Category Archives for Self Promotion

More Mind Melding at SF Signal

Participated in another Mind Meld at SF Signal. This one is a reworking of post of mine from a few weeks ago on the plausibility of science in science fiction.

These Mind Melds are fun. Gives you a chance to write and think about a particular genre at the same time.

So go to the link above and enjoy all the pieces on the subject. Weigh in there or here.

By the way, the particular question was mine, too.

Shameless Self-promotion: A Look at SF movie novelization

I took part in a blogging round table discussion of  favorite movie tie-ins/novelizations at SF Signal. My favorite was Alan Dean Foster’s novelization of the original Star Wars film. That novel is as responsible for introducting me to the SF genre as any book or film and certainly was an early influence on me as a writer. As you’ll see from the other guest posters, Foster is a master of the novelization. Anyhow, go read the post.

There Are No Rules – Your Online Presence Can’t Just Be a Gimmick (Or: Using Twitter Meaningfully While Unpublished) via Writer’s Digest

Below is another post on writing, publishing and marketing. Regarding using Twitter as a marketing tool, I think the key word in the title is “meaningfully”. I signed up on Twitter just to see what it was all about. I gained some followers. Tweeted some, but never continually on a daily basis. I still don’t. Sometimes I try to tweet regularly as I have today, at the same time, I wonder how much of me is too much of me. How many of my tweets are really meaningful? Which ones will gain an audience? Which ones might snag a freelance assignment?

There Are No Rules – Your Online Presence Can’t Just Be a Gimmick (Or: Using Twitter Meaningfully While Unpublished).

There Are No Rules – How One Author Is Using Scribd to Find Readers via Writer’s Digest

Last week I read the post below from Writer’s Digest, and it motivated me to check out Scribd. Marketing/promoting my work and my writing is probably the most difficult aspect of my writing life, almost as difficult as the writing itself. I had found some useful documents on Scribd, and signed up to download them. Now I’ve created a profile here: My Scribd Profile.

Since creating a profile, I’ve uploaded several freelance pieces. I also plan to upload a piece of fiction I’m drafting. And I may upload a draft of a novel. I’ll see what happens.

via There Are No Rules – How One Author Is Using Scribd to Find Readers.

Best Blogging Practices, Part 4: The Blog Without a Name via Big Bad Book Blog

Here is the fourth of a series of posts from Big Bad Book Blog on blogging and promoting y0ur blog and your brand (aka, yourself) as a writer.  To me self promotion is a necessary evil, and yet even before the Interwebs existed, writers such as Dickens and Twain were out there promoting themselves, their works and their opinions.

As a writer, I have a hard time marketing myself. I’m innately shy. I also don’t have a book to promote — not at the moment. But, I do write freelance, and would like to make more money doing that. I’m also looking for full time employment, preferably as a writer or editor. So getting the word out is important.

But what is too much? What is too little?

via Best Blogging Practices, Part 4: The Blog Without a Name.

Booking Through Thursday: A Shout Out to the Great Unknown

Here is this week’s Booking Through Thursday:

Who’s your favorite author that other people are NOT reading? The one you want to evangelize for, the one you would run popularity campaigns for? The author that, so far as you’re concerned, everyone should be reading–but that nobody seems to have heard of. You know, not JK Rowling, not Jane Austen, not Hemingway–everybody’s heard of them. The author that you think should be that famous and can’t understand why they’re not…

This is a tough question to answer. I haven’t read any new or emerging authors this year (Yes, Yes, I know! We’re only 21 days into this fresh new year, but still . . .). I suppose I could promote my own work , but that seems a little narcissistic, doesn’t it? Besides, I have yet to complete that novel I’ve supposedly been working on for the past five years so there is no book to brag about. I haven’t published a short story since 2004. And I haven’t published any freelance work since late 2008.So self promotion doesn’t seem to be in order.

On the other hand, I did read some new fiction early last year, emerging writers Joe O’Connell and Karen Harrington, and they are certainly worth championing. New writers need all the promotion they can get these days. And I’ve read a lot of nonfiction that I’ve enjoyed by William Bradley.

Another writer traversing the nonfiction map whose work is worth looking into is Dinty W. Moore . Start with his witty Google Maps essay , though you’ve probably read it already. (If you haven’t, do.)

Plenty of writers out there deserve more attention. One of my favorites is New Yorker writer Susan Orlean. Her features, besides being great magazine profiles, delve into the quirkier side of life, like her recent Smithsonian magazine piece on donkeys in Morocco. And The Orchid Thief is a masterwork of literary journalism. Who knew orchids could be so intriguing?

Stephen Harrigan, essayist and novelist, deserves some love, too. Harrigan’s Gates of the Alamo does what a historical novel should: it takes you to a different time and place — revolutionary Texas — and gives you a feel for that time and place, and at the same time, gives you a cast of characters caught up in that time without being stick figures presliced for TV movies.