I’ve often read that my social media should be 20% marketing and 80% interesting, friendly stuff that’s useful to my readers. So I try sharing funny memes, inspirational author quotes, and pics of my dog Tim; I’ve shared grammar jokes, tales of my hols in rural France, and pics of Aidan Turner and Rafa, but I’ve no way of knowing how much good it does me.

I’m told that if you Tweet that a book is free or on sale, people notice. I once had 19,000 plus downloads on a free book, but that was back in 2012, and I don’t think that sort of rush happens anymore. But maybe I shall try it and see what happens. I must admit it is a while since I tried a "free" week.

Promote your title

Amazon are putting on a day in Newcastle and have offered me a free ticket. Naturally, I shall attend, but I cannot help wondering what it is all going to be about. 

I've been with them since my first venture in self-publishing way back in 2011 when I put Fair Border Bride with them. I had four books published by then, but for different reasons each of the two American publishers closed their doors and disappeared. Having got my rights back for the four titles, it seemed silly not to try and get them onto Amazon Kindle. How hard could it be? I seem to remember a steep learning curve, but I achieved my goal and since then the process has certainly become easier.

I've got out of the habit of approaching agents and publishers, but lately I've begun to wonder if it wouldn't be easier to let someone else take the strain of publication and marketing. My good friend Shirley Dickson has got a contract with Bookouture this week, and all congratulations to her, for I know she has worked hard on her two stories for such a long time. Obviously, her success stirred my thoughts on the subject. One hears that promo is down to the author these days unless you are one of the very top level authors - who probably don't need much promotion! 

The only way I know is using Twitter and Facebook, but those  seem to be in a process of change. Perhaps the Amazon day will tell me what I should be doing.

Boring Facebook

Disheartening to see how boring Facebook is these days. Old posts are being recycled so most of what comes up I've seen before and have no wish to see again. The link between Twitter and Facebook seems to have gone awry - or possibly it is me that gone awry!

 Most of twitter is adverts for books unless the hashtag topics are investigated and then interesting conversations can be found among the garbage. I wonder what is going to happen in the next few weeks. Will Fb/Twitter recover their
verve, or simpy dwindle into nothingness?

Just read the first Peter May Enzo files book, got right to the end and remembered I'd read it before. I think the only one I have not read is the third one, but if I read them in order, the whole plot might become clearer in my mind. So it is on to nmber 2.

Manic Twitter

Twitter went manic over Hillary Clinton last night, but then Twitter often goes manic over anything that smacks of a conspiracy. Does she have a double? Does she have pneumonia or Parkinsons, perhaps both. she is wearing a leg brace, her doctor carries an oxygen tank around in a giant handbag......that kind of thing.  It is both interesting and appalling to see the level of detail that some conspiracy theorists will go to in order to make a point and it is an object lesson in the perils of living a public life. These days, it seems nothing is sacred and nothing, absolutely nothing, is off limits as far as Twitter fans go.

Another point that strikes me - these so-called "celebrities" who populate Facebook and magazines like OK and Hello - Most of them I have never heard of and I don't feel that I'm losing out by this admission. They have a distressing tendency to look alike and wear the sort of clothes that scream "Look at me I'm almost naked" and these days that might be said for the men as well as the women.
If an attractive young person has to resort to this sort of tactic to get noticed, I think it is probably a sad reflection on society as a whole. But what do I know?

In case you think I have a headless dog, or worse, a dog that investigates the inside of litter bins, worry not. He is merely smelling the outside of the bin where no doubt numerous other dogs have peed in the preceding days and weeks. You'd think the accumulated whiff would be so pungent it would knock his head off, but apparently not.

Learning new tricks

Changes for a new, summery feel, done on a day where the temperature in our garden has reached 26 degrees. (I'll see how I feel about it on a cold, rainy day.) Even Tim the dog has laid around, curled up or sprawled out behind me, his back touching mine as I pulled some weeds, which is why I've posted a nice cool picture of the stream that was roaring down the valley in flood not so long ago.

I'm making a determined effort on using social media after attending out training day at Shepherd's Dene on Friday, focussing on on Facebook and Twitter. I've never been very sure of what I was doing with Twitter, but I have a better understanding  of it now. I'm busy searching out hashtags - it took me a long time to realise they existed so that like minded posts could be grouped together - and collecting @addresses. Heaven knows if it will make any difference, but I'll feel as if I've done my bit and made it worth Caroline's time teaching us all.

I'm also editing for the umpteenth time, and still making changes. It is amazing how much I can still sharpen the dialogue and tighten up the plot when I thought I'd "finished it" ages ago. I thought I was editing for typos and silly mistakes only. Of course, I still find quotation marks missing at one end of a sentence, and sometimes there's a full stop instead of a comma. Occasionally predictive text has gone and done something silly, so I've learned to look for that now. But the Dowager Queen is slowly emerging from this edit as a much more active character determined to save the Scots throne for her daughter Mary.

If anyone has comments on the new look of my blog I'd like to hear them. I think some people found the black background difficult. I hung onto it for so long because I always thought it showed off the photographs as nothing else could. I still think that, but recognise it is time for a change.

PR and voting

Been out with dog, inhaled lots of fresh air, tramped about 5,000 steps while he ran maybe three or four times that number, and came home before the rain started. Neat, as they say in slang speak. Also turned the thermostat up while dh wasn't looking. Rain and cold is so depressing, and we don't have a bottle of wine tonight as we're trying to cut down.

Done my PR for the day. I'm about to begin a read through of the Daisy story via print out. I fear there will be lots of little glitches, like heroes ageing two years in one day and heroines forgetting they have brown eyes. Probably lots more as well, but fear not, they will all be smoothed, removed, and brought into line before I attempt publication. I think I also need to up the mystery element of the plot. I've been having such fun with the romance I forgot the thievery.

Someone told me I was an established author the other day. I  can't tell you how that made me feel. Actually, yes I can. Quietly pleased, if still disbelieving; but a nice boost to the ego. Yes!

Writing is only half the story. The other half is promotion. It takes a lot of time and effort and there is often the feeling that it brings little actual reward in terms of sales. I have added to my collection of yahoo groups in the hope of furthering the word out there. I'd like to do more on Goodreads, but just don't seem to get the hang of how the site operates. Facebook is turning more and more to authors plugging their books, and ditto for Twitter.

But the world is strange. I notice people on FB calling on others to vote for Outlander in some competition that's running. Vote again, they cry. Vote anyway, even if you haven't seen it! which seems crazy to me. Imagine it - if one person wished to, they could vote again and again. How many votes could be registered in a day? 1,000? 2,000?  I hope online sites prohibit users from voting more than once, but I have the nasty suspicion they don't, or at least not always. But really - 2,000 votes from one person is/are meaningless, don't you think?

Since I'm on a small rant, I ought to add that I'm so tired of seeing pictures of Jamie Dornan, bearded or not.

Marketing blues

I wrote a great blog post, pressed the publish button and the darned thing disappeared. I hope this is not a sign of how my day is going to go. So I'll start again. Now my book is out in the big wide world, I'm contemplating how to get people to buy it. Marketing is the tool, say the Createspace experts.

Marketing, they tell me, is the process of communicating with the rest of the world and telling them about your book, making them want to buy it without doing any direct selling. Who is your target audience, they ask. Anyone who reads historical fiction, I say. Not good enough. Who are they? Where do they live? What age group, social class? What are their hobbies? Which newspapers do they read?

I shrug my shoulders. Haven't a clue. Anyone between the ages of 14 and 94 might read historical novels, and the only link between them is probably just that - they like historical fiction! (I had to pick numbers, but I'm sure there are people over 95 and under 14 who read historical fiction!)

There are lots of sites on the internet these days who do nothing but promote books. Some charge, and there are lots of warnings from authors who've paid hard-earned cash and been disappointed with the results. So I think I shall steer clear of such places. I'm not enamoured of the way Twitter is flooded overnight with promotional post which I assume originate in the USA. I whizz by them - as they come batches this is very easy to do. The general opinion seems to be that 1 tweet in 10 may mention your book as long as you are offering other contents on the other 9. That seems reasonable to me, and the same seems to operate on Facebook.

This time I've let everyone know (or I will have done shortly) that my book is available, and this is a first for me. I'm slowly investigating lists of promotional sites, and may yet come up with some goodies. I'll stick with my promotional yahoo groups and see what the results are like.

It's quite a game, this writing lark. I thought the writing was the hard part!

Books and the Internet

Still hammering away on edits and struggling to find a title that hasn't been used before. The trouble is almost everything has been used already! Especially if you want to use the word Queen. Too many books flooding the market these days - that's something  Amazon has done. Not single-handedly, I admit, but it certainly helped. (Just as it helped me - Yes, I know! Pot calling kettle and all that)

Viking Magic went free for two days just to see what the response was. I remember the first book I put up for free was Fair Border Bride and it rocketed up to something like 15,000 takers, mostly in the USA. That was five or six years ago,  So how did Viking Magic do over two days?

A total of 124 downloads and still the biggest freebie takers are in the US - 86. The UK = 26, Germany 7, France 1, Australia 1 and Canada 3. (It would be nice if a couple of those people wrote a nice review for me! The only one I've received for VM was written by someone who was definitely having a bad day.)

So, as a way of gathering readers, going free doesn't seem like the tool it was. Times change, and they change exceedingly fast in Internet world. Twitter and Facebook seem the most obvious alternatives, but even there, marketing persons seem to be taking over and plugging the same titles over and over again.

And this too shall pass away...

Where have all those interesting snippets gone from Facebook? There was a time when I saw something every day - at least one thing I didn't know or had never thought about. These days it seems to be all about videos of animals or people sounding off about American politics or politicians or silly "can you think of a city beginning with E and ending with A?" games. Perhaps I have picked up a lot of unintentional  "friends" by accepting "friends" who have 795 "friends." Maybe I should be doing a little judicious weeding, and then I may get some interesting posts again. .

I hope Twitter hasn't gone the same way while I've been on holiday. I haven't been Twittering - its gets too complicated about passwords sometimes to bother with everything. Plus which I haven't been on the internet  all that much - far too much to do out in the fresh air and sunshine. Everything is so small on a laptop! I can't wait to get back to my big screen.

The feeling is growing on me that Blogging is not as ... how shall I say? as interesting as it used to be. More and more people have stopped blogging and readers seem to be fading away too. They've probably all migrated to something else that I've never heard of so far. There is a feeling of change in the air, but is it mega or only the usual drift away for the holiday season? Who knows?

Facebook, Twitter and blogging

Crinan

Is it me, or does anyone else think that interest in blogs, Facebook and Twitter is dwindling? Facebook is less and less interesting but that is possibly because Facebook is narrowing down the posts that I see. Certainly the variety of posts is not there any more. If I click on something, I get more posts of a similar nature, and I'm now up to my nostrils in videos of cute animals doing cute things. Nothing wrong with them in and of themselves, but too many is just ... too many. Likewise the pics of cruelty to animals. I can do without those images haunting my dreams. If those pics help the animals by stirring the conscience of someone in America to help the poor creatures, then that's good, but there's nothing I can do from the UK.

Twitter seems to have been taken over by American authors advertising their books. Perhaps my choice of followers has something  so with it. I haven't exactly been active in seeking a wide variety of Twitterers. When someone follows me, I usually follow back, so I suppose I can only blame myself there. Must widen my circle of interest.

Blogs I used to follow seem to have tipped over into oblivion, with no posts going up for the last few months. There are less followers coming to my blog, but that might be because the blog posts are linked to both Facebook and Twitter. If people read the blogs on either of them, I don't see any record of it back on my blog. So I could be read by more and more people and not know it. Or I could be read by fewer and fewer people, and be aware of it. How can I be sure which is really going on? Anyone know?

Twitter and Downton

Sometimes I feel things are getting out of hand. I have 134 followers on Twitter, yet I see streams of posts from people I  don't know, and have no interest in. Consequently I whizz down the lists looking for the icon of those I do know and am interested in. If it goes on like this, using Twitter will soon be a complete waste of time.

Yahoo gets no better. I'm on two Facebook groups now, and think I'd do well to come off the yahoo groups altogether. I'm almost at the end of the most recent edit on To Capture a Queen and I've been thinking it is time to re-vamp the blog pages that display my books. Surely I could make them more interesting than they are? I suppose this is where being an ex-copywriter or a journalist pays dividends and ex-library managers fall by the wayside. I have been exploring new ways of promoting my books but have not found anything startling except hordes of people like myself! Everyone, but everyone is writing a book these days!

At home, I'm starting the Big Clean, as we expect guests from the other side of the world in a few days time. One of them dislikes dogs, ("I prefer my animals rare and on a plate") and the other is allergic to them, so there are going to be happy times ahead. No doubt Tim and I will be relegated to the proverbial doghouse, but hey! he lives here! So, the Hoover (or should I now say the Dyson?) is creeping out of the cupboard, the Dettol impregnated wipes are standing by waiting to be opened, and the lavender scented spray is on the bookcase in my study. This is where a house the size of Highclere Castle comes in handy, for it must contain rooms where no dog has ever got his nose over the threshold.

I mention Highclere because I understand the new series of Downton is about ready to roll across our TV screens. I wonder if it will be as gripping as the previous episodes? Actually, some of them were not gripping. I could have dispensed with the long-drawn out scenes of Bates in prison looking like no woman's romantic dream. Instead it would have been entertaining to watch Sybil getting to grips with life as the chauffeur's wife in Dublin. Lady Mary, of course, will be seeking another spouse, but now her blue-eyed husband is dead (darn - I've forgotten his name!) who will inherit Downton? The chauffeur's child, I suppose. so who he marries next is going to be of great interest to the Crawley family. The simplest thing would be if he marries Lady Mary! They're not related by blood, so.....is it possible?

Eating Green Strawberries

We are having a running battle with our six month old puppy who, crafty and cunning as he is, persists in eating green strawberries. Apart from the fact that they will probably give him an upset tum, we want the strawberries to ripen so we can eat them with our breakfast cereal every day. As fast as we tell him No! he gobbles another one.

The funny thing is I don't remember anything like this with the Dalmatian bitch I owned many years ago. Perhaps males are just more trouble? He is due at the vet's for the big C op tomorrow, which may calm him down but I'm not banking on it. I'll feel guilty as hell afterwards when he looks at me as if to say What did I do that was so wrong?

I have reading stacking up on me at the moment. I completed Goddard's excellent Out of the Sun late last night, and have Write a Blockbuster and Book Proposals awaiting my attention. I don't suppose they'll say anything startling and new, but I live in hope, and refreshing the memory on all the salient points can never be a bad thing. I have the sneaky feeling that Facebook and Twitter are losing out to something else now, but I don't know what/where that something else is. I don't find the snippets as interesting as I used to, and the links to interesting articles seem to have dwindled to nothing. Indie Book Promoter has single-handedly taken over Twitter - maybe I'll have to look for some new people to follow.

The submission thing

After all my concentrated efforts on editing my first few chapters, I think I'm ready to send off to an agent. Again. The last agent I applied to on 30th January has yet to respond, so I guess that's dead and gone. Looking around the agent listings over the last few days, I notice  many of them now ask for e-mail submissions. Not only that, they have prepared online forms  . Somehow I find these more daunting than the old cover letter, synopsis and three chapters routine. OTOH, it is very clear what they want, which helps, and probably only seems strange because it is new.

I've been trying to discover which agent actually wants historical fiction and pin-pointed one or two who come across well on Twitter - or at least, they come across in a way I like. Not all do, of course. It is interesting to think that agents are - to use that dreadful American expression - showcasing themselves by being on Twitter. I wonder if they think of it in that way? Balancing that and the information they give out on their websites, I have made my choice.

Not all want the historical stuff, unless it creeps under the radar as literary or commercial fiction. I find it difficult to claim that I write literary anything - that is for others to decide. But I think I can claim the commercial tag. Maybe even women's fiction, though perhaps that is too limiting. I'd like to think both sexes would read my book. There are lots of male characters to hold their attention, but there are also two very strong women who have a large part to play in the storyline. The male reaction to having women in any sort of power role back then was so contrary to the general run of things, that it makes for a very interesting time for novelists.
Ah well, off to do that submission thing. Wish me luck!

Wasting Time

What's your favourite way of wasting time?
This leads me to a list of things, such as walking on crisp autumn leaves in the green spring woods with bluebells on one side and starry white garlic flowers on the other, or lying on the sofa watching the clouds drift by my window. Soft fluffy white clouds, and big dark grey thunder clouds, all billowing into weird shapes or wisping into nothingness as the suns heats the water vapour.

Others will say playing with Facebook and Twitter, watching tv, reading a book. Heavens! When did reading a book become a time-wasting exercise? In fact, none of these things are really time-wasting. Walking outdoors activates the blood, muscles and wakes the aesthetic sense of pleasure at the beauty of nature. Watching clouds relaxes the tired mind, and then begins to wake the creative part of the brain as the clouds morph into white rabbits or sailing ships. Facebook - it's rare I use Facebook and fail to discover at least one item of interest among all the dross. (Personally I wish people wouldn't put up pictures of food because so often they look like something the dog's brought up. Yes, I know, I put two pictures of food up last summer - but the food did not look like the dog's dinner! A French chef cannot possibly - no, scratch that, I have seen French chefs produce something  that reminded me of the proverbial.....)

Twitter is the same as FB. There's always at least one snippet that catches my interest and leads me onto to whole articles I enjoy. What frustrates me about Twitter is the snippets of interesting conversation between people I don't know - so I never discover the beginning, or sometimes the end, of the conversation. I'm left full of curiosity!

As a writer, (OK, an aspiring writer) I don't think time is ever wasted. Standing around watching other people can be rewarding even if you do get seriously cold feet, as I did yesterday watching more confident people harness Sparky and Bumper. To be truthful, my feet were the only warm part of me, thanks to my trusty Scarpa hiking boots and thick socks. The rest of me was freezing, but the interplay of action was interesting and will no doubt be transferred into a book somewhere down the line. That's the thing with authors - everything, absolutely everything, can be used at some point in a novel. so there's no such thing as wasting time.

Christmas & Social Media

It's time Christmas was gone. We're at the boring stage now - soggy wet weather, wind and rain, temperature around 5 degrees C. Fridge full of leftovers or odd scraps that won't make anything else. People getting crabby with too much food, too much wine and not enough exercise. TV mostly rubbish aimed primarily at kids.

Did my best. Can't help or change the weather, but regulated my intake of food and wine, took a walk every day. Yesterday stopped a young dog from plunging into swollen stream to reach young owners searching for him - the chances of being swept out into the nearby river were pretty high.

Did some work every day, too. Going back to Twitter this morning, noticed how several people keep trying to stop authors promoting their books. Don't understand their logic when they promote a) themselves b) their own authors and c)what they had for breakfast lunch and dinner. That's interesting? To whom? The truth is that everyone on Twitter is promoting something, even if it is only themselves. The urge to join in is there, and if  a book is the only thing you have to talk about, then why not? Nobody is forced to read what comes up on Twitter. I skip a lot of posts to find the ones that hold some interest for me. Live and let live, I say.

Social media and writers

I’ve noticed lately that interaction via my blog seems less than it used to be. I get the nasty feeling that my posts are boring the pants off everyone. Feedback via Comments grows less and less, possibly because the word verification thingy is annoying and frustrating – I know I find it so on other blogs and often give up without getting my comment to “go” through. And I'm aware that going to Australia for six weeks meant my blog deviated from the usual writing based topics - perhaps that turned people away.

There’s another suspicion I have though; that other media are attracting people away from blogs in general. Not only Facebook and Twitter, but mysterious things called Pinterest and Tumblr. I have no idea what they are and I’m not about to find out. It is easy enough to waste time on FB and T without joining more things! If this is the reason, it is something I cannot change.

 Writing has always been my main interest blogwise, though sometimes I feel like blowing off steam about one thing or another. Or I’ll record something that I may want to come back to at a later date – blogs are handy vehicles for that. But there’s only so much you can say about writing without repeating yourself.

That’s when I go to Twitter in the hope of picking up some item of interest.
I can scroll through a lot of posts and pick out what I’m interested in and ignore the rest. That may sound rude, but as people follow me, I feel obliged to follow back – it seems only courteous – which means I get loads of tweets from people I don’t know about things I’m not interested in.
But turn it the other way about and it also means there are a lot of people seeing whatever I choose to put out. But there’s the difficulty - as far as Tweeting goes, I’ve never really got the hang of it. How to say something engaging and witty in 140 characters defeats me, but others seem to find it no problem at all. I sit and stare at the screen but nothing comes to mind. I'd never make an advertising person!

 Facebook seems easier. I actually have an occasional conversation there with people I know or have come to know. The only person I know who doesn’t have a FB page is my other half, but he may yet be persuaded. They say it is the most likely place readers will look for new reading material, so that seems a good enough reason to stay there. If forced to choose, I’d opt for my blog and Facebook.

 

Twitter type woes

Have you ever wondered how successful your blog is? If anyone every reads it? There's a link that grades your website or blog here: http://websitegrader.com/

Naworth, sw corner of the present day garden

PR is a huge part of an aspiring author's life these days, and can easily take up more time than actually writing if you subscrbe to Twitter and Facebook and the many other things that I've heard of in a vague sort of way but haven't investigated because if I did I'd never get any writing done. And I don't have a full-time (nor even a part time) job to absorb most of my waking hours! Pity the poor writer who does.
Is it really necessary? Must I understand RSS Graffiti, Bebo and Good Reads to be a success? I gave up on MySpace a long time ago, but it seems there a many others springing up to take its place. Sometimes Facebook is fun, and its a good way of keeping in touch with other writers. I enjoy doing my blog. But that's it for me. If my stories aren't good enough to stand on their own two flat little feet, then so be it.