Hostage of Dolour

Social Networks
So you’ve decided on your author’s image, I’d suggest the next step is to make spaces online for yourself. You may already have spaces set up on common social networking sites: Facebook, Bebo, Myspace, if not, I’d suggest setting up accounts there, filling out your profile details with a consistent set of values and profile photo for the writer’s image that you’ve decided upon. If you already have profiles on these kinds of spaces, be sure to leverage what you’ve built already, particularly if it’s possible to change your details to those corresponding to your writer’s image. For example, if you were previously Bill McMurtry [an amiable, chirpy fun party guy] and your writer’s image is William Q. McMurtry, Author, who writes brutally realistic medical procedural novels, well a few tweaks may be in order, name change, profile details change that emphasise your role as author, and perhaps a moody profile mugshot or a nice darkened down stock image of autopsy instruments. Pass this around to your friends with a few timely “status updates” [William Q. McMurtry, Author has posted a new blog entry, etc.] From there, simply begin your efforts to make new contacts. Your job of work here would include joining relevant groups, commenting on discussion boards and then adding new friends. From here, it’s just a question of knocking on doors – the election’s on, expect the politician’s neughbourly outreach: that’s YOU now!

Alternative Networking
There are myriad alternatives to these social spaces, though I’d suggest hitting as many as you can without spreading yourself too thinly. We have Youtube, Vimeo, Google Video and the various other video networking sites. I’ve created a little trailer for my novel “Into Kotaom” on nothing more than free software, public domain video footage, a little research and some imagination. Upload yours to the various video sites and leverage that to further the scope of your outreach.

Blogging for Writers
Further to that we have your own blog. Again, you may already have one. Just ensure that if you’re using an existing space that you customise it to be consistent with your own writer’s image. That includes both your visible branding and your subject matter and style of writing. The reader should get an idea of what you’re purveying otherwise the focus of your writing and your message may be lost amid reader confusion.

If you don’t have a blog, well it’s simple to set up a free one at any of the major blog sites: wordpress.com or blogspot are good, blogspot being perhaps the more customisable of the free ones.

Author Website
You have a writer’s website too, right? It doesn’t take much expertise to assemble your own website. There are plenty of free website creating tools, in fact many web hosts have easy stepwise instructions to help you create your own few page sites. And whereas this is hardly the place to teach basic HTML and CSS, I’d suggest one action above all others: buy your own domain. It’s only £6-£10 and crucial to have www.williamqmcmurtry.com registered to you. Though or if your name’s taken, determine a suitable alternative. Either way, claim it now. If you don’t have your website set up, at least having procured your own domain name, you can set up emails: william@williamqmcmurtry.com and have a simple landing page with perhaps a bio or synopsis of your novel. Yes, buy your domain!

Possibilities
Of course you can expand your online empire almost ad infinitum – and I’d recommend doing just that, time permitting. You might set up profiles on microblog sites or Twitter, explicit network sites such as LinkedIn, put your blog on Technorati, add your photos and your video to Flickr, set yourself up each November on Nanowrimo. Really the list is quite lengthy and you should really only be limited by the time available to you. You can check my own spaces, listed all over this blog to give you an idea of where you might set up. As you can see, I’m new to this too! (:

A Matter of Metrics
Initially you may wonder after such a large effort in shameless self-promotion, why the crowds aren’t so overwhelming as to prevent you from grabbing even a minute’s sleep at night, but as a measure of your success, before you begin [and I'm sure you've done this already], try searching for “William Q McMurtry Author” [or whatever key phrase you're using, "Wiliam Q McMurtry, forensic novellist" etc.] in your favourite search engine BEFORE you begin this task and periodically afterwards: every week or few weeks perhaps. This will assure you that your empire is being permeated throughout the websphere and perhaps give you some encouragement should you be running low.

The only other ingredient is time. For an individual writer with little or no prebuilt platform, building an empire doesn’t happen overnight. Perhaps it happens much slower than we’d hoped. But it does happen. Patience, Grasshopper!

Author Platform – The Writer’s Image

If we think of the designer of surfboards; if we envision a surfer, a thrash metal drummer, an Irish dancer or a sculptor working entirely in farm manure, we have formed for us an image of those participants in these various artistic endeavours.  They may not, in their daily life always accurately reflect that image, and likewise, those of us who view them maybe have certain inaccurate expectations or perhaps preconceptions of the type of person they are, nonetheless, through their endeavours they are generating in all of us a certain image.  As a writer, our words create an image of us.  Some writers are acutely aware of what their image is.  For others, we don’t always appreciate that image.  Are you aware of your own writing persona as it applies beyond your actual writing?  I’d like to exhort you to take a moment and think of the basis on which you’d like to engage people while you set about building your platform.  Of course they know you as a writer, you’ve made that clear, but who are you in relation to your writing?  If you write sultry vampyric horror, do you espouse those values or can you at least fit in well in that real world scene? You get the idea, I’m sure.  So what’s your writer’s image?

Consistency

I think having a consistent image when creating our writer’s platform is crucial.  You may well fit with the preconceptions arising from your style of writing [are you as macabre as your horror shorts suggest?] or perhaps you take pleasure in destroying that stereotype [perhaps you yourself are macabre in a way that your romantic period heroine could never apprehend!]  Nonetheless, deciding upon the image that you present to your audience and then acting consistently within the parameters of that image will engender trust among those that are eager to step up to your platform and engage with you and your writing.

My Own Example?

My own novel “Into Kotaom” concerns life after God, theism versus atheism, doctrine and indoctrination.  My platform, although not always explicitly touting these notions, does make use of certain imagery [rosaries for example] on online avatars:

David Faylin rosary avatar

I might utilise key slogans from my novel “God is dead; Man is god” that any potential reader will be aware of exactly what I’m writing about.  I’m aware of key figures in the area of atheism in particular, Richard Dawkins perhaps being the most outspoken, and would use their existing relationships [friends on online spaces perhaps, participants on their forums, commenters on blogs dealing with the subject matter] and use that as a potential “ice-breaker” if you will to suggest my own wares.  I guess that can seem in some ways cynical, yet I’d not see this as any kind of spam tactic since the approaches are very specifically targetted, I’m as personal and personable as I can be, and I’m more than accepting of people’s choice to hit the “ignore” button.

Use your Name

Of course, should I decide to change tack, genre or subject matter for subsequent writing, then of course my image would need to change accordingly.  And it’s for that reason that I always use my own name David Faylin for my writer’s platform.  Because always, the most consistent thing about us is our name or pseudonym.

More to follow.. Take care speak soon maybe, David.

Author Platform – How to..

OK so I’m new to this.  I’m guessing you are too if you’re reading.  I had my lovely novel all completed and was surfing for presentation advice on how to send off the manuscript to my list of agents and publishers when.. Uh-oh, I need to have a what?  A platform?  WTH’s a platform?  And so my favourable disposition changed from a gung-ho, “Let’s mail these literary agent buggers until it hurts!”, to the more typically forlorn, “Back to the bloody drawing board”

So, a platform eh?  Well of course.  You send out your manuscript [and repeat ad infinitum] but maybe one morning, you get something other than the smudged, skew-copied standard publisher’s letter of rejection.. You get a, “Yes please, we’re interested.”  And things move from there.  A year later your lovely novel’s on the shelves.  Only.. ah.. who exactly is going to buy it?  The publishing house is prepared to grant you a small marketing budget but you’ve never done this before and thus your novel vanishes, not into bargain bins, just back to the pulp from which it came.

Rewind then.. Before you send out your manuscript, you hear about this writer’s platform idea.  The well-known authors have it already.  All celebrities do.  People buy your wares because you’re you.  But if nobody know exactly who you are, then nobody’s gonna buy.  And you’re not writing for the enjoyment of it are you?  Are  you really?  You’d not hoped for an audience of people eager to find out how that screamer of a novel ends?  Of course you had.  Every artist seeks to have their work known.  Art without an audience is vapid and useless imho..

So with that in mind you want to grab yourself some renown prior to the big mailout.  But how?  Well “Build it and they will come” is for me a most loathsome mantra [was it Field of Dreams or Wayne's World, I can't remember??] because nobody comes to you if you ain’t got celebrity, renown [read platform].

For me, this is exactly where I am now.  Embarking on that journey of construction.  I’d like to post up what I’m doing and how well it’s going.  My hope is that maybe if you’re heading that way we can share the trip.

More to follow.. Take care speak soon maybe, David.