To blog or not to blog? That is the question, and the answer is obviously you have to blog. What are you going to say though?
I should note that I do all of these things very poorly, due to being a bit of a social media disaster zone. That doesn’t mean it’s not good advice, it’s just not for me. I have no excuse. I’m just chronically Northern Irish and bigging myself up makes me feel like the biggest knob IN THE WORLD.
1: Your WIP
Tell your readers what is coming next! They follow you, I would assume they want to know more about your upcoming stuff. What are you working on? What’s coming next? Do you love it or are you chewing your nails down to the nub with nerves? All of that can work to keep your followers engaged and interested in your work in the long gap between release dates.
I’ve seen other authors do ‘My favorite sentence of the day’ and ‘My biggest typo!’, as well as little snippets about what the characters are like in their head. It works well.
Do I do it… No. I am a fragile flower, my friends, and my WIPs are kept hidden away like baby pigeons. If I talk too much about them my entire brain seizes up, decides it hates this idea, and refuses to look at it for a long time.
2: Your Process, darling!
People are always interested in the actual physical nuts and bolts of where and how you write. Are you a chiropractor’s nightmare, contorted into weird positions on a variety of not-designed-for-writing furniture? Or do you write with discipline and good posture in a writing nook? Are you a 300 words here and there throughout the day, or do you wake up and write 2301 precisely before dawn?
I’ve seen people post pictures of their space, do writing races where they invite people to join then in getting the words down, and even share any writing rituals they might have. Like our first point this is just a good way to keep people interested in what you’re doing between books. It also proves that you are writing and aren’t just sitting at home eating sweeties and cupcakes!
Do not overshare! I knew an author once who confessed in a workshop that he wrote with his flies open, so that if he needed to wee at any point it would minimise disruption of his writing flow. I’ve never been able to talk to him since without the thought ‘you write with your flies open!’ drifting through my brain.
3: A Carefully Curated Brand!
Establish what people think of when they think of you online. Then play into it. Are you sugar and spice, all cupcakes and squee? Show people that. If you’re all darkness and skulls, share stuff about forensics and burial traditions from around the world.
The drawback of this is that you’re stuck with it. Once you become A.N. Goth Author you don’t really get to veer off too many times without people getting a bit squinty at you.
I don’t do this. It doesn’t work for me as an author because my books tend to cover a lot of stuff, from comparatively sweet relationships to somewhat graphic violence in a bar fight. I am also kind of a hummingbird in what interests me, so I’d be stymied if I was all ‘is this TA Mooret©’?
My ‘author face’ is pretty much my day to day face. It’s a little bit curated in that…I don’t know, really. I swear less, I know that. Mostly there’s just not as much general chaff as there is in my in-person interactions. Genuinely, ask anyone who’s met me in the flesh how long it can take me to get to the point about stuff.
4: Slice of Life
Tell people about what you do and where you life. This is, by default, what I tend to settle on. People who are in my group probably know more than they ever wanted about a small market town in Northern Ireland. To be honest, they all know where I live at this point and I am Very Grateful than none of them have been weird about it. Rhys Ford does keep hitting me on the nose with a rolled up newspaper about my tendency to just let every app ever access my location at all times.
Anyhow, if you’re doing this what you need to do is NOT JUST TELL PEOPLE ABOUT YOUR DAY. Like, some of that, but it still has to be interesting to people. No one really wants to know that, for the fourth day running, you ate soup for the lunch.
It’s best-foot-forward, cocktail party you. The you that tells entertaining stories about how you fell into the road and were rescued by two old men. Not the you that explains in detail your dreams (I admit, I did do this…but in it C.S. Poe and I were steampunk superheroes at war with a cyborg Queen Victoria who was all spider tentacles under her dress and Poe had a PARROT? It was a good dream!).
But I digress (and still, less chaff than if we were in the same room!), you want to be personable and invite people into your day-to-day life, but not the boring parts. For example, I have taken the train many times over the years but I only tell people about the time that someone pushed me off the train. That’s where the drama lives!
So, there you go. Some free marketing advice from the person who will probably not take any of her own. I’ve got to write some and then pack an appropriate amount of underwear for a trip to Paris…because I really cannot take my own advice and not overshare!