We don’t sell anything unless we tell stories. To sell stories, we must have stories about our books.
Seth Godin’s blog and books sell because they’re short, pithy, smart and he owns his niche. To own a niche now, you’d do better define a new one. Don’t try to take Seth’s purple cow, tribe or incisive observations about case studies. (Note: “Case studies” is the more scientific word for “stories.”)
Define your own niche and you’ve got a better shot at selling more books.
For instance, my next book is about Romeo in a drug-infested, coming-of-age thriller in New York. Shakespeare plays a role in finding the modern Juliet. Coming-of-age and thriller aren’t normally such cozy neighbors. My last book was a zombie apocalypse with an autistic hero and Latin proverbs. Not a lot of competition in that end of the zombie market.
Season One of This Plague of Days is the siege.
Familiarity is overdone. Differences define us in the market. (e.g. Bookstores are still crammed with Harry Potter knock-offs, but there’s only one JK Rowling.) Take something familiar and find a way to make it original again and you’ve got something.
Story is the most important thing. Story works.
Podcasts don’t sell unless they’re rich in content and tell stories. From business success to how-to and gee-whiz science, podcasts don’t work as sales engines unless they tell aspirational stories. From the startlingly different (Welcome to Night Vale) to personal confession (Marc Maron’s WTF) stories must be told and be relatable.
I’ve noticed more authors seem to be shifting their cyber-presence to Facebook and away from Twitter. They’re all Twittered out. Tweets are solid tools of discovery and live-tweeting makes the Oscars watchable, but Twitter tends to be less about story and connection. We need a little more space to achieve resonance.
Facebook offers more opportunity for personal connection. FB’s post length helps, but it’s also subtext. On Facebook, you have friends.
Twitter is less friendly and more competitive. On Twitter, people have followers and people pay attention to numbers gained and lost. On Twitter you use ManageFlitter and WhoUnfollowedMe. On Facebook, if crazy Aunt Sadie unfriends you, you’re relieved you can swear again and her abandonment confirms your politics are sane.
Personal stories help us plug into each other’s pleasure centres.
The mind often fails to make distinctions among what’s real and illusory, cyber and real world. On Facebook, Story is the carrier wave of connection: “This is my child, my dog, my life!” we tell each other.
Since we don’t know what the hell we’re doing and we’re all scared, our connections reassure us. “Maybe I’ve screwed everything up, but at least I’m making the same mistakes as everyone else in our journey toward a better tomorrow.”
That’s why your photo catalogue of a glorious tropical vacation on Facebook doesn’t fit into the brain’s three-prong plug of connection. People love shared stories of failure, vulnerability and happiness, but only after that happiness is earned by failure and vulnerability. We root for the underdog and rags-to-riches stories, not Donald Trump. Your new car is nice for you, but I like you more when your dog dies. My dog died. Commonality is currency. Because I want to be loved, I love you when you’re suffering insomnia from worry, too. Misery doesn’t just love company. It insists on it.
Though we are each mysteries, we like to imagine we are each other.
Each of us is just as challenged and sad and lonely, but we hope to be rich some day, too. When the money and success roll in, we tend to forget all this stuff about connection. We blame the poor for their poverty, give luck no credit for our rise and trumpet all our hard work to the exclusion of any variable that does not bow to our big ol’ brains.
No wonder the rich and poor hate each other (except the poor want to join the resented rich, too.) Meanwhile, the rich would rip out their own throats with car keys from their repossessed Lexus if they had to get by on less than $100,000 a year.
Our class boundaries break connections. That’s why celebrities seem so otherworldly in person. They lost their shock collars and passed the invisible electric fence! They made it, so we can, too! Unless they’re the children of celebrities. Those lucky devils get a sneer and a Barry Bonds asterisk beside their fame.
Our stories about who we are become who we are.
That quest for privacy? Quaint. Adorable. Amish.
Jonathan Franzen worries about our attention spans, the death of literature and loss of privacy. He worries about the horrors of the Internet, just about every week it seems, in the Huffington Post. Horrors.
Blogs are dead sales platforms.
You have to have an author site, but you’ll get more juice from connecting on Facebook. Twitter will serve you better than a blog because it serves more people.
A blog is too much of a commitment for the reader. Too few blogs are “appointment reading”. A blog is a magazine at the doctor’s office. You only pick it up when there’s nothing else to do and you’d rather be doing something else.
I am subscribed to many blogs. They’re up there somewhere, forgotten in an RSS reader, added to a long reading list I will never get to. The blogs I actually read daily don’t have to be stuck in my bottomless bookmark bin. I go to them.
Blogs fail because signals go out but they don’t connect. Like this post, a bad blog post pontificates. I’m doing it now, connecting less, to fewer people. Still here? You’re already hoping the meta will stop and I’ll somehow pull out of the dive and land a punch and a point in the final sentence. How will I bring us home after such a depressing, meandering trip? I’ll show you. Indulge, a moment more, before the doctor calls you in to talk about those test results.
There are exceptional blogs, still breathing.
You can tell which blogs still have a heartbeat. They have a large and active comment community who aren’t just there to fight. (The Passive Voice is necessary to indie writers, for instance, as is David Gaughran’s blog.) Their lure is a story of aspirational subtext: Read this and you will succeed as we analyze the mistakes and triumphs of others.
And what are comments but the back from the forth? The best comments are more stories, resonating and rising up in conversation.
Commenting as a sales tool is less effective than it once was, back when people still asked, “What’s a blog?” Commenting doesn’t sell, though it can hurt you if you’re a dick. Some commenters never communicate human warmth. They think their intellect and snark will win people over and drag eyeballs back to their own dead blogs. They’re wrong. We only go back to their blogs to see if they’re rude to everyone (yes, always, yes) and make mental notes of what books not to buy.
Living sales platforms are conversations.
Facebook is a bigger sales engine at the moment, coming at you sideways, fun and friendly and under your defences. We tell stories in conversation with friends. That’s where the connection lies, even if it’s a lie. We share our failures and hopes and dreams and we don’t look at our watch when we’re on Facebook. (That’s how the wasted hours slip away and books don’t get written, too.)
Facebook falls short in some ways, but that’s where I can talk with Hugh Howey or Chuck Wendig or Robert J. Sawyer. Facebook is alive with conversation. That’s the hot, three-pronged brain plug of connection we crave.
So who cares about this shit? Too long to read. Meet me on Facebook and maybe we’ll connect in a conversation. Blogs are dead. I killed it. Just now. I regret nothing.
Season 2 is the quest.
~ There is a secret in This Plague of Days. You’ve already read it. No one has guessed it yet. If you suspect you know, DM me on Facebook or DM me on Twitter. Praise and adulation will be heaped upon those who guess correctly. First prize is a signed paperback. Three winners will appear in my next book. Adulation for all will happen on the All That Chazz podcast.
Related articles
- How To Market Your Blog The Write Way And Get Results (business2community.com)
- 7 Easy Ways To Drive Reader Engagement Using Social Media For Your Business (benchmarkemail.com)
- The Definitive Guide to Awesome Web Content (moz.com)
- Seth’s Blog: Coordinate and amplify (sethgodin.typepad.com)
- Seth Godin Points to Death of Traditional Publishing, We Listen and… (prweb.com)
- Seth Godin On Building Your Fanbase (hypebot.com)
- Quoting Seth Godin – Taking the Risk of Sharing YOUR Wisdom (unlockedbox.typepad.com)
- Seth Godin Says Google Has Officially Jumped the Shark (rpmgr.com)
- Marketing With Social Media May Disappoint (shoretelsky.com)
- Be the Purple Cow – #AlphaFemaleFriday (alphafemalesociety.com)
Filed under: author platform, author platform, Blog, book marketing, book promotion, connection, Facebook, friends, Harry Potter, Jonathan Franzen, Manageflitter, Marc Maron, Online Communities, publicity, seth godin, Shakespeare, social media, Social Networking, Twitter
02/12/2013 • 1:03 AM 7
Blog comment rules and how to become Batman
Rules? For renegades and free thinkers? Isn’t suggesting blog comment etiquette for people like us antithetical to our natures? No. Even badasses like us have a code we live by. The modern Ronin do not have lords we serve, but in our hearts, we are still Samurai. The Internet is the Old West, but even Texas had expectations of how people should conduct themselves in public.
What spurred this post
Sometimes I notice comments that afflict bloggers. This isn’t about me, by the way, you’re all awesome. However, those negative commenters irritate me. I’m not talking about Internet trolls. Trolls should be ignored completely. I define a troll as anyone who says something nasty enough that, without the protection of anonymity and distance, they’d be walking away from the conversation with a bloody nose.
Today I’m talking about nasty people who think they’re contributing to a conversation but mostly they’re stirring up feelings of anger and resentment. They might even have a point buried deep. Unfortunately, logic was obscured because they were dicks about it. They are Negative Nancies, full of condescension, who offer no transcendence. Criticism is best delivered quietly, preferably buffered by a gracious comment on either side to cushion the blow.
So what’s the rule?
It’s what Mitt Romney got so horribly wrong in the last election. It’s a rule in comedy and in commentary that has stood the test of time:
PUNCH UP, NOT DOWN
Meaning?
If you must make fun of anyone, mock your betters. Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Speak truth to power. Stick it to the Man. Harsh words should be measured out in proportion to the crime. For instance, no, you should not suggest that genocide and smoking marijuana deserve the same punishment. Self-monitor and — man or woman or transgendered — don’t be a bitch.
How do you know for sure you’re a bad comment offender?
When you mock the helpless or powerless or disrespect people who are trying to help you, you’re being a dick. If you go through life assuming everyone’s an idiot but you, bingo! If you’ve used the sentence, “I’m just being honest,” more than once in any given week, you’re undoubtedly the problem.
You’re not adding to the conversation because you’re not interested in free expression for others. You’re not listening, but you want to be sure we all hear you. You’re not pausing to understand before rushing to make us understand what a smart person you are. If it’s your secret wish that we all bow before you…okay, bad example. We all want that. However, if you actually do find a mistake and seize on it with smug, smirking glee? Warning!
Confirm your blind love of self here: You find a mistake of “your” mixed up with “you’re”. Do you assume it’s a mere typo or do you assume the person who made that mistake really doesn’t know the difference? Now try “just being honest” with yourself.
If you’re part of the problem, you have options.
1. Zip it and realize you don’t have to utter an opinion about everything. If you’re right and we are all idiots, you’re an idiot for associating with us. Consider scuba diving as a profession. You’ll have less of all that nasty human interaction.
2. Work on your social skills. I recently went out of my way to appear especially nice when I otherwise wouldn’t. No one can tell the difference if you do it ironically and, oddly enough, acting nice put me in a better mood. It felt good to pretend and, if I acted nice and came to feel good about it…wait…maybe I really was nice? Oh my god! We are what we do! We become what we pretend to be! (I am Batman…I am Batman…I am Batman!)
3. A person’s blog is their home and their home is their castle. Don’t say anything in a comment that would land you in the dungeon and chained to a wall drinking molten lead if you uttered it to the king or queen in person.
4. If you can’t be polite for us, do it for you. You’re hurting yourself. When someone is mean to anyone in particular, I check out their links, their blog, their book or their business. I do so not so I can buy their product or service because I’m struck by their brilliance. I want to remember them so I won’t buy anything from them. Voting with your buck may be the only vote that really counts for much, so vote for civility.
5. If you feel you must say something worthy of the dungeon, stop and reconsider. Is it your business to correct them? Are you being helpful or is this about the joy of gloating? For instance, get on Facebook and call somebody out on a mistake on their blog for all to see and your sin is worse. You aren’t acting like much of a Facebook “friend”. Consider sending them a helpful email and let them know you think they made a mistake privately.
6. If you don’t have anything nice to say, you know the drill. However, if you have transgressed and you want to reform, apologize to a human and go pet a dog. Say something nice to someone. They’ll probably think you want something from them. Shock them by walking away without a single acid criticism. Like Dalton says in Roadhouse, “It’s nice to be nice.”
For the afflicted bloggers:
A. Moderate your comments so commenters feel your blog is a safe place to express themselves as long as everyone stays civil. This does not mean everyone has to agree with you. It’s not free speech and opinion we’re trying to stamp out. It’s name-calling, unreason and harsh comments that hurt feelings. Don’t dumb down your blog with comment moderation. Elevate the tone of the conversation and encourage more conversation by setting that helpful atmosphere of civility.
B. There’s a theory that controversy on a blog will make it more read. That’s true. We will read more. Who here doesn’t read JA Konrath’s blog? (I do recommend Konrath’s blog, The Newbie’s Guide to Publishing, anytime. He can be cantankerous, but he’s not illogical and he is helpful. I find him funny, especially when he’s angry, but maybe that’s my daddy issues talking.)
However, in most cases, unless someone is a clear victim in a word skirmish, it’ll probably just give you stress without yielding more sales. I’ve seen many blow ups. Conflict is passively interesting, but I’ve never bought anything because of a flame war. Some bloggers seem bent on being negative for its own sake, without the substance. That doesn’t works. If you’re going to be constantly pissed off and kicking, you have to be twice as smart and funny as you are mean.
I do know of one blogger who sold a lot of books stirring up controversy and even started negative memes about himself. He now seems to regret that strategy and is trying to reinvent his brand. His rep seems to have negatively affected his life personally. I don’t think many of us have the willpower and natural predisposition to tell the world we’re jerks, loud and proud.
I’ll tell anyone I’m a contrarian, but that’s different. I’m punching up, not down. You know my motto: Question Authority before Authority questions you.*
C. Many blogs have the option of a star rating on each blog post, independent of comments. Delete that option. I did. I don’t see how to take the star grading system off blog comments, but since no one uses that, no harm, no foul. Grading posts contributes nothing to the blog. Mostly, you’ll get four or five-star ratings, anyway. Occasionally, some anonymous coward will click one star but leave no comment. You’ll be left bewildered what they objected to.
I rarely feel I have to deny a negative comment here. We’ve got a good thing going on with a lot of nice people. You’re all sexy butterflies and I thank you for reading ChazzWrites. However, any website that gets decent traffic will always attract the odd ugly moth. When that happens, I burn them before they come to light.
*Therefore, you know I’m making suggestions here, right? I’m not aiming this diatribe at anyone in particular and certainly not at anyone who is powerless in the world. I mention this to remain somewhat adorable in the face of knee-jerk critics. There, I think that should assuage the skeptical. As for the champions of unreason, who cares?
Related articles
Please spread the word:
Like this:
Filed under: blogs & blogging, Blog, blog comments, blog moderation, blogging, good comments, speak truth to power, writer, writing