Do as I say, Not as I do

Maybe I don't actually have to say this out loud but I feel like I need to: Most everything I put on this blog I would tell a client of mine, but I'm not always so good at following my own advice.

Isn't that lame?

I know, it totally is. But this blog is really about building MY platforms and recording it and my advice as I go along my journey. Most of the time I tell you about something I am also just implementing it myself.  Other times I realize I need to be doing such and such, but for some reason am not able to implement it in my life yet, so instead I just share it with you.  And some times I know that a particular tool or technique is not for me, but it may be for one of you so I post that. 

Here's some examples of things I think I need to do differently:

• my font consistency is lacking - in interviews I copy and paste whatever the interviewee used and don't make it my default font
• I need to have About Me and Sample Chapters of my books on other pages
• I should tweet more
• I should comment on more of the blogs I read
• I should respond to more of the comments on my blog
• my posts should be shorter
• I don't have an FB author page or use my personal page for all the writer things I should/could
• my blog template doesn't really say much about my writing (though it does speak to my personality)
• more things, but now I'm starting to feel defeated so I'll just stop

In short, I'm at a place in my writing where my main focus is on my first draft of my current manuscript. I'm also really occupied with being a mom. I'm not ashamed of those things, but sometimes my marketing suffers. That's just a fact. It's ok. But I hope that when you are searching for examples for your own platform building you look to my words not my actions. And be proud of the good things you do with your online media presence - don't dwell on the things you feel are lacking.

What do you think you should be doing that you aren't?

The Importance of Image

I have been listening to a YA audiobook in my car whenever I travel.  I don't want to name the title of the book because I'm not enjoying it. Ok, that isn't true.  I'm starting to enjoy it, but I've had a real difficult time getting into it. And it's not because of the actual story, which is really quite cute.

It's because of the actress reading the story.

She's AWFUL.

She reads with sort of a whine in her voice that makes this supposedly level-headed sophmore sound more like my whiny 6-year-old. And that's not what the story should sound like, IMHO. I probably would have stopped reading it because of this actress except that I needed to read this novel for a whole other set of reasons that really aren't the point.

So what is the point?

The point is that even a really good story can lose its readers because it isn't showing them what the story really is . And it got me thinking about image in general. Your image that you are so diligently building (maybe) on your blog may help you in so many ways, but if it isn't an honest portrayal of who you are, it can hurt you.  It can hurt you enough to turn away a potential reader, or even more specifically, a potential agent reader. Say an agent reads your query and then glances at your blog (as I have read many interviews of agents that say they do) and he or she sees that you only post really sporadically even though the sidebar says you post MWF.

What does that say to the agent?

Possibly they will think, "This writer isn't diligent or committed. What will this writer be like when I ask for edits? Will this writer turn in the next book on time?"

It could happen. For real.  Why else do you think those agents are looking at your blog? To see what you look like? No, they want to see who you are.  And if you aren't who they want, the agent may not request your book after all.

They might also think, "Ooh, fun and whimsical author who doesn't waste her time conforming to rules." And that's cool if that's who you are. (But I'd make sure you don't say you post MWF then, because it's that false advertising thing again).

This isn't really meant to be a high-pressure post. I'm not telling you to be someone you're not. This is just the type of conversation I have with my clients. I ask them, who do you want your customers to see when they look at you? Do you show it in every message you put out there? It's ok if your customers come to your website and leave if they realize you really aren't what they are looking for. Like if they come looking for YA and find you write Adult Mystery. But it's devastating if they come to your website and leave not realizing that you are exactly what they are looking for because you didn't tell them.

So now I'm asking you: Who do you want agents to see when they come to your blog? Do you show that?

Toot Your Own Horn

If you've followed my blog from the beginning you know that I have trouble patting my own back, but it really is necessary when you are building your image.

So as uncomfortable as this is for me, I am also very super excited to announce that I have been given my very first blog award!

Michelle Fayard of the Bird's Eye View gave this award stating:


Laura Barnes arrived on the scene just last month, but already her blog is causing some serious buzz. If you're looking for tips about how to work your social marketing faster and/or better, Laura is your go-to contact.

Thank you so much, Michelle, for passing this award on to me. I am truly honored to have met you through the blog-o-sphere.  Michelle was given this award herself recently, I might add.  If you haven't checked out the Bird's Eye View, I highly recommend it.

Do you have anything to toot about today? Tell us in comments.

Be Alert

I am far from alert at this moment as I am in a household of sickness.  Everyone of us, except my husband who is usually just the one carrying the bug, has come down with strep throat.  Boo.

So I am only giving a quick tip today, but one I am very fond of: Google Alerts.


For those of you who are unfamiliar with Google Alerts, here's a blurb from the Google website about what this nifty function does:


Google Alerts are emails sent to you when Google finds new results -- such as web pages, newspaper articles, or blogs -- that match your search term. You can use Google Alerts to monitor anything on the Web. For example, people use Google Alerts to:

• find out what is being said about their company or product.
• monitor a developing news story.
• keep up to date on a competitor or industry.
• get the latest news on a celebrity or sports team.
• find out what's being said about themselves.

Here's how it works:

1. You enter a query that you're interested in.
2. Google Alerts checks regularly to see if there are new results for your query.
3. If there are new results, Google Alerts sends them to you in an email.

For general queries like [ football ], you can get a summary of the new results every day. For specific topics, like[ cardiovascular atherosclerosis ], you might not get an email every day, but you'll find out when something new and relevant is published.

If you aren't using Google Alerts, please do!  It's the best way to track your image through the web and find out what people are saying about you. You can track as many terms as you like with this tool, even your competition or things you just like to follow. I recommend you at least follow your name or author pseudonym and your book title(s). Maybe you also want to follow your agent or editor, up to you. Sign up for your alerts here.

UPDATE TO THIS POST: From some of the comments I think I better mention that you can specify how often you receive alerts. I usually get them once a day or once a week depending on if I'm monitoring something for myself or a client. When I get them, I receive one email per alert term with a list of everything that the internet found for that time period grouped in type of item (Twitter, web, etc.). It's easy to scroll through or just ignore any time I choose. Plus you can end your alert at any time. Hope that's a helpful addition to the post!

How do you use Google Alerts? Has it been helpful for you? 

Who Are You Like?

This week I was asked to provide an agent with a list of books that I thought my novel was comparable to. That's when I realized I didn't know who I am like. Not who I want to be like, but who I am actually like. If you've done this before, you'll realize it really isn't that tricky of a task, but if you are a first-timer, as I was, you may have to do a bit of research first.

Let me start here by saying, the following is what I did and may not be appropriate for you. Hopefully it is helpful to a least one newbie author.

Suggestion: Go to the bookstore.

Not the library, not your bookshelf, not your list of favorite authors. The bookstore. An agent or publisher wants to see what your book compares to that is current. If your book is comparable that sold well in 1987, that just isn't useful information today. Go to the bookstore and find section that has your genre. I went to the children's section because my novel is for middle grade readers.

Then I read. And read. And read.

I picked up book after book after book and scanned the first pages. I didn't look at any books that were classics from my childhood, I was after CURRENT, like the last 5 years. It took a long time, I won't lie. Here's what I looked for:

1. Plot that was similar to mine. Of course. My story is about a child spy who befriends a princess and does spy stuff. Adventure/friendship. I looked for any books that had female spies and jotted them down in my notebook. Then I looked for stories with a mystery in them and jotted notes about them in my notebook. Then I looked for adventure stories that focused on an interpersonal relationship and wrote down notes about them.
2. POV. Books written in similar point of view as my novel. This may seem irrelevant, but when I was a kid, I remember that I absolutely hated reading books in first person present tense and I avoided them at all costs. POV is enough to attract or detract your audience. My current book is actually written in first person present tense, isn't that irony for you?
3. Voice. Not all middle grade books have similar voices. I looked for books with voices that were like mine. My main character is smart and sassy and my writing isn't as simple as some MG novels so I looked for similar stories and wrote these down.
4. Length. The reader of Magic Tree House novels is not going to be your Harry Potter reader, simply because Harry Potter is so much longer. I have an 8 year old that will only read books that have more than 200 pages. Any less that that isn't worth her time. My 6 year old will only read books under 110 pages. Anything more than that she feels takes too much commitment.
5. Style. I am more of a dialogue and narrative girl than description so I looked for books that had these similar styles. Some books have more of a contemporary style, some are more traditional. Find books that are like your style.
6. Character. Not to be confused with voice, this is more about the actual characteristics of your main character. Sure your main character may talk the same as the Princess Diaries heroine, Mia, but if your MC is also ugly, mean, and a math-lover, she will likely have a different reader base. No offense to math-lovers, but princesses have a totally different draw. Just sayin.

With all the info I gathered, I found the three to five books that had the most similarities to my book and I included them in my proposal.

Of course, I didn't just say, "here's five books like mine", because if there's that many books like yours, why do we need yours? No, the key is to explain why these books are like yours and then say why yours is different/better.

For example: If you wrote a book about a wizard in the first person that is 25,000 words you could say - Harry Potter is like mine because it's about a boy wizard at school fighting evil, but my book is told in the first person which is often times more personal to readers. Also my book is shorter and therefore geared to a slightly younger audience.

You want the agent/publisher to see that people buy books like yours, but there isn't already something exactly like yours in the market place.

Do you know who you're like? Can you name 3 to 5 novels right now as comparables and include reasons why? Do you look for something different when you are writing your competitive proposal? Tell us!

Learn to Share

Ugh. Do you know what's tricky for me? Sharing what I've created.

Seriously.

I'd rather write my songs and my stories and my blog posts (because I enjoy all of that) and not tell anyone I know. Strangers are ok, but people I know? What if what I say is completely stupid? Or wrong?? Or unpopular???

Get over it. That's what I tell other people and what I am now telling myself.

Suggestion: Tell people.

Tell people you have a blog. Tell people you have a Facebook page. Tell people you're on Twitter. Tell everyone.

This week I will: tell people on Facebook and people on the QueryTracker forum that I belong to about this blog. And if it's stupid, then who cares. You got to do it!

How about you? Do you have a problem sharing? Or are you all about telling everyone? Tell us in your comments!

To Share or Not to Share

While you're trying to build yourself, market your material, spread your message, no matter what it is or who you are, life happens. Life happens and sometimes you don't feel like being out there and exposed. You want to curl up in a ball or go to bed for, like, ever.

But just like I mentioned in the don't disappear step, you have to keep yourself available. Even when your personal life is maybe overwhelming.

Now you and every public figure has to decide (and nowadays you're a public figure if you have a facebook account) how public you want to be. Do you want to share with the world that you're going through a divorce? That you're sick as a dog? That you're moving? That you're gay? That your child has been diagnosed with autism?

Some marketers will say that you should keep it all professional and leave out all the personal. Others will try to give you exact guidelines. If you become well-known, you're private info will be shared whether you want it to be or not. But for now, you're in control. You decide what to divulge and what not to, what level you want to expose yourself at. So decide.

If you decide to share, decide what level to share at and be consistent. If you want to slip in some personal touches, do it more than just once every 6 months because otherwise it becomes jarring. This refers more to little comments like tweets about your dog puking on your shoes or about wrecking your car. For big issues, think carefully before you broadcast and then be prepared to be judged and questioned and interrogated and supported and advised.

If you decide not to share, you have to keep your marketing presence alive even if you aren't feeling up to par. Keep up appearances, as they say. If grandma died and you don't want to tell the world, you can't disappear. Market on.

It may not seem like this is an actual step in building your image, but it really and truly is. Decide early and think it through carefully. This is not the kind of decision you should make on a whim. Decide before the big life happenings occur. It will make it easier to already have your choice made.

Step 3: Decide how personal your image is.

So how personal is my image going to be? Well, semi-personal. I'm planning to tell you when I have a bad day and when my kids are driving me crazy. (Tonight, for example,I'm super grumpy - I have a massive headache and my baby won't go to bed.) But I'm not going to share the deeply personal stuff. My reasoning is two-fold: First, I work to escape my personal stuff. Second, I'm saving those stories for my books :)

I'm a Writer, Not a Self-Publicist

I've been a writer since I could write. As a child, I loved nothing more than a pen and a new notebook. I had a fetish for notebooks, in fact. I wrote and wrote and wrote. Diaries, stories, songs. Tons of songs. And as I grew and discovered other things I loved, writing never went away, always a constant companion. Music and writing. Acting and writing. Life and writing. I had children, and began writing for them. Well, for me, but inspired by them. First one picture book. Then another. Then five. Finally after all the dabbling and the collecting of words, I began a pursuit that moves writing from the sidelines where I've been pushing it, to the spotlight where it (maybe) belongs: I wrote a novel. And I've decided to try to go professional with it.

But this isn't about the novel I wrote. Or about how long it took me to write it initially (6 weeks) or how many drafts it's gone through (3 complete revisions and countless minor adjustments) or about the query process for getting an agent (maddening!) though all of these things may be mentioned along the way. Actually this is about my inability to self-promote.

 What does that have to do with writing? Apparently a whole freakin' lot. Today's writer's have to market themselves, create a following, promote their material. There may be publicists to help, but mostly, it's up to the writer. It's something I've never been good at, self-promotion. I've wanted to be good at it, but I'm always awkward at praise. Which is odd because I've been an actress and performer and often stood in front of people with my accomplishments. I just somehow cower at the precise moment that I should be standing straight and tall, soaking it in. And then I have a horrible time telling others about whatever it is I did or am doing or am going to do. So how am I supposed to be a successful author with this skill limitation?

Guess what. I don't know the answer. But I have been working in marketing for the last five years (I can promote other people just fine). And I'm almost done with my MBA in marketing. I think, with this experience, I just might be able to pull it off. Anyway, that's what this blog is. It's about whether or not I pull it off. And how. Ok, I don't have anything to promote yet, but marketing campaigns can take a long time. You can never start too early in your promotion strategy. Well, at least that's the way I'm playing it. So now that promotion strategy begins.

Step 1: Start a blog.