Anti-social vs social media.

I was going to title this post Autism vs Social Media, but that seems unfair to the people who are anti or unsocial but don’t have autism or mental health problems as a reason (some people simply prefer to avoid people).

I have encountered a number of discussions on Goodreads recently about the need for and the usefulness of Facebook author pages and other social media, and every time I am left with the same set of conflicted feelings. On the one hand, I know that social media can be a very powerful tool in this globally connected age for enabling a writer to find readers, build a fanbase, connect with fans, etc; on the other, this only works if you are able to use social media effectively.

If, like me, you have difficulty dealing with people on any level (in my case the reason for that is I have autism and a number of other mental health problems, but people have many reasons for this problem) then social media can be a real struggle; unfortunately this means that no matter how good your book is, and I’m not about to claim a Dickens level of writing ability here, but I do believe I am above average as an author, it will be difficult to get people to discover the books you release.

There are sites that will provide authors with a quick boost of promotion, but long-term success will only come as a result of good quality, consistent use of social media. What the solution is, I don’t know, but if anyone out there can come up with a suggestion for how I can market my books effectively, and long-term, without spending a fortune, and without burning myself out trying and failing with social media, I’d love to hear from you.

Nagivating Indieworld – An Honest Review

Navigating Indieworld

Julie A Gerber & Carole P Roman

Social media guru, Julie A. Gerber and award-winning author of forty-three best-selling, independently published books, Carole P. Roman, team up to travel the winding road of self-publishing, promoting, and marketing a book. Join these two self-help experts as they share their vast store of experience in an easy to read, comprehensive guide, complete with end of chapter checklists to keep an author on track. Learn the importance of a beta reader and the value of a good editor. Know what’s needed when preparing a list for choosing an illustrator. Compare the many ways to promote your book. Find out what each step can cost and where you can save. This guide takes new independent authors from the first draft, through publication and the complicated world of marketing. Included is a directory of resources to help get there faster. Navigating Indieworld will end up being the ultimate travel guide for writers on their journey to published author. Join us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/NavigatingIndieworld

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I was gifted a free copy of this book, not for review but because I have connected with Carole P Roman through Goodreads and she was kind enough to want to help me with my writing and promoting efforts. Having read the book, however, I just had to review it.

Julie Gerber and Carole Roman have done a great job of putting together a guide for anyone thinking of publishing a novel. The focus is on publishing as an independent, as the title suggests, but they also cover, briefly, getting published through a publishing house.

The book is organised into a number of different areas that encompass every conceivable aspect of writing and publishing a novel, and each one is written in a way that makes it easy to understand what is being said. Not only are the sections clearly written, they include examples where appropriate – I found the section on blurbs particularly helpful, it’s an area of writing I’ve always struggled with but seeing the examples enabled me to restructure my blurb into something that I feel is more appealing.

Having published in the past, I knew some of what was written about in Navigating Indieworld, and would have liked a little more detail to help me in the areas I didn’t know, such as social media – this is an area I’m uncomfortable with, so more information might not help me all that much, I’m actually thinking of paying for help – but for a new author this is a book I’d recommend reading this book so you know what you’re getting into and how to get the most out of it.

Blocked

Today I am suffering the agony of writer’s block – not with regard to my books, I’m in editing mode on Where There’s A Will and it’s going really well, and I’m pretty sure if I were to sit down with one of my many book ideas I would have no problem there. No, I’m suffering writer’s block when it comes to this blog; most of what I have posted so far have been reviews of one sort or another, with some random stuff which might give you all a few details about me – namely that I suffer from mental health issues and the approach of winter is giving me a bit of a kicking.

I wanted to write something a little more upbeat, something perhaps, dare I even suggest it, a little fun; I even considered writing a bit about myself so you could all get to know the other side of me, beyond the writing and the mental health issues. My good intentions, however, are not going so, well, good; I have so far started and deleted 3 posts because I couldn’t think where to go with them, and now I’m not sure what direction to take.

I’m not really comfortable with talking about myself, but I’ve heard that one of the best ways to connect with potential readers, and this is the main reason I set up this blog, is to let them get to know you, both as an author and as a person, so here goes.

Alex R Carver is not my real name; I have decided, for several reasons, one of them being the issues I have as a sufferer of autism/aspergers and other mental health problems, that I don’t wish to publish under my own name, so I picked a name I was comfortable with and which, although no outlandish, might stand out a little.

Despite ‘hiding’ behind a pen name, I think first and foremost I should reassure you all that whatever I reveal of myself on this blog, it is the real me.

Now, onto me, who I am and what I like; this is likely to be more of a list of qualities and interests than anything else right now, but I intend expanding on what I tell of you of myself as time passes by. From time to time I will put up posts that reveal more about me, and which touch on my interests, you can also check out my social media – such as it is, I’m not really one for social media – to find out a little more about me.

A few facts:

I’m almost 40 (a lot closer to it than I’m comfortable with)

I have brown hair

I generally have stubble, because I’m lazy about shaving

I’m little under average height, and a little (perhaps more than a little) overweight

Reading is one of my biggest pleasures, I cannot begin to guess at how many books I’ve read in my life, but there are still many more for me to go through, and I hope to get to them before I’m done.

Outside of reading, I enjoy TV and movies, and I usually have something playing in the background while I work – work being writing; I have been writing since the age of ten, when I was given an assignment in an English class to write a story, the story I came up with, which was significantly longer than those written by my fellow students, was a Famous Five style adventure that I wish I still had.

Currently I am unemployed, I don’t see that as a problem, though, because it gives me all the time in the world to follow my dream of becoming a full-time, self-employed, successful writer. My first novel, Where There’s A Will is scheduled for release in January, and I am on track to meet that target, with 5 more books already written in the Inspector Stone series (they’re currently on paper) and several other books also awaiting release, which should happen at the rate of 1 book every 4-6 months.

 

Anyway, I think that’s enough about me for now. My social media accounts, if you’d like to know more about me, are here

Twitter

Pinterest

 

Why?

Sometimes I wonder why I’ve chosen writing as a career. Okay, so I haven’t exactly ‘chosen’ it, I’ve been writing for most of my life, I believe I’m better than average at it, and I have been out of work for a while so it seems sensible to try and make a living out of a hobby that does have a potential income attached to it.

Days like today, though, make me wonder if I’m really cut out for it. I had a writing career previously under another name, it was only a hobbyist kind of thing then, and circumstances forced me to give it up, but before they did I was starting to do well enough that I was making enough money to believe I could do it full time.

Now I am back at the beginning, trying to get my books ready for release, and trying to promote the novella I have already released. My novella is free on Kindle today and tomorrow to try and generate some interest and I have been looking around for places to promote and let people know about my freebie; one of the places I visited is the Amazon discussion boards, where I made one post before getting discouraged and deciding not to bother.

The rules of the discussion boards have changed since I was last there, several years ago, and apparently you are no longer allowed to promote your own books there, as was pointed out to me almost straight away – that’s fine, I can live with that, I wasn’t aware of it but am now; my problem is that the person who pointed it out to me spotted one typo in my post, which was written quickly, and immediately declared that if my post is anything to go by my book must be unreadable.

I don’t mind that I was told what I posted was against the rules, I don’t mind either that my spelling mistake was pointed out to me, what I mind is the pretty rude way my book is declared bad – without it even being looked at – on the basis of 1 post on a forum. This has reminded me of why I didn’t much like the amazon discussion boards when I was using them before, there’s a lot of rude people on there, people who feel they can be insulting just because they can; as I remember, the behaviour tripped over into trolling on a few occasions, which gets to me.

This kind of thing does nothing to help me with my issues surrounding socialising and interacting with people; I’m already struggling with them. I don’t do well at dealing with people, and encountering rude or inconsiderate people makes me want to withdraw and avoid the entire social media world, whichever corner of it I might be trying.

My first full-length novel is due out in January, and I know I’m going to have to work something out before then. Right now I’m thinking I will be doing very little with social media, it’s just not me, and sticking with paid advertising, at least until I can afford to hire someone to handle the social media stuff for me.

If anyone has good suggestions on how to handle this stuff without making my brain go into meltdown and giving me panic attacks that send me running for the hills, I’d really appreciate it.