Enid Blyton - a thoroughly modern writer

(Duplicated from my Heartsong blog today.)

Recently, I had the chance to go to Newcastle's Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children's Books. I had some time to kill in the morning so I had a lengthy browse of the fascinating and atmospheric Enid Blyton exhibition. Now, much has been discussed about the aspects of her books which today offend us as sexist, racist and simply Not On. And indeed, I spotted a book title which I won't even repeat here, though I'm sure at the time there were no problematic connotations at all.

Leaving all that aside, however, there was something that struck me as very modern. Blyton worked damn hard to promote her books, reaching out to engage with her readers. For example, she produced her own magazine, in which she advertised and promoted her own books. When I read that, and the information abut how industrious she was, and how much time she spent answering her vast piles of fanmail, it struck me that she might have been very at home engaging with her readers through social media.

So, don't let it be said that it's only modern writers who have to help promote their books. Enid Blyton worked her socks off, with both the writing and the promoting.

Yes, btw, that photo is not the right way up. Life is far too short to care. I have writing and promoting to do...

DEAR CRABBIT: market the author or the book

Dear Crabbit
We had a brief Twitter exchange this evening. I asked: " Do you recommend focusing on marketing the writer...or the book? "

A bit more info: for the past 2-3 years, I've been blogging. Firstly as a way of promoting my (very) part-time coaching practice (I have a full time day job as well), and latterly as a way of promoting my writing (I've had a small paid writing gig with PaleoDietNews.com for the past few months).

Long story short....I now want to focus on promoting my writing. I'm going to convert my main site (cormackcarr.com) into an "author" site, and am going to set up two other blogs. One will focus on my coaching/careers/personal effectiveness writing....the other on food/health/fitness. Those are the two areas that my writing to date has tended to cluster around.

My logic (such as it is!) is that I can then promote the two blogs to their respective niche areas, backlinking to my author site (which will also have backlinks to any guest posting and article writing I do) and which will focus more on me...so that there's scope for me to develop my writing in other directions without being tied down.

Consequently, I suspect I'll "market" my blog writing sites, and just let the author site be my online "home".
Thoughts?

For what it's worth (and I regard myself more as an experienced bumbling opportunist than a marketing strategist,) I think you are doing the right thing. I think those of us who have several different strands to our work, with different (but sometimes overlapping) audiences, have to keep an eye on what we're doing and adapt as we go.

A year ago, I had my new website designed. My thinking was: some people will come looking for me because they've heard of my children's books (and of those, some will be looking for my brain books and others my teenage novels and yet others my younger fiction, or they may want a school event) and others will come because they've heard of my advice for writers. But I'd like each group to know about the other areas of my work. On the other hand, I want them to know exactly where they are and not struggle to find what they are looking for. So, my website has three sections - "rooms" - and all of them link to each other, except that when you're in the children's area you cannot directly get to the more grown-up area designed for writers. (Though you can get directly from the writers' area to the children's area.)

The rules I feel we (and the questioner) should follow are:

• We need to be easy to find, when people know they want to find us. So, someone looking for Cormack's coaching should get to it immediately; ditto for someone looking for his writing. They should not have to go searching and make many clicks.
• We should be possible to find even when people don't know they are looking for us. So, someone looking for particular coaching should ideally come across Cormack's coaching site; and when someone is looking for a writer of the sort of books he writes they should be able to find him. (This is harder to achieve and requires good SEO and google-friendly content, but good linking between sites and other sites is helpful here.)
• When someone comes to one part of our internet presence, it should be easy for them to see that there are other parts, and to feel inclined to browse.

As to the fundamental question of marketing the writer or the book: I'm a writer. I write books. I write lots of different sorts of books but they are all me. They need me. I need them. We are undisentanglable. So, I don't see an either/or situation here.

If you are marketing your book, you are even more a part of the marketing than if a publisher markets your book. You become part of the marketing, inevitably. A lot of books are bought (or not bought) nowadays because of how a reader feels about the writer. I have absolutely no statistics for that but I feel it deeply, from anecdote and instinct. I've done it myself.

Books are not beans. They hold emotions and histories that are not explicit. Their author is somehow part of that, and this is especially true as soon as we begin to talk about our books. Those authors who wish to separate author from book and distance themselves from how their books reach and touch readers are entitled to try to do so and some will succeed more than others. But I don't believe this is what you (the questioner) want and it's not what I want.

So, books and their authors, music and its composers, art and its creators, are best considered as parts of the whole. And if an author has many separate strands of creation, those strands are, it seems to me, best given separate definition and yet strongly linked.

I don't think you can take the book out of the author or the author out of the book.

Agree? Disagree? Specific exceptions? Anything to add?

[Edited to add: although it's gone off-topic, please see the comments below for a useful discussion about fake accounts to review one's own work. This whole topic makes me feel sick. But I'm grateful to Philip for raising it, especially since there's been discussion about it ever since a certain panel on a certain crime-writing festival...]

The 90/10 promotion rule: what to do with the 10%?

I said a while ago that I favour the 90/10 rule for self-promotion on social media. In other words, if you spend 90% of your time there being generous - offering my three pillars of Friendship, Information and/or Entertainment - people will allow you to spend the other 10% promoting yourself, whether that means mentioning that you have a book out or telling your friends about a nice review, or whatever.

But, what can we do with that 10%? In other words, do I have any suggestions for using Twitter to promote your book without bugging the hell out of people? (And please see How Much Promotion is Too Much for that thorny topic.)

Non-writers, please turn away now. You don't want to know any of this. OK? You go to Twitter to have fun and sometimes chat to writers. You do not go there to be sold to. And this, indeed, is the one question all writers should ask each other before they do any self-promotion:

Is there a single person anywhere on Twitter who has gone there wanting to be sold to? NO. So be very very careful how you do it.

But here's what you might do during that 10% time. I haven't done all these things but I know others who have.

• In the lead up to publication, generate excitement by occasionally mentioning publication date or tweeting that you've seen the cover (attach a pic) or something.
• If you are doing a blog tour, once (or at most three times) a day, tweet the link to where you are that day. This is a favour to your blog host as much as anything.
• You could tweet short quotes from your book.
• Consider setting aside one day a week to tweet about your book. For example, Catherine Ryan Howard did #MousetrappedMondays. (For her book Mousetrapped, obvs.)
• If your book has an underlying theme, find the organisations linked to that theme, and get into conversation with them, or about the theme with other interested users.
• CAREFULLY (ie modestly) tweet when you find a review or any other mention of your book.
• Tweet if you get a bad review, too - this shows you as a self-effacing person who can laugh at herself. (Don't be bitter about it and do avoid encouraging anger on your behalf.)
• You could have a Twitter party on launch day. It's cheap and you don't need to dress up! Or buy drinks for anyone...
• Link to any articles you write, on your own blog or anywhere else.
• You could (if you can keep it up) open a Twitter account as one of your characters and tweet in character. However, there's no point unless your character has some followers, so you need to plan this in advance.
• Advertise any events you are doing.
• Have a giveaway or advertise a competition - if you need more space to provide details, explain in a blog post and link to that. Everyone likes a giveaway. Make the deadline really short because otherwise people won't buy the book in case they win it...

Anyone else have any good ideas?

And never forget - 10%.

And be nice :)

How much promotion is too much?

I was asked this on Twitter the other day. The reason the conversation arose is that a successful writer has been bugging the pants off people on Twitter. (Please, if you know who I mean, do NOT identify him on my blog. I have no desire at all to embarrass the poor chap. Besides, I hear there are more than one bug... Erm, person who bugs.)

Poor chap? Hang on! His book has done fantabulously well, so surely his bugging-people-on-Twitter strategy worked? Why should he feel any embarrassment?

Let me tackle this, before I move on to talk about how much promotion is too much.

First, we have no idea at all whether the bugging strategy worked. We have no idea if it was even a strategy. For all I know, he was just being over-excited. Importantly, we also have no idea whether he'd have sold as many or even more if he hadn't bugged pants off people.

BUT he has sold stacks and stacks of copies, so he really shouldn't care if he's annoyed anyone, should he?

Well, here I come to my second point: it depends whether he (or any writer who crosses invisible lines) minds what people think. And that is entirely up to the individual; everyone's skin is of a different thickness. So, I will not say he or anyone "shouldn't" have crossed the lines he crossed. I will not say he should be embarrassed.

But I would be.

And this is at least part of my main point, moving on to the wider question. "How much promotion is too much" depends both on you, the writer, and on you, the reader.

Everything is a judgement call. Every blog post, every tweet, every Facebook status update, every email to a festival organiser pitching an event. Every time you tell a personal friend about your latest short-listing, every time you say "me" or "my book", every video trailer, every pile of postcards you order from Vistaprint. Every quote you add to your email signature; every new review you put on your website. All of it, every single time, is a judgement call.

But how do we make that judgement? Are there any objective measures? What things turn people off? Well, probably not exactly objective but there seem to be some general lines that a decent number of people would agree on. Let me tell you what my own guidelines are. They are the lines which I try not to cross and the crossing of which by others bugs the pants off me, to the extent that I'm highly unlikely to buy their books or want to help them in any way. (Like anyone, I may occasionally get over-excited and accidentally put my toe over a line - I would then try to pull it back immediately.) They are the guidelines which I sense many others follow and approve. You don't have to follow these guidelines  - you have to find what's comfortable for you.

So, here are my guidelines:

DO

1. Give far more than you ask for. In other words, if your blog/FB timeline/Twitter feed is mostly giving people information, support, or entertainment without asking anything, it is fine if you sometimes plug your own work or ask your readers, colleagues and friends or "followers" to consider doing something for you. (Bearing in mind other points below.)
2. I've heard a 90% rule given - 90% of your online activity should be giving, and then you can use the other 10% for blagging. (Bearing in mind the points below.) I've also heard a 60/40 rule from marketing professionals, but I definitely prefer the 90/10 one, which is for mere humans.
3. Be generous in your praise of others. Be nice. And if you can't be nice, be silent.
4. When you ask people to do something (such as read a blog post or click a link or buy your book) do so generally and openly, not individually or privately. (See below.) If you make it general and don't address your message to anyone specific, you make it easy for people to ignore it, which is as it should be.

DON'T

1. Ask a stranger or slight acquaintance to do ANYTHING for you. (This is where complaints came in.) Not even the smallest thing. Not even to retweet your tweet. So, on Twitter, never send a DM (private message) to someone who is not genuinely a good friend to ask them to do even the smallest thing. Even to do something you think is fun. (Someone said, "But surely you wouldn't mind if I DM'd you to ask you to do something you'd enjoy?" Only I can be the judge of what I would enjoy. You don't know me, so don't assume.)
2. (Don't) Forget that no one loves your book as much as you do.
3. (Don't) Forget that there are eleventy million other books for people to buy.
4. (Don't) Assume that all your friends will buy your book. They can't all afford to and they can't afford to buy all their friends' books, especially if they are writers, because writers have many friends who are writers.
5. (Don't) Ask people to review your book, except as a very general and light request. I'm cautious about doing this at all, as I think it can sound needy, but I will occasionally in a very careful and tentative way. Also, again very occasionally, if someone privately tells me they absolutely loved one of my books, I might cautiously ask if they might possibly have time to write a quick recommendation on Amazon (or something) but I would also make it very clear that I absolutely wouldn't mind if they didn't. I will make it easy for them not to.

I think it all boils down to three things:

1. Don't do what you don't like others to do.
2. Give far more than you expect to receive.
3. Never ask even a tiny favour of someone who you don't feel is actually your friend. Especially if that person is busy.

As I say, these are my guidelines, which I recommend to you. I admit that I might sell more books if I crossed more lines, but I would be uncomfortable. I'd rather have my modest sales but feel reasonably comfortable that most people are not being totally bugged by me. I hope! (NB I'm sure, logically, that I've pissed some people off: it would be pretty hard never to cross anyone's lines. But I carefully watch out for what annoys me in others - and I do have a fairly low tolerance - and actively try to avoid doing the same. It's all any of us can do.)

What about Facebook (your Author page, not your personal FB profile) and your own website?
Ah, now this is where you can do much more. People come to your FB page or your website to find out about you. They expect to find links to reviews, newspaper articles, videos of you, or news of awards and short listings. So, putting those items as prominently as you like in those places is absolutely fine, though I would never advocate cockiness or boasting. Saying, "I've been shortlisted for such-and-such" is not the same as saying, "I'm a totally fabulous famous author. Kiss my feet, losers." The point that makes your FB author page or your website a place where you can play by different rules is the element of choice that the visitor has in coming there and why they came: to see you and find out what you've done.

I stressed that I'm talking about the FB Author Page, not your personal page. This is a matter of opinion, but I know that I and many writers and readers who I respect don't like their social space overwhelmed by promotional updates. So, my advice is to keep your "normal" FB page social, soft, supportive, and to do your promotional stuff on your Author page. It doesn't matter if it sometimes overlaps, but I really think the 90/10 rule is best applied to social networks. I think it's fine to post links to your blog sometimes though, as long as that's not all you do. Just don't do the "Ooh, look how freaking successful I am!" thing. Apart from anything else, there are a lots more writers amongst your friends who are feeling very vulnerable and you just trod all over them. They won't thank you.

Back to Twitter, where this began: personally, I think the writer who was being discussed has used Twitter very successfully. Good on him. But I don't like using Twitter. I like enjoying it. Therefore, I can't in all honesty recommend the bugging-the-pants-off-people approach. Even if it works for him. 

What do you think? Do those guidelines make sense? What else bugs you? Or what doesn't?

PS I can't tell you what I'm doing today, because that would be blatant self-promotion. I may casually drop it into conversation on Twitter and hope people will notice. Mind you, if I actually WIN the thing... No, shhh, woman. You just crossed a line. Or did I? What do you think?