Hey.
I've been a big moan in the past (we know, says everyone ever, we know), but there is one aspect of self-promotion I enjoy: author interviews and spotlights. They tend to be good fun, and they are an aspect of promotion that should not be overlooked. If you haven't done any yet, get involved. It's a chance to talk directly to your readership, to give them an opportunity to learn a little bit about what kind of person you are, about what drove you to write your crazy book in the first place. Yes, reviews and promo spots are great, but a lot of readers want to know if the author is similar to any of the characters, of if the author found her or his self in similar situations in real life. Young social media savvy readers in particular will want to reach out and connect - so give them the opportunity to do exactly that.
Everyone's a winner here. The author gets some positive exposure, the blogger gets some good content to post and tweet about, driving traffic to both blogger and author. An added bonus - this content isn't time limited. It stays up until the blogger decides to take it down (and we all hope they don't!).
As you do more and more interviews, you'll end up with a vault of answers you can give to a wide range of questions - although you might not need an answer to If you were a box of cereal which one would you be? very often in your career. You never can tell, though.
Plus, if you're a bit reticent like me, interviews will give you increasing confidence to talk about your work, and you should be talking about it because you should be proud of what you've achieved.
A great big thank you to the guys below. They truly believe in indie authors, and do their very best to promote those they showcase on their blogs. I enjoyed doing every one of these interviews and spotlights. Visit them, read them, follow them.
And if you get featured on someone's blog, make sure you re-tweet them. And link back to them. They've done you a favour - do the same for them.
Twitter handle: @TPolen6
I did an interview with Teri Polen on her great blog. This is a little sample of how that went:
What’s the most constructive criticism you’ve been given in your writing career?
There’s two things, the first of which I’ve heard time and time again, most clearly from Stephen King’s legendary ‘On Writing’ (I reference King a lot in blogs and posts and I just don’t care). Drop the adverbs. Don’t be afraid to just say ‘she said’. Honestly, I think this piece of advice makes writing a lot clearer. Going through a passage a few times and taking out adverbs goes far in the removal of clunkiness.
The second thing, and slightly more abstract, was my introduction to General Semantics. Look it up, seriously. It’s where we get the notion ‘the map is not the territory’. I learned about it from this sci-fi editor who was attempting to get my short story writing up to the point where I was worth printing. He nearly managed it. But GS can teach you a lot about clarity, word usage and meaning. Basically, I was throwing too many words at the page without considering if they were getting my message across (there are those who say I over-extend my sentences now – I was way worse back when I started out). Writing stories is fundamentally an attempt at communication between myself and the reader, and I want them to get the image I’m trying to transmit to them as clearly as possible.
General Semantics is meant to bring clearer thinking, peaceful interaction and greater sanity. This is the complete opposite of my home life. Daughters and cats result in none of these things.
writerdmayall.wordpress.com/2017/09/17/authors-spotlight-steve-conoboy/amp/?__tw
David put together a great Author Spotlight for me, covers both my books in detail with large cover images. Really appreciative of this one.
David put together a great Author Spotlight for me, covers both my books in detail with large cover images. Really appreciative of this one.
Twitter handle: @writerdmayall
Hit David up if you fancy something similar for yourself.
Twitter handle: @AuthorAAvina
And finally, this is an extract of an interview I did with Anthony Avina, who not only gave me a great review for my first release, but he's also going to read my next novel A Graveyard Visible. A hard working guy doing a lot for indie authors.
7) What advice would you give to up and coming authors?
Do it for the love. Really, that’s the most important part of the whole process. If you’re enjoying what you’re writing, then there’s a chance that someone else will enjoy reading it. If it feels like a slog, something’s wrong. I’ve dumped a couple of novels partway through the writing process because they felt so off.
8) What’s next for you in the world of writing? Any new or upcoming books on the horizon?
I’m currently gearing up for the release of A Graveyard Visible on 27th April 2018, so there’s a lot of promotion work and pulling together some reviews (which are proving to be very divisive so far – that’s either incredibly worrying or a great marketing tool). It’s being published by Lodestone Books, and the cover and the layout of the paperback look absolutely fantastic, so pleased with the result. On the writing side of things, I’m playing about with a possible tone change for an AGV sequel, as well as being deep into the writing of a story about the political activism of a pig. Yeah, it’s something a little bit different.
That's my highlights from the last couple of months. You know what? I've been enjoying doing little blog posts about upcoming indie books in recent times... Maybe I'll start posting some author interviews as well. After all, everyone wins. And it means I get to mess with other authors' heads by setting them weird questions about what cereal they would be and why. Yeah. Revenge.
Laters.
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