Documents of Tabat: Pests of Tabat

Yesterday I spent a pleasant chunk of time talking to the Clarion West 2013 students, along with Django Wexler. Django and I were the “mystery muses,” a Friday feature for the CW students where people come in to chat about a specific aspect of the writerly life. Django spoke well to the experience of having one’s first major book come out, since his book (which I have read and heartily recommend) The Thousand Names just came out. He let us all know (to mass disappointment) that it doesn’t lead to being booked on the Leno or Daily Show or lavish book tours, though he did get to go to ComicCon.

I decided to talk about self-promotion and career building, since that’s advice I didn’t get a lot of while at Clarion West myself. And I came up with nine maxims, but lost that index card so I have an incomplete list. Maybe the students can chime in to tell me what I’ve forgotten.

1. Writing always comes first. Self-promotion can become a form of procrastination, particularly if you’re playing on Facebook or Twitter while pretending it’s all in the name of self-promotion. Having the biggest Twitter following in the world won’t help you unless you’ve actually got something to promote.
2. Be discoverable. One of the questions that always comes up in my Building an Online Presence for Writers class is whether it’s mandatory for a writer to have a social media presence and blog and all that. The answer is no, (though it’s helpful in these days, when the burden of promotion falls increasingly on the writer him or herself.) But you do need a way for someone to find you if they liked a story and want to contact you. That may be a simple static webpage where you maintain a list of your publications. It may be a full blown blog. Or it might be a social media presence (although I think this approach is not the best, because people may not be on Twitter or Tumblr or Facebook or whatever network you’ve chosen).
3. Don’t oversell. We’ve all unfriended or stopped following people because of the unrelenting way they push their books. Out of five Tweets (or blog posts, or FB posts, or whatever), only one should be about selling stuff. The others can be kitten pictures, advice, funny sayings, whatever (one easy way to fill this quota is to promote other people), but make it something that people are interested in.
4. Don’t be a jackass. It’s a small world and word gets around when you behave badly. Search on “authors behaving badly” if you want some examples. Professionality is important, although sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of in our charming, silly, opinionated genre. Don’t make arguing on the Internet another form of procrastination.
5. Jealousy is okay. We all experience it. Use it as motivation for writing. Don’t put it on the Internet. Find one person you can trust and use them as your sounding board when you absolutely have to say those snarky things about an award or kudos bestowed unjustly.
6. Say thanks. When someone does something kind like getting you invited to an anthology, blurbing your book, whatever, don’t assume it’s your due because you’re a genius. We all think we’re geniuses. SF is full of people paying it forward, but they’re more likely to do so for gracious people.
7. Be kind to yourself. Writers are so good at beating ourselves up, at feeling guilty for not doing X or achieving Y. Don’t do that. Set goals but rather than punishing yourself for not meeting them, reward yourself when you do hit that word count. You are the person with the most to gain from being kind to you, so do at least one nice thing for yourself each day, whether it’s taking time for some activity you enjoy or giving yourself some small present.
8. Don’t be a jackass. It’s a point worth repeating.

Some other things that got mentioned:

• Find someone who is where you want to be a few years down the line and look to see what they’re doing, using their example to guide your actions.
• Early on, you don’t need to go to conventions unless they’re something you enjoy for their own sake. If you do go, participate. If you can’t be on panels, try volunteering, which is a great way to meet people and network.
• Writing process differs from person to person. Try different strategies and when you find something that works for you, do it, do it, do it.
• For most of us, it’s easier to write if you get at least a few words in each day.
• It is often skill in rewriting that differentiates the professional-level writer from the almost-but-not-quite-there.

And here’s something I didn’t mention, but which has come up a lot recently, as to what to blog about, both in terms of finding something interesting and not spending too much time on it: excerpts of what you’re working on both fulfills those terms and encourages you to get some words out.

Enjoy this advice for writers and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.

As you may know from the five bajillion posts and tweets and updates and god know what all else, I just had a book come out. I tried to have a somewhat coherent, or at least well-documented, promotion battle plan. Some stuff worked, some things worked better than others, and some stuff I dropped the ball on.

Things I did included:

• Making jewelry: Anyone following the blog has seen the jewelry based on the interior art that Mark W. Tripp and I put together. They turned out beautifully and were a lot of fun to make. I’ve used those pieces as giveaways at the book launch post, as well as various web giveaways, and people seem to like them. I’ve been able to post some pictures of people wearing those, and that’s been fun as well. I made sure the pieces I handed out at WorldCon had chains with them, so people could put them on immediately and many did. I also made special versions for blurbers and other people involved with the book design.
• Sending out an email: I sent out an email listing what people could do to promote Near + Far. I sent it to friends, fans, fellow writers, anyone I thought might be interested, and tried not to be too spammy about it, including a way they could remove themselves from my mailing list.
• Contacting book bloggers and reviewers: I contacted a number of people, making my list simply by poking around on popular spec fic sites to look at their blogrolls. I’d intended to set up a blog tour, but didn’t get my act together on that, so there was no organized effort along those lines, but I did do a number of interviews.
• Getting stories out there in both audio and print form: Figuring that samples of my work were one of the best ways to intrigue people, I sent out a lot of stories, including a number of audio reprints. I made sure that in the bio statements for each of these I mentioned the new book.
• Goodreads giveaway: I set up a Goodreads giveaway, following the excellent suggestions Emily Chand laid out in How to Run a Goodreads Giveaway with Maximal Results. The giveaway is currently on its last day, with 752 people requesting it, which seems like a good result, particularly since a third to half of them have added it to their to-read list.
• Blog giveaway: I gave away three pieces of jewelry on the blog, and had about a hundred entries all together. In retrospect, I might follow the poilicy mentioned in the Goodreads piece and just distribute one thing at a time, but next week I’ll be doing a sticker giveaway with stickers from the interior art.

So what’s in store for this week? Well, mostly preparing for a trip to the Baltimore Book Festival. I’ll be taking some stickers and jewelry along with me, but my focus is selling books. Beyond that, I’m continuing to send fiction out (got six pieces circulating over the weekend), preparing for another Goodreads giveaway, the aforementioned sticker giveaway, and trying a giveaway on Shelfari as well.

What all have I neglected? I’m still struggling with the mobile app intended to accompany the book, for one. I’d hoped to have more audio available, but still need to work on recording that (along with some other pieces I’ve promised to narrate). Overall, I’d give myself a solid B for my efforts, but I’ve made plenty of notes of things to do better next time.