No Sympathy for Bookstores

The general premise is that if you want to be a writer, you should buy books whenever you can, whether they are for yourself or gifts for others (this sentiment most often comes up around Christmas). I don't have a problem with this, to be honest. Support the business you work in. Makes sense to me.

This then moves on to the "and buy at your local independent bookstores." There are a lot of assertions to be made about the benefits of independent bookstores versus national chains and online purchasing. These claims are almost always made by people who live in large cities (notably New York) where independent stores like the Tattered Cover have well established their awesomeness¹.

For the rest of the country, the reality of the independent bookstore doesn't call for such unprecedented love. Of all the small towns I've lived in (five in three different states), the independent bookstore is much the same: used books, limited selection, disorganized or poorly defined space, a limited new release section that only includes names like Grisham or King, and prices set at full value or higher. In my current town, there are two independent bookstores, both conforming to this description. They open at 10 and close at 4, so even if I felt obligated to patronize them, I would have to take a day off of work to do so.

Not growing up in a place like New York where an independent bookstore might have a large enough market to survive the B&N onslaught, I am not enamored with the notion of the underdog². Now don't get me wrong, I don't dislike them. There are stores like the Tattered Cover that have so well established themselves that people can mention them online and others know exactly what they're talking about. Two thumbs up for those places. It's the presumed obligation that rubs me wrong. A business needs to earn my business. If you cannot provide me the book I'm looking for at an hour in which I am able to patronize without requiring vacation spent, you won't get my dollars.

Not that the large chains are doing any better. My experiences with the last two paper books I've purchased have been miserable. I skipped my hometown Borders and B&N and went to the Borders on Boylston in Boston. This is one of the better Borders in the country, so I should be able to find Tad Williams' new release, SHADOWHEART, without much difficulty.

...or so I thought. The book wasn't on coop or on the shelf. There wasn't even space made for it on the shelf. The first three employees ignored me, talking to themselves. The fourth one had never heard of it but was able to confirm that they had six in stock. It ended up being on a cart because it hadn't been shelves yet. What kind of store doesn't have new releases shelved the day they're supposed to be released? When I worked at Blockbuster, Tuesday new releases were shelved Monday night after closing like any common sense business would.

If I had purchased the book online, it would have been delivered today and for $13 less than what I paid for it at Borders. This brings me to the fundamental aspect of book shopping in any store, whether you're a local indie or a national chain:

You have to earn my business.

Amazon is the big bad wolf because that's how we roll in America. If you're the biggest, you're evil. Support the little guy. Fist in the air. Do the right thing. Go to your local independent bookstore and give them your business.

I don't give any business charity. If a local bookstore earns my business, it's on them and good luck to them. That's the kind of place I'll support and speak well of (and often--have you seen how many times I reference Jackie's Diner on my website?). Spare me the guilt trip. I was raised Catholic. It doesn't work.

I really wish Nashua (or even downtown Boston) had a place like the Tattered Cover. There's an antique bookshop near where I work, but that doesn't do much for me. Otherwise, it's online purchasing or continued bad experiences with the national chains (I ranted on twitter what happened when I tried to buy Bujold's CRYOBURN, so I won't repeat that, but it was even more annoying than this time around).

More so than ever, I am pleased with my decision to go e-only in my book purchases³.


¹ I lived near the Tattered Cover when I lived in Denver. It is indeed awesome.

² Which is weird, because usually I'm a sucker for an underdog.

³ SHADOWHEART is the last in the Shadowmarch tetralogy, so this should be the last paper book I buy, depending on how much farther Bujold takes the Vorkosigan series.

The Six Books of Harry Potter

Nathan Bransford invited readers to post comments about Harry Potter on their own blogs and link back in his, for which this post is created. Depending on how long you've been following me, you might have listened to the episode of the PodgeCast or even read the older post on my LiveJournal that covered the matter. Rather than digging through all that, I will repost here why I think the seventh book should be erased from the collective memory.

Why to read HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS

Molly Weasley vs. Bellatrix Lestrange


Why NOT to read HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS

Like many of the previous novels in the series, HPDH lacked a firm editorial hand¹. The 300-page trek through the woods was interminable. At least 100 pages could have been cut from that scene without detracting from the story.

The climax of HPHBP enumerates a number of rules for the final book. Harry is chasing after Snape and not having any success at all. Snape tells him that he'll never succeed without learning how to cast without speaking. More over, if Harry ever hopes to face Voldemort, he must first defeat Snape. Neither of these issues are addressed in book 7.

Never, not once ever, does Harry cast a spell without speaking in the seventh book. When it comes to the final conflict, it has no bearing whatsoever to the outcome.

Harry never faces Snape. Nagini kills Snape while Harry watches, so really, the whole ending of book 6 is negated.

WORSE, that negation also reduces Dumbledore's sacrifice. Why did he let Snape kill him? To protect the Elder Wand. Snape defeats Dumbledore and thus is the owner of the Elder Wand. Harry is supposed to defeat Snape so he can get the Elder Wand. The Elder Wand is one of three items that GIVE THE BOOK ITS NAME! That plotline is entirely disregarded.

Lupin and Tonks die so that Harry can be father to an orphan, bringing to a ridiculous conclusion to the character arcs of two of the most reasonable characters in the series up to that point. They throw their lives away to avoid responsibility² and their deaths are a complete throw-away. It's not even a scene of the book.

Harry sends Ginny, the most badass combat wizard of the group, away at the end of the sixth book. And she stays away. What character is this? Certainly not the one that had grown into a strong-minded woman in the two previous books³.

And the clincher, JKR's comments following the publication of the book. No, not that Dumbledore was gay. Who gives a shit about that? No, she made two comments that just make me wonder how she managed to write such an amazing series in the first place as she seems completely out of touch with her own characters.

Blog post 1: JKR answers the questions of what happened to the characters after the end of the series. Harry and Ron become aurors and revolutionize the field. AYFKM?!?!? Neither of them are smart enough to be aurors much less to revolutionize the field. They lucked into potions class and would never have been able to last in any long-term capacity in that profession.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, she had created an arc she never resolved. Voldemort had tried to be the Dark Arts professor and failed. Following, the school never had another professor for more than a year. Being his opposite and given his proven track record at surviving the dark arts (and experience leading DA), Harry should have taken on the roll to break the curse. Ron could have taken his self-confidence and gone on to play professional Quidditch, which is the only activity he ever truly loves in the entire series.

Blog post 2: JKR says she crafted the ending specifically for Harry to represent Jesus in an effort to draw readers to Christ through her fiction. Hey, if that's what she wants to do, that's her choice. But to accomplish it, she derailed her own series and turned it in a direction where she could recreate Good Friday in a wizard combat zone. Never sacrifice your story for your message. A skillful author could use the former to deliver the latter.

Adendum 1: I also contend that Neville is more popular because of the movies than he is because of the book. JKR uses Dobby as the character that arrives with the timely answer (e.g., gillyweed). In the movies, they use Neville who is a lot cheaper than a CGI house elf. Not only did it work, it was BETTER than the books. It fit the character better and fleshed it out. The Neville of the books never got any real attention (other than being a practical joke) until HPOP, whereas the movies began his evolution one story earlier in HPGF. While he gets a great scene in the final book, I wonder how much attention he would have got if he hadn't grown so popular.

Adendum 2: What would have been cool? In HPPS/HPSS (depending on your nationality), Ron is the knight and has to sacrifice himself for Harry to continue on to the end. If that had been paralleled in the final book, it would have been a stroke of genius.


¹ After the series became popular, there became a standard format to any Harry Potter novel. Part 1: Main plot. Part 2: Awesome subplot. Part 3: Lame subplot.

Parts 2 and 3 always got equal attention and swelled the book well beyond an appropriate page count. Parts 3 from every novel could have been chopped with no loss to character or primary plot flow. It would have just chucked lameness that we all had to wade through like we were sewer workers or something.

² I have yet to meet a (sane) mother who would sacrifice the life of her kid to be with her husband while he runs off to get himself killed.

³ In all their previous fights, Harry and Ron have required a third person to force them back together. When Ron returns with the sword, it should have been Ginny hauling him there with whatever cattle prod Ron needs that book. They abandoned their strongest weapon and the story abandons her too⁴.

⁴ I will admit to some bias, as she's my favorite character, but really. If you're going to war, you don't send the guy with the machine gun home because it's dangerous. Certainly the guy with the machine gun doesn't stay home once he's there.

50,000 words

If not for a dead battery, I would have passed 50,000 words yesterday in my WIP. I instead passed it this morning. Making a similar comment on Twitter yesterday, I pondered why I put so much stock in 50,000 words. Certainly it doesn't represent the end point of the manuscript nor the midpoint. I have never written a 100,000 word manuscript coming under or over that mark. I wouldn't have to do with NaNo because I do not participate. So what then?

And then I remembered why. Before--and before I mean when I would try to write but never finish--no matter how good a story was, no matter how clearly I could visualize it, no matter how much work I put into it, I would always quit before passing 50,000 words. The closest I ever came was with CAUSE AND CONVICTION, the first book of the Third World. That topped out just over 40,000 words. Then I wrote BLACK MAGIC AND BARBECUE SAUCE and hit 110,000 words. Since that first success, I have been able to work to completion on any novel that passes 10,000 words (with the exception of THE SEVENTH SACRIFICE, which I will be doing over once I finish JEHOVAH'S HITLIST).

Now, when I pass 50,000 words, it's a reminder that this isn't a fantasy. It isn't a dream. There are no excuses. This is what I do and I can see it through to the end. It's an incredibly satisfying accomplishment, one I have now accomplished four times in the last 20 months.

So, yay for 50,000 words!

I Love My Company

The formula I always say for meeting colleagues in the publishing industry is to take the decade of a person's age (I'm 33, so 3), subtract 1, and that's the number of publishers that person has worked for. It's amazing how accurate that formula is. Publishing is incredibly incestuous in its hiring practices, we list who we've worked for like a pedigree, and few people are satisfied with the first company they work for.

In my case, the first publisher I worked for was particularly nefarious. I am reminded of that fact today because I just sat through the annual health benefits meeting. Every large corporation has them, and the difference between my former employer and my current is like night and day, or really like Douchebag McAsshole vs Captain Awesome von Awesomesauce.

My last health care meeting with DMcA was representative of my last year with the company. They lied their face off, I called them out on their lies in a combative and non-constructive manner. The gist of the meeting was that they were changing our plans. They would cost more, offer less, have astronomically higher deductibles, and cap on services to everything. They followed this up with rhetoric about how much better the plan was for us because now we could have an HSA. I replied that it was better for us only if we did not get sick. This was a highly accurate assessment of the plan.

I skipped last year's health care meeting with CAvA, but because of the health care legislation, I wanted to see what changes might happen. This is where the screws were going to be put to us.

What I saw was not what I expected. This happened to me over the summer too. I missed the town hall meeting last year where the CEO came and spoke because I got lost (hey, I hadn't been working in Boston this year). When I worked for DMcA, CEO visits were a nightmare. They showed us an hour-long PPT showing how much money they made and that they were freezing our salaries, stopping new hires, and not funding forward-moving strategy so they could make more money. I expected much the same and for the first 8 minutes, I saw how much money the company made (in short, a shit load). The remaining 52 minutes were spent explaining our moral obligation to educate the world, the strategies we were implementing to do so, the funding those strategies would receive, and taking vice presidents to task for not being more aggressive in implementing fare business strategies.

I'm not making that up. Read that paragraph again. So what would I see at the health care meeting? This guy wasn't the wicked intelligent, charismatic CEO with the grand vision. This is the guy that manages the nuts and bolts. This is where you squeeze the workers for cost savings.

Oh, when will I learn. First, the guy is funny in his own right. Second, a discussion of cost didn't come until 40 minutes in and it was only one slide long. He started with "Our biggest expense is high-value illnesses like cancer, so we're changing policies to make it easier for employees to receive preventative care." Yes, my company actually uses common sense. Rather than limiting health care access to reduce costs, it increased front-end expenditures to reduce larger expenditures for untreated illnesses. 100% preventative coverage, free cancer screenings, and distributing free copies of a popular nutritional author who happens to be published by our trade division. Total costs are rising marginally, but the services my company offers me is improving across the board.

This is how corporate America should act. This is the ethical and responsible relationship a company should have with its employees. This is Captain Awesome von Awesomesauce. I love my company. It is the greatest place in the world to work.

And at the very end of the presentation he dropped the bomb. Because of new health care legislation, my company's health plan is considered a Cadillac plan. Come 2018, the company will have to pay the government $80 million a year to continue offering this level of coverage to its employees. What? No! This is how a responsible American business should treat its employees. They should all be doing this. The company will not consider an additional $80mm charge to its annual health costs. So it will instead be forced to reduce benefits to fall outside this range.

Dammit Congress. I'm annoyed, but am not worried. The current health care legislation will not be what is implemented in 2018. Still, what the hell. You could quadruple my salary and I still wouldn't make the "rich people are bad" $250k. What are you doing taxing my health care?

Clarification, Explanation

I changed my twitter profile recently from "I write." to "I write in the morning. I make ebooks all day. I write in the evening. I do other stuff." There was some confusion to this statement. It was presumed that I self-publish in ebook format, and that is not the case. I work for a publishing company as a media project manager. One of the things I am responsible for creating is the ebook (in its many formats, pdf, xml, flash, etc). I changed it because in the pub-o-sphere, the paradigm of agents giving advice to aspiring writers, they can forget that we have day jobs too. I have eight years in publishing, six of those in media production. I have participated in the creation of estrategy and worked the guidelines for xml creation from typeset PDFs of finished books. So, you can imagine, when an agent tells me I'm wrong about ebooks, it grinds my gears. The closest an agent will get on the production side is perhaps giving feedback on a cover. When it comes to this part of the business, the paradigm is reversed. There is a caveat to all this.

On my website, I list the jobs I've held. At the bottom of the list is my current job in educational publishing. My web presence elsewhere is part of the trade publishing community, blogs, twitter, just like how all of you found me at one point or another. In that environment where there is a limit to characters or an amount of time you can make your point before readers go on to the next post, I leave off the "educational" because most people don't understand the difference. I also say I work for a big 6 publisher because I do not want to say which publisher it is and there isn't a term any of you would understand otherwise. I do work for the parent company of one of the big six. I am in their higher education division rather than their trade pub division.

Here's why this matters: 1) The acquisition of trade titles is different than the acquisition of education titles. For all my bad experiences with a perpetually late editorial staff that has no understanding of production or media (of which there are many), I have no basis to claim the same for trade.

2) I do not want it to appear as if I am intentionally deceiving people or suggesting that I have a role in trade when I do not. I have never worked in trade and never intend to do so as anything but an author.

Here's why it doesn't: 1) In corporate strategy sessions, technological strategy often has to take into account both sides of the business. Efficiency is always the key word and a method I use for making my ebook is highly likely to be used on the trade side as well. Disparate systems cost money!

2) Print and media in general are established workflows that are not affected by what they are publishing. Printing a book is printing a book. You need to know your trim size, your paper weight, your final page count, the weight of the paper for the cover, and various milestones for your schedule. The subject matter of the book doesn't matter. The printing process is the same. The same is true for media. An enhanced ebook is an enhanced ebook. File format matters MUCH more than subject matter. Is this thing for Kindle? Nook? Our own proprietary ebook viewing system? The skill set I have in media transfers 100% to trade.

So there you go. Full disclosure. I work for the largest publisher in the world. So often people say largest and they're just talking about trade, when in fact they should consider trade and education. It actually obscures a lot of "predictions" on where publishing is going because people only focus on trade. Educational publishing puts trade publishing to shame. So when you think, oh no, ebooks are going to kill publishing. I laugh. I laugh heartily. Trade publishing is having difficulty adjusting to ebooks, but Education has been pushing as hard as it can for years to get to this point. The ebook revolution is a gold mine for educational publishing. Where does educational publishing lose the most money? Not piracy. Used book stores. How do you sell an ebook to a used book store? Exactly. A collapse of the trade division of my company would see total yearly revenue drop by only 25%.

The end of publishing? Oh no, my friends. This is only the beginning.

(Technical note: The information in this post is stated as personal observation and without review by my HR department. The information is non-proprietary and represents experiences gained working at two separate publishing companies over the course of 8 years. Chill.)

Pay Attention, Stupid

Google Home Page has been increasingly deficient in updating modules with new blog posts. I follow a collection of industry people who post daily and lately, some of their posts haven't been showing up until days later. That was another impetus for me to switch from LJ to Blogger. The Blogger Dashboard is much more effective at telling me when content is available. (I'm told it's the same thing as Reader, but I started with Google Homepage when I had a lot of non-blog modules included as well, but they have fallen away over the years.)

One such industry person is Jessica Faust from BookEnds, LLC, a literary agency I queried for BLACK MAGIC AND BARBECUE SAUCE. She posted her form rejection letter on her blog today, and I wanted to compare it to the one I received (identical, in case you were wondering). It struck me that it was only to BM&BBQ and not WCO. Why hadn't I queried her again?

So I went to her agent page and saw the reason. She only reps contemporary fantasy, which Black Magic was. Wanted is pure classic fantasy.

...

Now, if you've done your homework properly, you know I'm wrong. She reps contemporary, fantasy. That reads "contemporary [COMMA] fantasy"

You see, that comma was at the end of the line and I skipped right over it. Right over. Woosh! Here's an agent whose blog I follow daily (where I participate almost as frequently) who I could have queried MONTHS ago, but because I missed one stupid comma, I did not send her anything.

So the rule that says do your homework before querying an agent? Here's a sub-clause: Pay attention, stupid.


Oh yeah! While the above remains a smart lesson, in this case, the decision not to query was intentional. I read an interview with Jessica where she voiced a firm opinion of word counts, which WCO surpasses by 30,000+ words.

Maximizing Social Media (Part 2)

Maximizing Social Media (Part 2)

This is a continuation of the previous post I made on maximizing social media. That one ran into problems shortly after it was posted because Facebook made some changes to fan page construction. It has been partially fixed. For a Facebook fan page to export to Twitter, the update has to be posted to the Wall (not just the Notes tab). That functionality was disabled but is now restored in the Notes settings (when you're in settings, look at the top of the Notes Settings selection box and you'll see a second tab option that will bring up a checkbox for you to choose to post your Notes to your wall). Facebook is still having trouble maintaining subscriptions and there's no rhyme or reason as to which pages are affected. When you list a URL for subscription, Facebook should check every few hours to see if new posts have been made. Some pages (like mine) drop the subscription, so I essentially import posts manually. But otherwise the trifecta process works.

One of the reasons I switched from LiveJournal to Blogger was to see if it was a matter of platform. LiveJournal is a dinosaur in terms of social media and perhaps it simply couldn't keep up with Facebook's quickly evolving interface. Now that I've attempted the same trifecta with Blogger and run into the same problem, I know the issue is with Facebook.

That brings us to today's topic, Understanding Social Media.

To properly utilize social media, you need to A) Understand the best uses for said medium and B) Understand the expectations others have for that medium.

This post discusses three media: Blogs/Journals, Facebook, and Twitter. For the purposes of this post, podcasts and video casts are lumped in with blogs/journals. They are outside the Venn diagram of this post and much of the blog conversation can apply to them, so there we go.

BLOGS and JOURNALS

Blogs and journals are similar in that you can use the same platform to deliver either. You can use blogger to deliver a journal. You can use LiveJournal to deliver a blog. It's a matter of content that separates the one from the other.

So, before we begin, we will assume you are not a New York Times bestselling author with a built-in fan base that will come find you regardless of where or how often you post. For the mere mortals in writing, there are some guidelines you need to keep in mind regardless of whether you're blogging or journaling.

Frequency. A blog has a set release schedule: once a week, three times a week, five times a week, seven times a week, etc. Whatever schedule you set, keep to it as best you can. If you're only posting once every six months, there's no reason for people to make the effort to remember your blog (even if you think, "Hey, just throw me in Google Reader and forget about me," that's still space they have to dedicate to you the person that isn't actually capable of posting more than twice a year, so really why are you worth that space?). While a journal may not be on such a rigid schedule, the concept is the same. If you don't give people content to read, they will not spend the time looking for what you have to say. A blog that posts rarely is not a blog at all. It's a zombie walking along and occasionally spouting out blog-like things but really all it wants to do is eat your brains.

Platform. There are a lot of options for blogging and journaling out there. Blogger, LiveJournal, MySpace, Dreamwidth, and a number of other derivatives that come and go. While you should find the one that works best for you, be cognizant of what a platform can offer you. Simply by moving from LiveJournal to Blogger, I've quadrupled my posting views and participation. People don't like clicking through. The more clicks they have to do, the less likely they are to do it. So sometimes it's to your advantage to post where the most people are, even if that means moving platforms every half-decade or so.

So there are the similarities. What are the differences? It's the intent that distinguishes the two. A blog has an expected topic focus and an expected release schedule. You will give advice, comment on the subject matter, or otherwise provide a review of the subject matter that is either newsworthy or instructive. Even the slice of life stuff is instructive. See what I had to go through? You're not alone! You can do it! and/or Don't make the mistakes I did! And you'll do so on said schedule you determined.

I'm cautious to list examples for this one. A lot of the old guard that made literary blogging such a big deal are starting to or have faded (Kristen Nelson, Moonrat, etc). Nathan Bransford is still going strong. He talks about agenting and writing and the business and he does so once a day, five days a week. That is a blog.

If that seems too stressful, consider a journal. A journal is similar but much more laid back. Topics can be as instructive or as flippant as you want, and you can post as frequently or as infrequently as you want. (Remember, it's better to have an empty page and an account you use to view/comment on other people's work than a handful of posts throughout the year. Much like having a self-published credit versus no publishing credit at all.) You want a good example of a journal, check out George R.R. Martin's aptly named "Not a Blog." You're more likely to find George talking about football than you are A DANCE WITH DRAGONS.

Whether you're using a blog or a journal, the delivery is the same. You write a self-contained mini-essay or rambling exposition on whatever you want and put it up for people to read. There is a comments section where they can choose to comment. The initial thought is self-contained. In my opinion, the more dangerous place for a writer isn't the post itself but in the comments section. That's where the back-and-forth exchange occurs. That's where the sycophantic praise happens (don't let it go to your head) and that's where the trolls come. It's easy for genuine disagreement to be drowned out by all the people who say they agree with you. It's easy to take dissent as a flame because of trolls who show up for no other purpose than to be rude to you. Be sure to listen and treat all posts--good and bad--fairly. Be calm and be careful. In the end, this blog/journal is your space and you set the ground rules. You establish the tone, and you decide what is and what is not displayed.

(Incidentally, despite the tone of recent posts, this is a journal and not a blog. When I get busy at work, posts will slow down, and when I see something inspirational like a good play, I'll probably comments on it as well. For me, I have other outlets for that kind of stuff which is why the content here is better defined to a general topic of writing and the challenges of trying to become a published author.)

FACEBOOK

Facebook is what made social media a part of our lives. It's likely most people reading this already have a Facebook account, so I'll keep the description short. It's a networking tool where you make friends and list your status. You may involve yourself with old school/childhood friends, family members, coworkers, or what have you. How strict or how loose your friending policy is your discretion.

If you have a Facebook account and you are using that for writing purposes as well, stop. Facebook puts a limit on how many friends you can have, so as soon as you are successful, you'll have to ask all those writing followers to switch. Best to do it right from the beginning so you don't have to inconvenience anyone. Also, it can get frustrating for a friends list who are personal acquaintances and those there for your writing to put up with status updates for the other half. Go create a fan page for yourself and steer all your work-related content there. It'll save you a headache later, and will provide you an outlet to properly present yourself as a professional.

You've seen a fan page whether you realize it or not. XXx friend likes "xxx show" That show is a fan page. Anyone can make a fan page. It does not require you to make a new account (in fact, it'll be linked to your personal account as you'll be the administrator of that page). A fan page allows you to post status updates like a normal account does. You can also make Notes (longer blog-like posts) or import Notes from a blog/journal. You can post pictures and links and your fan page can have its own list of people of whom it is a fan. It's almost like a second account except you can limit how much other people participate. You can prevent them from commenting or you can make it so their comments are there but don't immediately present themselves. It gives you an administrative control over normal Facebook functionality.

But best of all, it allows you to keep your life separate from your work. Facebook has millions of members and becoming a fan of something is incredibly easy. Every person that likes your page has that "xxx likes xxx" show up in their news feed. That means everyone who is a friend of that person sees your page and so on and so on and so on. It's institutionalized viral marketing.

(If you've heard of or experienced Facebook's privacy debate, keep an eye on Diaspora which I am hopeful will present a great Facebook alternative in 2011.

TWITTER

No one thought Facebook could be stopped when Twitter first came along and boy was that proven wrong. Twitter is the place to be right now. Does it make a difference? There's no measure to be sure, but it generates the most activity of the three. With 140-character comments, you can have conversations, post, and be reposted, created searchable hash tag discussions (such as the inimitable #amwriting). Twitter is growing into a community for various writing genres, such as YA. This is because unlike Facebook and blogging, where the poster maintains a degree of control, Twitter is fully open. It is voyeuristic socialization. As soon as you make a post, there's nothing you can do about it. Anyone can see it. Anyone can respond to it. Anyone can retweet it (unless you block an individual, typically reserved for spam and trolls or protect your posts, which completely defeats the purpose of using Twitter to expand your online visibility).

Here's how twitter works. Anyone with a twitter account can follow anyone else. They then see the comments of everyone they follow (assuming those comments are not directed to another person they do not follow). The more people you follow, the more posts you see, both their original comments and their conversations and responses to one another.

It can be disorienting given how different Twitter is to more controlled environments like blogs. At any given time, someone can respond to what you're saying. On Twitter, you are never having a conversation with another person. You are having a conversation with everyone who is watching you. It's just a matter of whether they choose to respond.


As an aspiring professional writer, it's important to have an online presence (as you will be told often), and social media is an effective way to spread word about yourself without an advertising budget. Others like what you have to say and they pass that along. Their friends see it and pass it on and so on. It's the fundamental tenet of social media, "pass it on." You need to figure out which of these best fits how you want to interact with people and how much involvement you want to put forward.

Be aware of where you're posting and the expectations and opportunities of that platform. It doesn't do you any good to have a blog you don't update or try to maintain privacy on Twitter. These are tools, a hammer, a screwdriver, and a wrench. Each has different functions, but all can help you build a bookshelf for your eventual best sellers.

Know Your Footprint

This was originally going to be part of my "Maximizing Social Media (part 2)" post, but that thing is already flipping long and at some point, you just stop reading super-long blog posts. Since it's the weekend (when fewer people read blogs, statistically speaking), I thought I'd post this part here as a preamble to the forthcoming behemoth.

There was a comment made in response to Suzie Townsend's blog post on the Perils of Social Networking. (I do not remember if the comment is in the comments section or was on Twitter.) In her post, Suzie says, "DON'T compliment people's pictures when you don't know them. It ends up sounding either condescending ("I'm usually fun and you look chipper") or creepy...or both. @shallremainnameless: I saw your beautiful agent photo. I hope i get to meet that smile in person one day.

This is good advice, advice that can be hard to follow if you were raised in certain areas of the country (Midwest or South like I was) and compliments are a standard part of conversation. Given the illusion of friendship social media can create, a positive comment on someone's appearance would seem on face value to be a nice gesture. Given that social media often constrains our statements to the point that context is lost, best to err on the side of caution.

That leads me to..."the comment," and I really wish I could link to it. Rushing to agree with the poster (as so often does on blogs...except for mine where people seem to be shaming me a lot), someone commented on how silly it was to compliment someone having only seen their user icon. Ignoring regional cultural differences (and now working in Boston for four years, I can absolutely guarantee you there is a difference between Midwestern manners and East Coast manners) or the fact that professional pictures can make the most average person look stunning, this still seems an incredibly short-sighted comment.

Know your footprint. Catalog all the different social media you participate in and don't stop at ownership. Every blog you've guest-posted on, every blog post of a friend that included pictures where you were involved, every forum that you've added a personal user icon to, every Facebook upload that was viewable by other people, every Twitpic and Yfrog of you being goofy in line at a [movie/bookstore/coffee shop/whatever, every dating service you've mistakenly signed up for because your friends insisted it worked for them (thanks Luke...jerk). All those pictures add up. Not only do they add up, they can then be downloaded and reposted by anyone else on the internet. You may be appearing in blogs you're not even aware of. So...

The most obvious and important lesson, be careful what you put on the internet.

The less obvious but equally important lesson, be slow to judge. When you presume people don't know what you look like outside of your professional picture, it's very possible that they do. Be cognizant of how much of your life you share with people and whether you unintentionally (or intentionally) foster that illusion of friendship with strangers.

Fear and Cold Water

I made a mistake today. I posted a list of agents who actively participate in social media that I would like to work with. There was discussion on the list and whether it was appropriate. Checking my email quickly while I was at work, I found the discussion continued by an agent whose opinion I value. I disagreed with the opinion, was in fact hurt and offended by part of it, but nonetheless I deleted my post. She said that such a post would inhibit my potential to find an agent. It may. I'm okay with it now. In my hurt and in my shock, I deleted it. I questioned everything I had been working toward and the community I was attempting to become a part of.

In a way, her post was a good thing. It was a splash of cold water to wake me up from the dream that is the internet. A digital play has formed that mimics real life: friendships, relationships, knowledge more intimate than strangers have of one another but less than true friends do. It's easy to forget through daily blog postings and 15-minute Twitter updates that you don't know any of these people, and they don't know you. They are not your friends and are not attempting to be so. It is a business. It is all business. We all know this, but it's so easy to forget when people are talking about books you've read or trips to Starbucks or reading on the Subway, things you do. It's even harder on media such as Twitter where you can watch whole conversations unfold if you're following all the participants.

I was not prepared for that illusion to be shattered so coarsely, especially not by someone I respected. I panicked. I deleted the post. And was depressed about it all for the entire day until I just sat down at my computer and typed out a response to the comment that was repeated as a blog post. I do not know if that comment will ever be posted. The absurdity of it all is that my list of six agents (because I included but Kristin and Sara at Nelson Literary Agency) was taken from a total list of 11 agents. Of those that specifically ask for fantasy and actively keep a blog/LJ/Twitter account, there are a whopping 11 people.

If you are an aspiring writer, you should have a list. It's up to you whether you post it, but you should have a list. You should research agents and find those whose vision, goals, and personality are a good compliment to your own.

Frankly, I don't think I'd like to work with an agent upset at not being on my list. If I am not included on a list, I look at those that were and see what they do that I do not that earned them their place on the list. It's an opportunity for improvement. Anyone who takes offense rather than saying thank you is not someone I would work well with.

Post Script: It was also said my original post was condescending. It was not intended to be so, and I apologized to those agents that took offense.