Useful writing links | C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

I had another frustrating day dealing with tech support that, for awhile, actually made things worse. Now another modem is on order and I’m searching for a technician to come save me. Yeah, it’s that bad.

However, this too shall pass. I’m going to try to get some writing done on my little AlphaSmart Neo. Once you’ve done all you can, you’ve done all you can. I’ve messed with the computer so much I’ve lost two days of my life. While others were enjoying snow days, I was staring at a screen trying to move the immoveable. No more.

Today I get back to my life and focus on the fun parts. I’ll let the on site tech deal with the trouble. (For those who missed it, a cyber attack is to blame, but don’t be afraid. I’m not contagious.)

I recently finished a major editing stage for a client’s book so now it’s time to work on something of my own: a dystopian novel about soulful robots and a drug that improves human brains. Think Robert J. Sawyer meets William Gibson. Ooh, that’s high falutin’ talk. Anyway, I’ll put aside my present-day tech troubles and write about future tech troubles.

And finally, I’ll have some fun. Writing fiction is always fun. If you aren’t having fun as you write, your readers won’t have a chance. Stop putting it off. Go have fun, too. If you have to delegate your worries to get them away from you, then do that.

(Well…after you check out these cool links, anyway.)

The Writers Alley: The Quixotic Pull of Your Future Novel‏

10 media and tech luminaries on the future of reading

7 Ways to Help Writers Survive the Holidays

Audio from last night’s live event with William Gibson and Cory (boingboing.net)
Am I better off living a different dream? (tobiasbuckell.com)
Update: David Milch (gointothestory.com)
Duplicate Content and Ways around It (searchenginejournal.com)
Need for new utopian stories (rs.resalliance.org)
Zero History. William Gibson (regnordman.com)
William Gibson Serves Up Zero History (time.com)
Unsuccessful treatment of writer’s block: a replication (mindhacks.com)
Writers on Writing: Booklife by Jeff Vandemeer (tor.com)
The Six Gifts of the Writer’s Workshop Weekend (planejaner.wordpress.com)

Filed under: authors, My fiction, publishing, Useful writing links, What about Chazz?, writing tips, Author, Cyberpunk, Robert J. Sawyer, William Gibson, writers, Writers Resources, writing, writing advice

12/08/2010 • 1:52 PM 1

Writers: Optimizing your social media (and a question)

Mostly I talk about writing and publishing here, but if you have a book to sell, promotion and publicity is integral to the process. Social media has democratized book promotion in that it’s an all-access pass and the admission is free.

Writers, this afternoon, I have three great links on the topic of optimizing your use of social media to spread the word about your words:

TNW Social Media » 10 Ways Journalists and the Media Use Twitter‏

How to triple your Twitter traffic in 7 days‏

Is It Time to Take a Social Media Inventory? | FreelanceFolder‏

And a question: Which social media are you using to promote your book or business?

Please let me know in the comments below.

How-To: Utilize Social Media to Promote Your Event (vivanista.com)
Learn More About Social Media (blogs.constantcontact.com)
In house social media monitoring (sharemarketing.wordpress.com)
Building a Social Media Framework (socialmediatoday.com)
Why Should You Build Your Business on Social Media? (lockergnome.com)
Free Keyword Research Guide from TrafficPRM – SEO Tips for PR and Social Media Pros (prweb.com)
How American Companies Use Social Media (thinkup.waldenu.edu)
SEO Future Is Linkbuilding + Social Media Optimization – Social Media Marketing Press (seome.me)
More teachers using social media ()
Using Social Media to Grow Sales (prweb.com)
How restaurants are selling with social media (econsultancy.com)
Does the Rise in Social Media Marketing Equal a Rise in Holiday Sales? (marketingpilgrim.com)
Social – A Culture, not a tool (ericbrown.com)

Filed under: Publicity & Promotion, publishing, Social Media, Twitter, Useful writing links, book promotion, Business, Facebook, Internet Marketing, LinkedIn, Marketing and Advertising, social media, Twitter, YouTube

12/03/2010 • 7:17 PM 0

Resistance is futile: Social media, doc trailers and blog vision

I just watched about as much as I could stand (not much) of a documentary called We Live In Public. It’s about internet pioneer and visionary Josh Harris. In 1989, he was a nobody researcher in New York. But he saw the Internet coming and capitalized on it. He was one of the young multimillionaires who hit it big before the locus of Internet power went to Silicon Valley and the west coast. It’s not that the documentary is particularly bad. It’s just that if they had a big point to make, it’s either out of date or they buried the lead the past the first half hour.

Here’s the deal: The future of books is digital. Arguably, the present of books is digital. After this Christmas, even more so because wow, are there ever going to be a lot of Nooks, Kindles, Sony Readers, iPads etc.,… unwrapped on the morning of December 25th!

We are all connected. What was once metaphorical is now electronic. We consume digitally, therefore we are. (That’s not all good, by the way. The planet will suffer and in turn, make us suffer for our rampant consumerism, but that’s another post. For a great documentary on that issue, check out How to Boil a Frog or take a look at this trailer.)

[MORE AFTER THE JUMP]

The point is, We Live in Public documents how one guy saw future possibilities and so stepped in to make them happen. What was once sagacious is now a mundane truism, the I-told-you-so stuff makes you feel bad if you happened to be around at the birth of the Internet and are still poor.

The technology has changed again. And yet, there are the still modern-day Luddites. I recently connected with a bunch of editors on Linked In. Good folks. Smart, interesting people all…but that doesn’t mean they are like-minded. I ran into some people who were disparaging Twitter as a marketing source. They intoned sagely about the Law of Diminishing Returns kicking in.

I’ve already blogged about the proper use of Twitter, so I won’t pound away on it here. However, there was a general sense from some that they were being dragged screaming into the present. No matter how hard opportunities pull, some people want to resist the allure precisely because it’s the shiny new thing. It’s a knee-jerk contrarianism that won’t serve them considering what they say they want to achieve. (For instance, yes, studies say you catch more edits if you edit hard copy on dead trees. Too bad. Adapt. Learn to edit the pixellated stuff. The efficiency lost in editing websites on paper isn’t worth it.) Still, their knuckles are white as they cling to Future’s door frame no matter how hard possibilities pull.

Yesterday a friend complimented me on the many useful writing and publishing links on this blog. (Insert smile of pride here.) I take the curation of useful information very seriously here. And where do I find all those great links? Mostly from Twitter because it pushes information to me that I wouldn’t necessarily think to find on a search engine. Also, some links wouldn’t be in the first few pages of a search term I’d think to use.

The people I follow, the living and breathing humans behind those Twitter avatars, are sending me links all the time and I’m boiling down what I find into the elixir I find most intriguing and useful for my readers. Some of those readers will be authors some day, either published traditionally or self-published. They have websites that need editing. They’ll need my help beyond the information I provide here. I’m ready.

But, the foot-draggers object, is all this translating into present-day moolah? Nope. Not yet. I’m working fairly steadily on my freelance gigs and expanding my sphere of influence. When I worked in publishing in Toronto I had to meet people in person to do that.

Now I’m reaching out from my office in a house that’s much cheaper than what it would cost t in T.O. My kids go to a great school and I feel well-placed and cozy here by the wood stove and the warm glow of the world through my screen, reaching through my keyboard. I’m building my brand (and things have really taken off lately as more people find Chazz Writes. Thank you if you’ve already spread the word!) I’ve had other blogs but this one hasn’t really been up long. It’s already delivering intangibles (i.e. My God, this is fun and instructive for me, too!) I’ve built it slower than I could have, but it’s a learning curve I’m climbing. I can see the top from here. I’m enjoying the view. This is going to be great!

I see the future.

I’m making it happen.

Here.

Now.

So, I’ve got passion and skills and a big dream…so what? Where’s the evidence?

Well, there’s this:

The Numbers Tell the Story: Why Social Media Matters

Do You Speak Twitter? (greenandcleanmom.org)
Setting the Hook: Fishing for New Readers with Social Media Lures (problogger.net)
How Storify Helps Integrate Social Streams Into Articles (pbs.org)
8 Reasons Why We Love Social Media (thinkup.waldenu.edu)
Yes, It Will (rooksrant.com)
Employees with social media access more likely to talk you up (liesdamnedliesstatistics.com)
Twitter May Raise Money as Web 2.0 Values Soar (dailyfinance.com)
Why “Thank You” In Social Media Goes Largely Unnoticed (shegeeks.net)
E-mail v. Social Media: Utility v. Futility? (marketingpilgrim.com)
Social media and the workplace (franklinmatters.blogspot.com)
Dangers of Social Media Addiction [Video] (quickonlinetips.com)
Twitter Proven to Impact Search Engine Rankings (hubspot.com)
We Live In Public Opens In NYC This Weekend (avc.com)

Filed under: Friday Publishing Advice Links, links, Twitter, Useful writing links

12/01/2010 • 5:09 PM 1

Writers: Publishing breakdown by the numbers

Image via Wikipedia

MAKE MINE MYSTERY: The Three Rules of Dialogue

Agent Mollie Glick Talks: 7 Things Agents Want to See in a Query, and 9 Things They Don’t

An Agent Breaks Down Royalty Numbers

Seven Rules of Writing

10 Mistakes Authors Make that Can Cost a Fortune (and how to avoid them) : Selling Books

5 Ways to Promote your Blog: What You Should Be Writing Besides Blog Posts

Be My Villain: 10 Things That Will Make Your Writing Better (and Your Editor Happier)

…and a partridge in a pear tree!

Writers: Don’t Set Your Self-Worth By a Publisher’s Opinion (blogher.com)
I Am a Hack Writer and Proud of It (quazen.com)
The Art and Economics of Ghostwriting (dailyfinance.com)
Five Writers Explain How They Got, Kept and Fired Agents (theawl.com)
The Walking Dead Consume Writers! No Staff Necessary for Season 2? (dreadcentral.com)
Reader Question: What about using a pseudonym? (gointothestory.com)
Best New Blogs of 2010 ” The Bygone Bureau (bygonebureau.com)

Filed under: agents, blogs & blogging, links, Useful writing links, writing tips, agent, Arts, publishing, Query letter, writer, Writers Resources

12/01/2010 • 11:16 AM 0

#Editors: Experience is what you get through mistakes

Image via Wikipedia

Last week a friend of mine called looking for advice about becoming an editor. She was looking for a way out of the nine to five grind wherein she could control her time, make a little money and still manage to pick her kid up from school by mid-afternoon. She was doing things she didn’t desperately want to do. She didn’t like her options, even though some of those options could be more lucrative than editing. In short, she’s in a spot many of us have been in: passion versus practicality. She has a tough choice ahead. Let’s talk about her choices, and yours.

We can’t start this discussion off without mentioning that a lot of people don’t have any choice about their employment. They’re just happy to have any kind of employment. Either by circumstance or by a lack of education or preparation, many people in a recession take what they can get. Self-fulfillment in employment is actually a pretty new idea. In the Industrial Revolution (or any time before that) the idea that you have to love your work would be considered a silly idea. However, much of the soul-crushing ennui was made acceptable by the common practice of drinking yourself near-unconscious on the job.

This woman lives in this century and has options. Should she be an editor? She already had a useful teaching background. She played it down, but as we dug into her history, she did indeed have some relevant experiences to draw upon. She also took an editing course recently and explored membership in the Editors Association of Canada (EAC.)

I told her about the meat of the work. We discussed grammar and the common mistakes people make. We talked about the various levels of engagement editors bring to text. For instance, there’s a big difference between a proofreader, a copy editor and a developmental editor. We talked about flow, judicious cutting, client consultation and the merits of the AP Stylebook, the Chicago Manual of Style and The Elements of Style.

And I learned something. In coaching someone else, it forced me to evaluate how I’ve been going at the editing business. I’ve had various projects on the go, but I’ve been awfully passive about it. I haven’t stepped outside my comfort zone to go after new book and website projects. For instance, much of my editing work has come about because of my writing. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s been pretty much exclusive to that.

My speech writing arose from my magazine writing. My web page editing came about through my magazine writing. The memoir I’m editing came as an assignment from a friend in need. The e-books I’ve ghostwritten and edited? Same deal. The marketing materials I’ve worked up for another client came to be because I’d interviewed the president of the company for another magazine story.

There isn’t anything intrinsically wrong with these sources of work. Work is work, no matter how it finds me. But it’s a clue that I’ve been lackadaisical. I need to solicit work more actively instead of waiting for it to come to me.

I’m busy now, but independent editing is piece work. It can come fast, all at once or not at all, at least for a time. Sometimes, work falls through or gets put on hold for a long time.

And sometimes, only greater self-awareness comes through helping someone discover their own path. I’m pleased she’d thinking of joining the ranks of editors. She loves language and believes the proper use of words matter. I warned her it can be a hard journey if she’s not prepared to be a go-getter.

And now I know I need to take my own advice.

Have your say on the AP 2011 Stylebook (blogs.journalism.co.uk)
Who proofs the proofreaders? (ask.metafilter.com)
To the Future, Grammar Nerds! (slog.thestranger.com)
Sixteenth Edition of the Chicago Manual of Style (boston.com)
Copy editor faces gantlet as readers throw down gauntlet (laobserved.com)
Copy Editor Publicly Embarrasses Times Bureau Chief [Gotcha Journalismism] (gawker.com)
Take Charge of Your Brand (socialmediatoday.com)
The Marketing Professional Reveals How to Avoid Holiday E-mail Hijinx (themarketingprofessional.com)

Filed under: Editing, Editors, getting it done, manuscript evaluation, rules of writing, Useful writing links, AP Stylebook, Chicago Manual of Style, editing, Editors Association of Canada, Elements of Style, freelance editing, freelance writing, independent editor, Writing and Editing

11/30/2010 • 11:12 AM 0

#Book Marketing: The old divisions don’t apply

Over the weekend, inspired by the social media conference I attended, I got signed up for Linked In. I had signed up a long time ago, but frankly, I really hadn’t done anything much with it. Stuff you don’t engage with doesn’t count, so Linked In didn’t count. However, the more I explored the site and played with it, the more I understood that there were some great conversations I was missing out on. So I got engaged again.

One of the great things about Linked In is that it suggests groups and associations and companies that dovetail with your interests. One of the groups—I guess I won’t name them because I don’t know if I’ve been accepted yet—sent me a list of rules as a preliminary how-to and how-do. The group moderator’s membership criteria was that I wasn’t going to join in on their forums just to get all spammy. In some detail, the moderator warned me that I shouldn’t post on their site just to introduce myself and say hello. (I’ve been a member on other forums wherein that’s their first request of noobs.) None of this was personal. The forum had a large membership and I undertand they want to keep it clean if not pure.

Basically, I was to contribute on-topic value at all times, never straying into self-promotion and blog blaring.

Well, okay. But…

Look, I don’t want to be spammy. At the conference, one social media guru referred to that as “Shout Marketing.” That’s basically being obnoxious with outdated marketing approaches where the information goes in one direction and the message is “Buy! Buy! Buy! Hire the magic that is ME, for the love of god!” and so forth.

What makes social media “social” is that it’s a conversation. Information goes back and forth. You interact with customers who (gasp) give you feedback, leave comments, contribute their own thoughts and opinions and (worse!) let you know how you’re doing.

So the forum admin had a point about avoiding the old style of marketing. However, the implication that we can all totally divorce our marketing roles from the life of the mind is also outdated. If you’re an artist of any sort, you need to market yourself. Writers comment on blogs and engage in conversations because it’s fun and interesting. They are also trying to sell their books. There’s no shame in that as long as you use the new style of marketing (engaging in conversation) and not getting all spammy over their screens.

I’ve noticed some people on Twitter get a tad irked when too many tweets from one person are too advertorial. I’ve felt this way, too. For instance, I love Chuck Pahlaniuk’s fiction, but his Twitter account seemed to be managed for him by one of Skynet‘s spambots. As vast as his cult is, Chuck doesn’t appear to be engaging with his audience as a person. As a result, I reluctantly unfollowed the author. No hard feelings. Still love most of the books and Fight Club is an all-time favorite.

So what I’m saying is, you can sell effectively without being obnoxious. By all means, let us know about your next book signing so we can show up and engage you there, too. But:

1. Be authentic.

2. Be yourself instead of your intern.

3. Have conversations. Have opinions.

4. If it’s all spam, you will be unfollowed and your blog shall go unvisited and unlamented.

Me? I retweet links that interest me. I sometimes go off on tangents that aren’t about writing and publishing. I hope you’ll like me and visit the blog often. (Updated here, Monday to Friday! Same Bat-time, same bat-channel!) When I have a service to sell (like my editing services) or when I have an e-book or tree book to sell, I hope you’ll like me enough to consider laying out some moolah for my work.

I say unto thee, I am open, honest and unashamed. I am marketing myself because that’s what creators must do now. As long as you don’t feel that’s all I do, you’ll probably stick around. I don’t need millions of followers who don’t give a shit about me. A core constituency that does care (and forgive my occasional missteps) will do fine.

The take-away truisms are:

1. First you sell yourself.

2. Then you sell your product.

3. You do so by doing what we’re all here to do. We serve each other.

10 Essential Rules for Engaging Customers via Social Media (chrisabraham.com)
10 Essential Tips for Social Media Brand Engagement (marketingconversation.com)
Know The Rules of the Communities When Marketing in Social Media (webpronews.com)
Six years of blogging – perspectives on social media (getgood.com)
Ways to use Headliner.fm to promote your band on myspace twitter and facebook (digitalvegetarian.com)
Developing Personas for Better Social Media Marketing (toprankblog.com)
25 Characteristics of Highly Effective Social Media Campaigns (sociatic.com)
Twitter Is More Fun And More Profitable When You Follow The Right People (wassupblog.com)
How to Determine Which Social Media Site is Right for Your Business (hubspot.com)
178 Perspectives on Social Media Marketing (socialtimes.com)
Top 20 Apps For Managing Social Media (informationweek.com)
Social Media Challenges You (marketingconversation.com)
The Art of Engagement (extanz.com)
15 Tips And Howto’s To Empower Your Social Media Career (socialmediatoday.com)
What Every Social Media Marketer Should Know About uberVU (socialtimes.com)
Making Social Media Work for You and Your Brand (fingercandymedia.com)
Giving Thanks to Social Media (babyfruit.typepad.com)
LinkedIn Sends Signals Worth Receiving and Using (blogs.forrester.com)
New Social Media Tools: Time Saving or Time Wasting? (masonryan.wordpress.com)
5 Common LinkedIn Fallacies and Why You Shouldn’t Believe Them (socialmediatoday.com)
20 LinkedIn Case Studies for Personal Branding (personalbrandingblog.com)
How to Maximize Your LinkedIn Presence and Effectiveness to Generate Business (costpernews.com)
It’s not the size of your LinkedIn network that counts it’s what you do with it that matters (customerthink.com)
The 9 Worst Ways to Use LinkedIn for Business (hubspot.com)
How to get the LinkedIn advantage (publicrelationssydney.com.au)
Are Facebook and Twitter necessities? ()
LinkedIn – the semantics of connection (ask.metafilter.com)

Filed under: blogs & blogging, Books, ebooks, Editing, Editors, getting it done, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, self-publishing, Social Media, Useful writing links, web reviews, Writers, Business, Conversation, Facebook, Internet forum, LinkedIn, Marketing, social media, Twitter

11/29/2010 • 1:50 PM 0

#Authors : I want to eat your brains (and profile you)

The left frontal lobe (red), the forward porti...

Image via Wikipedia

This morning I mentioned I have some authors lined up for profiles for publication in this hallowed space. For instance, author of My Camino and friend of the blog, Sue Kenney, will share her journey across Spain and to publication in the near future. Not only is she an author, she’s a filmmaker, too.

Why can’t you spread the glory of your achievement, too? Answer: You can! I want to pick your brain.

I love books and love to hear from authors about their struggles and successes. If you’re an author with a book you want the world to know about (and if you have a book, why wouldn’t you?), shoot me an e-mail at chazz@chazzwrites.vpweb.ca.

I’d like to make author interviews a regular weekly feature if I get enough interest. If your fiction or non-fiction looks like a good fit, I’ll send you a questionnaire to answer et voilà! Instant book promotion as we delve into your climb to the literary pinnacle.

Brains! Brains! So hungry! I want to pick at your brain!

Author Success Story: From Salesman to Silver Screen. (lulu.com)
b i b l i o p h i l . o r g (bibliophil.org)
Author Websites: 7 Of The Best Writers’ Sites (PHOTOS) (huffingtonpost.com)
Author Says ‘Pay What You Want’ For His Dog Book (prweb.com)
Laurence Hughes: Book Publicists Love to Hear “Pretend I’m a Producer, Pitch Me My Book” (huffingtonpost.com)
How to Make a Book Cover in Photoshop (brighthub.com)
“How Reading And Book Buying Has Changed With The Kindle” and related posts (thecreativepenn.com)
The New York Times gets a new science fiction book review column [Jeff Vandermeer] (io9.com)
The Ethics of Artistic Consumption: Seinfeld and Orson Scott Card (blogcritics.org)
Maddie Dawson (officialmegtilly.com)

Filed under: blogs & blogging, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, self-publishing, Useful writing links, web reviews, Writers, Author, author interviews, author profiles, book marketing, book promotion, books, Literature, publishing

11/26/2010 • 2:05 PM 5

#Writers: How much should you tweet?

Image via Wikipedia

This article in the Globe and Mail advises you drop tweeting from your schedule. The main point is, writers waste time tweeting when they don’t have something to sell.

Well, yeah, but…

I’m not sure why anyone thinks a writer’s e-marketing time should be all or nothing. It’s probably useful to market to your audience, present or future. Your marketing time should not cut into your writing time. If it does, you either aren’t writing enough or not prioritizing. Blogging and tweeting to your market (present or future) should be a fun thing for you to do. If you don’t like it, then don’t do it.

I tweet, but always during time that would otherwise be dead time (e.g. waiting for something, while suffering insomnia or during commercials when I forgot to PVR something.) I enjoy blogging about writing and I make time for it. As a result, I watch a lot less TV than I used to do.

But writing time has to come first. The real question is, must you blog or make a book trailer or tweet to your followers? Can’t you just leave that to someone else when the time comes? (Answer: No. Selling anything means selling yourself.)

The Globe article suggests that it is often contests that curate bestsellers (especially in Canada.) Mm, yes, but what if you don’t write the sort of fiction that’s likely to even be considered by the Giller Prize panel? You can’t leave your book’s promotion to the whim of a handful of people, not when the power of the Internet is right in front of you.

It’s worth noting that publishers expect authors to shoulder most of the responsibility for promoting their books. Your publisher and agent will want you to have a blog as a home base that all your marketing efforts feed. If you’re into self-publishing, it’s all you, though that’s arguably not much different from what it ever was. (I’ve been a publicist and I’ve worked with publicists. What they’re doing is not rocket science. You can do it and if you won’t do that, at least control it.)

Do people follow you on Twitter and then buy your books based on those interactions? I bought a Scott Sigler book after he shot me a kind tweet. If Margaret Atwood alerted to her Twitter followers that she was holding a book signing at a particular bookstore, not only would they all get her message, that’s free targeted marketing to a group very likely to show up if they can.

Is social media marketing the norm for book marketing? Answers: Yes, no and not yet. Yes, because it’s the cheapest way to go. No, because the are many authors and publishers out there who haven’t embraced the full power of social media’s potential. Lots of people still think Twitter is about letting people know about that spicy burger from lunch backing up on you. They don’t get that Twitter can push information you want to you (sometimes information you didn’t even know you needed.) And finally, not yet, because I wouldn’t count on that “no” remaining stable.

Yes, there have been authors who did not promote themselves. JD Salinger became a recluse and never tweeted. However, that’s a lousy example for two reasons:

1. He was JD Salinger and we aren’t.

2. The world (and the world of publishing) has changed drastically, even among those who are reluctant to embrace new models.

For instance, the number of book sales reps has plummeted. Interactions through Twitter and Amazon Reviews and Blogs and search engines: All that technology has turned up the volume on the marketing environment so it’s hard to hear the tiny books by unknown authors who aren’t stepping up to speak for themselves.

Yes, I know you have lots of books on your shelves and most of your buying decisions were not influenced by anything you saw on Twitter. You’re right. But as e-books flood the market from self-publishers, you won’t be right about that for long.

Build your following now so when you do have something to sell, you’ll have lots of people to spread the word. If you don’t begin to market yourself until you have a book to sell, you’re already late.

First I have to buy in to you. Then I consider your product. Twas always thus, but now more than ever.