Glenda Larke on Authors and Social Media

Welcome to the 12th interview in the Authors and Social Media series; where I interview some of Australia’s most acclaimed speculative fiction authors and some rising stars.

This week we have Glenda Larke (who has also written as Glenda Noramly), who seems to me to be somewhat of a quiet achiever, having amassed 3 trilogies to her name.  

I thank Glenda for taking time out of her busy schedule to answer some questions on Authors and Social Media.

Sean:

How important do you view social media to selling your books or interacting with fans?

Glenda:

From my personal point of view, very important. Living in a place where I don't have much real-time contact  with other writers and none at all with fans, I find social media has been huge for me. But when it comes to attracting large numbers of fans or readers? -- Not so much.

 
I have a Twitter account (love twitter!) and 2 Facebook accounts (personal and group). I love the immediacy of both. I've had a blog for over 5 years and a website for ten or more, and yet the numbers have not been growing. I get a little less than 2,000 hits a month on the website and about 50-60 a day on the blog. So I suppose I'd have to say I love the intimacy of the contacts I have, I adore the feedback, I love the way it keeps me in contact with what's happening in the writing/publishing/genre world but I doubt I sell huge numbers of books as a result.

Sean:

Do you or would you want to receive any guidance from your publisher/agent on interacting via social media, both in a technical sense or in a 'professional presentation' sense?

Glenda:

The only advice I had from a publisher was "use the internet". My agent is actually much less savvy than I am!!I am blessed with a wonderful webmaster. I don't know what I would do without him, I really don't. Because he's there, I already have the help if I need it.

Sean:

There have been some recent examples of inexperienced authors reacting badly on the Internet in response to blog reviews etc., what are your thoughts on being social media savvy? What advice would you give to new authors?

Glenda:

I'm puzzled by the naivety of people who grew up with social media. I didn't (when I was born there was no such thing as a plastic bag, let alone social media!) Any social setting requires learning the manners and mores, preferably before entering the situation. So my advice would be take a look around first before you plunge in...and of course, the glory of the internet is that you can do just that.

 
Every parent should teach every kid that what they put up on the internet is probably going to be accessible there forever, and teach them that taking a moment before pressing the send button is a good rule to have.

Sean:

In my experience Social media breaks down normal communication conventions.  People can be more familiar and 'take liberties'.  Have you experienced problems where this ease of communication has lead to followers/fans 'crossing the line' or has your experience been entirely positive?

Glenda:

I've had almost no problems in the sense that you mean. I think I've more trouble with being misunderstood, especially in chat rooms where people type quickly. In fact, I've stopped using chat rooms as a result. Face to face, it's easy to take cues from tone, facial expression, etc.  With the internet there is so much more room for misunderstanding.

 

I have had people misinterpret what I've written, sometimes because I said it badly, sometimes because they understood it badly. (I have to say that I do hate the anonymity of the internet -- I loathe comments that hide behind "anonymous". If you have something to say, then please attach a name to it, even if it has to be a pseudonym -- one that you stick to.)

Sean:

How vital is social media to the genre in which you write and how do you think social media will affect the way you write and interact in the future?

Glenda:

It's already a major force in marketing. I wonder, though, if we are all going to sink under the information. Already people are having trouble winnowing the gems from the chaff for eBooks because there are so many self-published things out there, a lot of them terrible or just scams, and they are all being marketed via the web. People are proud of following and being followed by X number of people on Twitter - yet how many tweets can you read in day and still have a life?

I'm not very good at predicting the future. At the moment I love the recommendations and the contacts and the information -- and yet the proportion that actually has an impact is small. For example, in a week I may have 50+ recommendations of fantasy books in the tweets I read. But I can barely buy or read 25 books in six months, let alone in a week!

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Glenda was born in Western Australia, the daughter of a farmer. She was educated at government state schools and the University of Western Australia, where she obtained a degree in history and a diploma in education. Married to a Malaysian scientist, she has grown-up children, and now lives in Malaysia, where she is actively involved in rainforest conservation.

Check out her blog here (the photo’s from Cambodia especially).

You should be able to find Glenda in most good bookstores.  Her most recent book is Stormlord’s Exile the last in the Watergiver’s Triliogy.

You can listen to an interview with Glenda conducted by the Galactic Chat crew below:

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Peruse Booktopia’s selection of Glenda’s books.

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Patty Jansen on Authors and Social Media

Welcome to the 11th interview in the Authors and Social Media series; where I interview some of Australia’s most acclaimed speculative fiction authors and some rising stars.

This week we have Patty Jansen, who funnily enough, I discovered through social media.  Regular readers might remember the review of her novellete, His Name in Lights,  I posted in April.

Sean:

How important do you view social media to selling your books or interacting with fans?

Patty:

I don’t know about selling books, but social media is vital for interacting with people, because it expands your reach. Not only does it allow you to talk to a potentially larger interest group (note that I avoid the word ‘audience’ because it’s not a one-way interaction), but there are pearls of wisdom you can learn, and submission opportunities you would never have found out about otherwise. Your ‘friends’ will be readers, other writers, editors or book buyers, or—very often—a couple of these functions rolled into one person. The important part of the term social networking is the word networking, and we all know this is vital if you want to get the good gigs in many professions, so why not writing? It’s not so much a question of who you know, but how those people know you.

Since the question was about selling: Readers feel good if their favourite author is open to interacting with. How cool is it to receive an email from Facebook saying ‘C.J. Cherryh has accepted your friend request’. Translate that fangirl moment into the feelings your readers will have. People like to be made to feel special, even if only for a few seconds. Interact with these people in a nice way. They have lots of real life friends, and they will say ‘this author Sean is such a nice guy, and he writes damn good books, too. You have to buy them.’ And in the long term, people will. But, you don’t go into social networking to sell books. You go into it to connect with your friends and your audience all mashed into one great interwoven network.

 

Sean:

Do you or would you want to receive any guidance from your publisher/agent on interacting via social media, both in a technical sense or in a 'professional presentation' sense?

Patty:

I am unlikely to be impressed if a publisher dictates what I can and cannot do online. That said, if a publisher encounters a writer who is new to social media, I think it would be nice of them to give the writer tips and warnings about things most of the rest of us have learned the hard way, by making the mistakes and having them fly back into our faces. So: publishers and social networking: tips on using FB, Twitter, etc.—fine, rigid rules—no.

 

Sean:

There have been some recent examples of inexperienced authors reacting badly on the Internet in response to blog reviews etc., what are your thoughts on being social media savvy? What advice would you give to new authors?

Patty:

Just one piece of advice: don’t be a dickhead. If you’re unsure what constitutes a dickhead, sit back and watch at any time some sort of conflict blows up. Analyse what happens. Some people get abusive (and everyone defriends them). Some people make hyper-long responses (which no one reads). Some people try to play mother hen and try keep an increasing divide together. Do you really want to be involved and risk being dragged to either side of an argument, quoted as proof for the reincarnation of the Evil Overlord, and re-tweeted six thousand times?

Consider for yourself how you want the world to perceive you. If you’re fine with being seen as an opinionated right/left/sexist/ulta-feminist/commie/religious/and-so-on-and-so-forth pedant, if those opinions are what you stand for, then fine, go ahead. Opinion writers and social commentators make a living out of doing just this. But this also means that you will receive a lot of wind from the opposite direction. Sometimes, the wind will be smelly. It may be beneficial to your fiction sales. Then again, it may not. It will certainly distract you from writing.

So I guess my point of advice would be: before you wade into the fray, consider how you want the world to perceive you, and act accordingly. I know it sounds horrible, but you are the product, and you have to craft an image. Hint: images that are close to your real personality work best.

Something I do when I feel compelled to say something in a discussion that is clearly going to blow up, is to state my opinion once and don’t visit that discussion site again. It is often in replies and replies to replies that the damage is done. And a discussion where everyone finds continual re-wordings for the same argument wastes everyone’s time. If people get angry, no one listens.

 

Sean:

In my experience Social media breaks down normal communication conventions.  People can be more familiar and 'take liberties'.  Have you experienced problems where this ease of communication has lead to followers/fans 'crossing the line' or has your experience been entirely positive?

Patty:

 

I think it is important that you realise that the one who sets ‘the line’ is you. ‘The line’ is how you differentiate your personal and professional (writing) networks. I use my Facebook account solely for writing. If people from real life want to friend me, I warn them, and then leave it up to them. The same with Twitter and my blog. My private communication is all conducted through completely separate channels. Except my brother who follows me on Twitter because he reads SFF and probably reads this (hi, bro!*)

In the writersphere: I am very informal and am not easily shocked. It’s probably safe to say that I keep my ‘line’ very close around me, but that doesn’t mean I’ll discuss any subject in the open, or answer any question. If the subject is controversial, candid or not-yet widely known, I take the discussion to email or private messages. That said, I don’t mention people’s names online unless they’re in their professional capacity. For example, I will mention the names of writers I meet when I’m talking to them as writers, but my family always go under the names husband, daughter #1, daughter #2 and son.

In the time I’ve used social networking, I’ve had some ‘interesting’ interactions, but none that gave me pause about my use of the internet. It’s positive. Full stop.

 

Sean:

How vital is social media to the genre in which you write and how do you think social media will effect affect the way you write and interact in the future?

Patty:

I have never written without social media. I’ve been on the internet since 1994, when I wrote non-fiction. I couldn’t imagine being without it. I think it’s vital regardless of genre. Genre-specific? I don’t know. If I’d been a crime writer, I still would have been writing in isolation had it not been for the internet. There are big geographical distances between writers full stop, never mind the genre. Social networking allows us to connect.

 

*My brother and I have this game of sending each other weird greeting messages. He sent me a ‘hi’ through the google search terms that come up on my blog’s stats.

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Patty Jansen is a writer of primarily hard Science Fiction, Space Opera and Dark Fantasy. She is a winner in the Writers of the Future contest, and her story This Peaceful State of War has been published in their 27^thanthology.

Patty has also published stories in the Universe Annex of the Grantville Gazette and Redstone SF, and local anthologies and magazines, such as Dead Red Heart, Tales for Canterbury, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.

Patty blogs at Must Use Bigger Elephants, about science, writing and about why elephants aren’t big enough. You can also sample some of Patty’s fiction at Smashwords or Amazon.

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Colin Taber on Authors and Social Media

Welcome to the tenth interview in the Authors and Social Media series; where I interview some of Australia’s most acclaimed speculative fiction authors and some rising stars.

Colin Taber, author of The Fall of Ossard  will be answering 5 questions on Authors and Social Media.

 

Sean:

How important do you view social media to selling your books or interacting with fans?

Colin:

Simply, it’s vital.

While there are other ways and venues for interacting with fans (such as old fashioned snail mail and face to face meets at signings and the like), social media makes interactions not only more immediate, but more likely. That’s a bonus for both parties.

Social media also gives me exposure to thousands of potential readers everyday. Unlike most writers, over half my readership has found me through the medium, whether from their friends’ recommends, shared posts, or carefully targeted advertising. Social media has given me thousands of readers scattered around the world. I love it.

Sean:

Do you or would you want to receive any guidance from your publisher/agent on interacting via social media, both in a technical sense or in a 'professional presentation' sense.

Colin:

I’ve received little guidance other than cautioning about what I might say. Of course, that leaves huge scope for me to put my foot in it. I try to be careful. Sometimes I post something and then remove it, more because I’m fishing for a reaction. I rarely swear on social media. I never post anything that I’m not prepared to wear, regardless of whether I’m planning on posting and deleting it later.

 

Sean:

There have been some recent examples of inexperienced authors reacting badly on the Internet in response to blog reviews etc., what are your thoughts on being social media savvy? What advice would you give to new authors?

Colin:

I imagine it’s something that has always happened, but now such incidents have the capacity to go viral with social media. Authors just need to put on their work face and be professional. In regards to people posting their own opinions about your work, whether as comments or reviews; you win some and you lose some. You can’t control what other people think, so ignore it.

If you post something, even if you plan on deleting it, you have to accept that it’s going to be ‘kept’ somewhere in the digital ether. Aside from always thinking twice about posting, also think about the nature of what you’re going to say. If you’re posting reviews of books and wanting to be a bit out there, you’ll need to consider that one day you might very well be sitting in a con’s green room with an author you had a go at years before on your blog or that a potential publisher might be turned off by your vitriol. What you post cuts both ways.

Sean:

In my experience Social media breaks down normal communication conventions. People can be more familiar and 'take liberties'.  Have you experienced problems where this ease of communication has lead to followers/fans 'crossing the line' or has your experience been entirely positive?

Colin:

Mostly my experience has been great. I love getting messages, feedback and ‘likes’ from readers. Such interactions help soften what is ultimately one of the loneliest trades. Having said that, I have had to modify some of my online availability because otherwise I’d never get anything done. There is scope for people crossing the line. I’ve seen it happen elsewhere, but so far it hasn’t happened to me, not in a big way.

I also get a lot of emails and messages (via Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads) asking how I’ve managed to do what I’ve done in regards to online marketing. Those always take me by surprise. I try and deal with some of that sort of stuff in my blog (or, more so, will soon be). The second most common email or message I get asks when the next book is coming out; thankfully, with Ossard’s Hope now released, that issue is behind me – until my readers finish reading.

 

Sean:

How vital is social media to the genre in which you write and how do you think social media will effect the way you write and interact in the future?

Colin:

These days social media is a huge part of how people communicate and find out about new books and share ideas. Everyday it brings new readers into my genre, educates people already reading within it about new titles and authors, and adds to the growing breadth and depth of that community. To say it doesn’t impact me would be to put my head in the sand. For now (until something better comes along) it’s a very real force.

Likewise, to say that the contacts that social media enables doesn’t impact my writing would again be to delude myself. While my storylines are pretty much set when I start out on a project there’s always opportunity for some elements to be shaped by external input. If I wasn’t influenced by reader feedback I wouldn’t be human.

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Colin’s first book The Fall of Ossard, complete with Shaun Tan cover art has been out for some time.  He’s just recently released it’s sequel, Ossard’s hope.

 

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