Tag: Author Platform

Smart Advice from Smart People

Your Audience: Building versus Earning

2013 was a hell of a year. I did a lot of stuff. A lot of that stuff was huge: I ran GenreCon; I produced eight or nine full-day workshops over the course of the year; I went to so many cons that I could spend 2014 sleeping and still not pay back my sleep debt; I went to motherfucking Vienna and rode the Wiener Riesenrad, which is one of the few tourist attractions anywhere in the world that holds some appeal to me (largely thanks to its prominence in The Third Man and Before Sunrise). I discovered that riding the Wiener Riesenrad is a fucking terrible idea if you’re afraid of heights. One of the smartest things I heard last year came via Chuck Wendig, who did an interview at the Get Read online conference where he talked about author platform and maintaining a career as a writer. I meant to post about it back then, when I first heard it,

Smart Advice from Smart People

Writing, Not Blogging

I keep reading articles that say blogging is mandatory for writers nowadays. That agents and editors won’t take you on if you don’t already have a platform. This is hooey. Let me repeat that. Hooey. Cat Rambo has a sensible blog post about not blogging up on her website this week, which I’m linking to because: a) it’s good, common-sense advice that syncs into the things I routinely tell people who ask about writing and social media and stuff; and b) it neatly explains why I’ve been absent around these parts, and left everyone hanging half-way through the Die Hard series. The TL:DR version: I’m being mugged by life at the moment, and most of my brain-meats have been expended getting the GenreCon Program up and running. The head-space I’ve got left over goes on projects in order of deadline, ’cause when you’re working with limited time and mental resources, ya gotta prioritize the things that need to be done and

Works in Progress

Make Your Content Easy to Share

Today’s post is a short-but-passionate plea to a whole bunch of bloggers out there: install some form of social media sharing on your blog. If you’re not sure what I mean, go to your blog and see if you have something like this at the base of your posts: It may not be an exact match for this, but there should be something like it. A way of linking the post you’ve just made, quickly and easily, to places like facebook, twitter, and other forms of social media. If you have it, go upon your way, my friend, for you and I have nothing further to speak of. If you don’t have it, keep reading. Personally, I don’t care what form of link salad you use. My particular preference runs towards Share This ’cause it’s what I know, but most platforms will have a bevvy of options and WordPress, at least, offers the function to anyone whose installed Jetpack (and,