How to Get Published When No One Will Publish You - Part II
by John Long
Before we begin, I am dedicating this installment to Linda Yezak, who's posted question over on Christian Writers got me thinking about putting this out there for critical review. Thank you for the devotion to the craft and business of authorship, that drove you to questions that got me moving.
We are living through the most turbulent time in publishing history and one thing is absolutely clear; the communication savvy, creative self promoters will rise to the top like never before. With technology shrinking the cost and time involved in publishing, at the same time that publishers are perishing, creative self-marketing enhances your chances of success in a way not as evident in the past.
The cost of printing and delivering a book to a reader is much the same as it was a decade ago. The real cost shift has occurred in the area of developing new readers and plugging them into a consistent product stream to everyone's benefit.
"Intuitive communication," as opposed to just putting out "blog stuff," is rearranging the landscape of publishing in ways we are only beginning to understand. Many bloggers take the low road of blogging, which is similar to driving across the neighbor's lawn to save time getting to work. Intuitive marketing communication is the art of getting to the "so what" part of the message, quickly, cleanly and without losing your audience along the way.
I was taught, when I put together a sermon, to review the message and ask myself, "so what?" Jesus is alive. So what? If you can't communicate the "so what," you aren't communicating.
All forms of social media, from Twitter to FaceBook are important pieces of your public face and can't be over appreciated. Twitter is a short message, hoping to drive people to your other social mediums, where you develop your thoughts and direct a reader's long term impression. It is among the hardest forums to do well because you have so little message to work with.
140 characters is only too long when you have nothing to say.
When you "get it right," twittering is an amazingly intuitive tool. The title of the tweet is almost the entire message and that challenges and scares people.
Twitter is also easy to do poorly, just like playing the piano. There are millions of twitter people, who's tweets are so forgettable, I've forgotten them before I finished reading their tweet.
One rule I would suggest for twittering:
Do Not Put Yourself Out There Unless You Have Something Substantive To Offer.
Commentary is a great way to keep your name near the top of your follower's home page but if you catch their attention in a negative way, you lose.
A school of thought where publicity thinking is concerned says even bad publicity is good, because it keeps your name top of mind. Bad publicity and boring publicity are very different things and you need to consider that in how you tweet.
Next installment coming soon...
