Social Media and writing books

One year ago I was in the editing process of the first book I published. At that time I was just a normal (Well as normal as I can be) accountant. I didn’t have a Twitter account, refused to go on Facebook and didn’t think much about social media. Funny huh!

Now I’ve got social media accounts running out my ears. But that’s one thing I learned was that you have to go social media crazy when you publish a book. That is if you want to succeed.

My first venture into the social world was this blog. It has been so much fun. I at first wondered what I would write about on a daily basis. Then I laughed at myself because I guess you would say I’ve got a writers brain. If I could write a 400 page novel surely I could handle a blog post. So far so good. I don’t guess I’ve put anyone to sleep yet, or at least I hope not anyway. 🙂

Then the social media world spiraled. My editor set up a Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook for each book, then one for me, Goodreads, Shelfari, LibraryThing, Pinterest, Reddit, and the list goes on. It takes me a good part of two cups of coffee in the mornings to get through all of them. I actually look forward to the new additions to my pages from all of my new friends that I’ve gained from all over the world through these sites. It’s never a dull moment. I love reading all of the posts from other bloggers. I’ve learned a lot.

So, as a writer you’ve got to embrace social media and just go for it. I’ve been conducting an experiment with my smashwords book stats and Twitter. When I Tweet my books from the Smashwords website the views skyrocket. It’s funny how that simple click of the key just  makes people curious. 

As always, good writing and May God Bless you…

Thankful for reviews…

How can you be thankful for bad reviews? Well, when I get a bad review I notice an increase in sales. Odd, but true. I have realized that I have a bad review stalker. When I get a really good review on one of my books, they follow with a very mean and vindictive review. They always say the same thing, just change the words around. This time they added a paragraph telling how bad my grammar is and that a five year old could do better.

At first I was angry, then I realized that with all the good reviews on this one book, this one only showed a vindictive nature to this reviewer. They even gave me one star, why even give a star at all if it was that bad. If you’re going to review someone’s work, try to be a little less vindictive. It makes the review a lot more real. When you start slinging mud, it only makes the review worthy of nothing but mean spirited emotions.

Not sure why this one person keeps reading my books if they are so awful. If they even read my books. According to two of the reviews the comments totally don’t match the book or it’s content. Oh well, life goes on and we live another day to write for the people that truly enjoy our work and write nice reviews.

As Thanksgiving rolls around tomorrow, I’m thankful for those that take reviewing books seriously and know how to handle even the bad reviews. Thanks to my fan base that I thankfully am building, my books continue to sell at a slight upward trend. Not retire from day job pace, but a make the author happy pace.

As always good writing and May God bless.