Don’t you love industry buzzwords? “Solution,” “brand,” “grow the company,” “face time,” and “leverage” as a verb. Twitter has a really good buzzword: “Favorite” as a verb. “@Severusnape favorited your tweet.”
“Tweeting” and “favoriting” are new to me. I have a memoir about my experiences during the 1970 Isla Vista riots and have written three novels. One of my novels is with an editor and will be ready soon. I signed up for a webinar and have been reading about different publication options. I’ve been to talks given by literary agents that made me want to stop at the liquor store on my way home. Everything I read and heard was the same. You can wow them with an awesome pitch, but no agent or publishing house will consider you without a platform. “Platform”–the publishing industry buzzword.
So I don’t know yet what I’m going to do with that novel, the first of a series of at least four. The books and webinar suggested starting with Twitter and Facebook. I’m familiar with Facebook already, so I dove into Twitter for the first time. I am supposed to look up all my friends on Twitter and follow them… only, I do not know any people on Twitter. I’m the pioneer of my group. I like being the first to test out new stuff, especially tech stuff. Still a bit of a nerd. But how to get people to follow me when I don’t know anyone? I haven’t a clue. All the same, someone in Ireland did follow me, and I downloaded his epic fantasy at once, read it, and was not disappointed.
Twitter is a HUGE info dump. I discovered that all but one of my favorite authors are using Twitter, so I must be in the right place. And here and there in the avalanche of tweets, I have found some wonderful writing advice. I have been prowling the feed, “favoriting” other writers’ posts like a madwoman.
My last post was about deciding to self publish the Isla Vista story when I realized how the whole university landscape has changed radically from the way things were. Now I realize that in addition to having a book out, what I learn from the whole experience will be more than worth the cost of having the ebook distributed and having a great cover design.
Soon I’ll be getting the book proof to review, and if all goes well, it will go out to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and a bunch of other booksellers I haven’t heard of. And then, who knows?
Noticing Magic Everywhere 
April 16, 2014 at 7:37 am
You might consider having a personal twitter account for conversations with other people and another twitter account just for following/collecting followers for book announcements.