You may be an author or a writer. And you love this, because to speak in front of more than one or two people (maybe even that too!) scares you to death.

But learning to speak as an expert on what you write about? There’s a gold mine in there, trust me.

I’ve been speaking on being a writer and marketing as a writer since 2002. My venues are small, about 100-200 people and they are writing conferences, usually themed, spiritual writing conferences, fiction writing conferences, and it’s only growing from there. I’ve met tons of people who always want to know what’s new in my writing career every time I see them in person or on Facebook!

That’s a powerful way to reach more than your immediate acquaintances about your latest book, don’t you think?

How does one find speaking opportunities?

Here’s a list of ideas:

1. Your local community. Churches, civic groups, libraries, bookstores, just about anyone who has a published book has a veritable golden ticket to local speaking engagements. There may not be pay, there may be a small honorarium, but the opportunities are there.

2. Your regional chapter of a national writer’s organization. Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustators, America Society of Journalists and Authors, Romance Writers of America, there are many more out there. You could speak on a writing topic or a research topic for these groups.

How to practice speaking in front of an audince?

1. Twitter chats. It’s happening already on Twitter. Grab a hashtag (#WCLW for Michelle Rafter’s Word Count Last Wednesday, for instance; I’ll be the featured guest on September 29 talking about using Facebook for authors!). Get people to get on Twitter at the time of the chat, and start chatting. It may start out small at first, but it will grow. This helps you get used to writing-speaking before you actually have to.

2. Webinars. Have a great idea that helps people with how-to steps? Host a webinar. (Again, this isn’t EXACTLY speaking, but it’s excellent training.) I’ve got an upcoming free webinar with Writer’s Digest in the next few weeks (I’ll keep you posted!).

Action Tip: Consider speaking as well as writing to build your platform and to get visible as an expert. You may really enjoy the experience!

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I’ve said before on this blog that you should start with social media (as an author) with the lowest barrier to entry (easiest entry point). I am now here to say: start a blog.

You may be freaking out. You may be saying, “Hey, she just reversed and contradicted herself!”

Say what you will, but don’t freak out.

A blog is the lowest barrier entry to social media. Seriously. Consider a blog your new content hub. You only have to post information that your audience wants and that you already know. It isn’t rocket science and it shouldn’t take you hours of your day. It should take time only because you want it to be the best it can possibly be, not because you’re sitting there freaking out in front of your computer that this social media/blogging thing is a waste of time and will anyone even read what you write?

Don’t give away your energy.

Remember, how everyone used to say that email was archaic? That it was outdated, old? Recently, it was said that Generation Y doesn’t even use email. That’s all true.

But, as the Internet grows by leaps and bounds (yes, still), the people just now getting online in a serious way are using email and email alone. Less than half of the new Internet users polled in a 2009 study are on social media. Thus, the way to the majority of your buying audience’s heart . . . at least for now . . . is blogs.

Wait a minute. Did you say blogs or email?

I said blogs.

Blogs can be delivered via email using RSS. Blog posts can be emailed. Ezines are emailed, which direct people to posts on your blog.

Folks have been saying that email is out. Well, it’s back and in a major way. And I’ve heard several people in the past week say (out loud) that they are thinking about ditching their blog and going strictly to email. I think that is a great idea . . . for them . . . but for authors and writers and anyone who is trying to sell books, it’s a mistake.

You’re going to gather interested people to yourself by writing. The best way to get that writing seen (aside from writing your book) is still a blog. You can Tweet out your posts. You can post your blog writing on Facebook. You can spread so much content around, it’ll be like spreading jam on a PB&J sandwich.

Because your blog is your content hub. It’s central intelligence. It’s where everything originates, draws from, points back to, and circulates around. You create a blog, you’ve just begun your journey into social media.

Unless you are really, really good at email newsletters. If you can knock out your own email newsletter that gathers thousands of subscribers without a blog, go for it!

But I’ll go down in history as the one who said: a blog is a content hub. It works, if you’re willing to do the work.

Action Tip: So, you’re going to start a blog? Not sure where to start? Sign up for my biweekly social media strategy eZine (sign up box is up toward the top of the page and to the right of this text) and you’ll get tips and tricks on blogging, including a free ebook, “Author’s Guide to Blogging” coming soon from yours truly.

Lots of questions:

How do I market the books already published and have time to write the new books?
How do you corral the social media? It’s taking over my entire life!
I can’t focus on the new book when I’m so into promotion for the recent one. Help!

These are normal questions. This is the age-old question for any artist. How to make a living and create amazing art at the same time? I don’t think we’ve yet hit a solution either. I hear novelists, artists, screenwriters, actors, producers, and directors asking the same questions all over? Been on any art or writing forums lately?

There is no easy one-size-fits-all answer.

It depends on your work. What strategy do you have in place to write new work and promote the published work? How do you keep yourself sequestered to bring forth the new dream when every day Twitter scrolls by like textual diarrhea?

I like to think of marketing as playing a game. Robert Middleton of Marketing Ball fame talks about how marketing is like a game of baseball. You move from base to base as you answer the questions your prospective customers ask of you. For book authors, prospects are asking: Does this author know what she’s talking about? Is she a good writer? Does he provide practical tips for me? Do I learn what I need to know from this guy’s book?

Think about how you can create a marketing strategy from just those questions. You could start a blog or eZine and answer those questions in different variations using different mediums. A blog post talking about how you discovered the steps you give in your book, an eZine sharing a case study about how another professional you know tried their own method, then found yours and they had much more success. Get the idea?

Another strategy would be to tell a story. And we’re writers, this is what we do for a living, right? The story can be how all your life you were drawn to this certain kind of cheese (bad example, but bear with me) and then suddenly, one day you realized that this other cheese suited your needs better. And voila, your life was changed, the world opened up, the sun came out, and so on and so on. You engage your audience (and their questions) by telling them how you experienced those same questions and how you decided to answer them. And then you publish that “story” as a manifesto or as a white paper or as a series of blog posts that people searching for you on Google will find when they click on your web site or blog. You’re preloading your content with the most likely questions. And then on your blog, you host a link to our book from independent booksellers and Amazon so that people who see that you do know what you’re talking about. They realize you will answer all their questions and they will learn something from you and they order your book. Or they leave a comment or they lurk for several maddening weeks until they buy.

You can’t force people to buy your book. You can’t force anyone to read your blog. You can, however, make it so inviting, so interesting, so intriguing that your target readership just can’t resist.

Action Tip: Information no longer goes out to an audience. The audience comes looking for information (mostly via the Internet). How can you take advantage of this shift in our society (called inbound marketing) and use it to your advantage?

I was talking about my BSM (before social media) writing career with someone the other day and as I spoke, I realized that many of my readers here might not realize that this social media for authors thing was a direct result of me being an author whose books went out of print. I didn’t just decide that I was going to become an expert at social media . . . oh yeah, for authors. I am an author. And I am thrilled with social media. And much of what I see happening in social media right now is primed for authors. The publishing industry may lose midlist authors at the speed of sound, but the social media industry is saving them.

Yeah, I was one of those lost authors. Back in the 1990s, I wrote books, eight of them in fact. I sold all of these books without social media (or an agent for that matter) and I learned a lot about how tough the publishing industry is.

It’s tough. It used to be tougher to get yourself noticed by publishers. Back then, there wasn’t Facebook or Twitter or even blogs. This was 1997; the Internet was AOL. I had only been online for two years and my computer was so old (a used 486 laptop) that I had to turn off images whenever I wanted to download web pages. I had an extra phone line for my dial up Internet access. (Yes, I did live way out in the boonies; in a town of about 1,500 people actually.) I helped the postmaster with her email, often going back into the mail sorting room to restart her hard drive. (She still remembers me and tells my mother hello all the time!)

So it’s not like I didn’t have the Internet or email. I did. And I used it to my benefit by connecting with a lot of information, including how to write book proposals and how to approach publishers. The first publisher I approached didn’t do royalties (I was so naive without an agent, I didn’t care) and gave me a flat sum to write seven books for them in 1997 and 1998. They had liked my poetry. (Again, yes, I was a poet once. I poured out my grief in verse after the death of my beloved grandmother.) And so, I was published.

How did that happen? I still don’t know. I was in the right place at the right time. My books may have been from a packager/small publisher, but they scored endcaps in Targets for three years straight. My books were in gift shop catalogs for years. I remember, because I sent out letters to local gift shops telling them so. (Businesses like gift shops didn’t have email back then.) I talked up my books for as long as they were in print.

That may surprise many of you. I know a lot of authors who believe that marketing and promotion of a book only happens in the six weeks leading up to and after a book is published. Yes. And those authors are now out of print.

Just like me.

And I didn’t ever stop marketing. I’m still out of print. It doesn’t mean my books are bad or poorly put together (they were gorgeous hardcovers with vellum book jackets); I have several sitting on my shelf right beside me. It means that there was too limited a way for readers to find out about my books. It means that there were no tools in place to help authors promote and market their books for as long as they are in print.

Things are so much easier in 2010 (I am so thankful!) and my next book will be so much fun to promote! I, for one, can’t wait to start the promotion part. It’s now my favorite thing to do (second to actually writing and revising my book).

Why, you may ask? Why would you love to market and promote?

Because it’s so much better now. It’s possible for authors to promote and market their own books better than their publishers. It’s possible that authors will become bigger brands than publishers!

And that gets me very excited.

Action Tip: Have you been thinking you’ll only have to promote your new book for a couple of months around the release? Can you change your mindset?

In future posts, we’ll be brainstorming ways that authors can promote their books to keep them in print for many, many years and in a way that doesn’t let the promotion take over the writer’s life. Stay tuned.

When I launch a new site, the content list looks like this:

1. web site
2. blog posts and pages
3. eZine
4. ebook
5. Tweets

I can’t just use the same content in the same way over and over for all of these mediums.

I know you’re now hyperventilating a bit. Hang on.

It doesn’t mean you’re researching and writing all of these pieces separately, it means you’re doing the initial research and then spinning off the pieces for each medium. Not sure what I’m talking about?

Read on.

1. The web site is in its own category. It’s standard copywriting. It’s where you answer the questions and prove you’re reputable to be offering the products or services you’re attempting to sell. I usually take a few weeks to a month on this. I often don’t start with this.

2. The blog is where I start. What do I want to write about? What do I hear are the biggest problems faced by my audience or potential buyers? I often can articulate for myself best using blog posts. For others, especially copywriters, journalists, and book authors, the blog is the hardest form to master. Where is your easiest entry point? Find it and start there.

3. The eZine is next. I love writing email newsletters. It’s fun, fast, almost like Twitter (most people will be looking at this eZine on their mobile devices, so be prepared), and needs to be in your most peppiest voice. I can write a eZine issue very quickly in a few hours. (Note: You should be able to write for one of these mediums with energy; if not, you’ll need to figure out why.)

4. Ebooks are a spin-off from the blog. I actually start with the blog and then when I want a content strategy plan, I start planning ebooks. What I blog about and what I want on my web site will come directly from the ebook.

5. For me, Twitter is in its own category as well. The content I produce for Twitter is largely determined by what’s happening on Twitter that day. I often use a lot of other people’s content to fill my Twitter feed. It’s helpful, it’s authentic, and it gives back. When I do create custom content for Twitter, it can be blog post titles I’ve written, interesting factoids or news I’ve found, and then comments about my day and my work.

Does that help?

Any questions?

Action Tip: Write down your content strategy plan and begin to search out your lowest barrier of entry. Use that medium to help you create content for the other mediums. Don’t force yourself to be miserable. Life is too short.

We’re writers. But still, the endless list of content to be created (especially when, like me, you’ve decided to start a blog, an eZine, got on Twitter, started a Facebook fan page) sometimes makes me want to just forget it. What is the point of all this content creation? I’m not getting paid for it. Why should I do it? Shouldn’t I just write my books?

Promotion is part of the writing job, remember. My friend, Allison Winn Scotch, in town the other night for her book signing, was on the job. She didn’t consider meeting all of her readers as a chore, in fact, she was delighted to see all of us. I felt she was authentic as a writer. She understands that meeting readers, interacting with readers, writing extra content for your readers, is how publishing works. Can you list any other business that can be run without any marketing and promotion? I sure can’t.

It’s a pipe dream, folks. You’re not going to make a living off of one book. You’re not going to be done promoting yourself once the book is out and your book tour is over. The promotion part of your job never ends. Better to embrace the reality that is publishing now and quit sticking your head in the sand, right? Better to have a plan in which you create extra content for promotional purposes. You’ll be so glad you did.

1. Figure out what you really want to do. It takes commitment to begin a blog, to be on Twitter, and to keep up an email newsletter (eZine) and Facebook fan page. You need to find out if you’re willing to be there for the long haul. You need to ask yourself the hard questions. There’s no magic formula to this. You don’t start one of those projects and suddenly it gets done when you want it to. Really commit to it. Don’t be half-hearted. Don’t set yourself up for a failure.

2. Figure out how much content there is to be created. Any writer knows how much they have to write for their book. You need to figure out how much you have to write for your promotional content: two blogs a week, monthly newsletter, five tweets a day, weekly Facebook fan page update. Or what do you think you want to do? You figure out what you have to write and you keep a list of it.

3. Mark off the time to get it done. You don’t get a book written by not writing it. The same thing for promotional content. You don’t get it done unless you make time to do it. Can you tap out a blog post while you’re waiting for your kid’s soccer practice? Can you tack on the eZine research and writing when you bang out your 1,000 words each day on your novel? Figure out when it works for you and then give yourself the time to get it done.

There’s no use fretting at the social media explosion. As authors, we don’t get the luxury of waiting until we absolutely have to do it. We’re better off easing in, starting one thing, or committing to one thing, right now. Otherwise, it will just hurt more later. It’s like waiting until the night (or the hour) before your deadline to research, write, and edit a magazine article or an essay. It’s too much pressure and we don’t like pressure. Reduce the pressure on yourself right now: jump in.

Action Step: I recommend creating a social media strategy. Why are you on social media? Why are you creating all this content? (In upcoming blog announcements, I’ll be dispensing more information on my upcoming social media strategy bootcamp for Writer’s Digest University! Stay tuned!)

Some folks have told me that they just cannot be a personality on social media. They are who they are. Boring. Plain Jane. One guy even joked he was almost “almost senile.” (Yes, these are all authors.)

Whoops!

Did you all see the big mistake these writers made right out of the gate?

Well, I sure did. And I quickly stopped each writer and explained authenticity once again. The reading public isn’t interested in boring, plain jane, and almost senile. They are interested in boring people writing exciting romances (this one’s for you, novelist), they are interested in plain jane writers who can tell them how to better plant their gardens (that’s for you, gardening writer), and they are interested in slightly senile military history buffs (that’s you, Joe).

See the difference? You’re taking a topic that others have done already (so what? isn’t everything borrowed, stolen, or recreated from something else?) and you’re stamping your personality and point of view on it. That’s what’s interesting. No one cares about your excuses about your dishwater blonde hair that needs a trim, or the fact that you haven’t won any beauty pageants (if it’s not going to to make a different to your book subject, it shouldn’t make a difference to you), or the fact that you have a small military war museum on your property (hey, wait, that’s interesting, Joe; what do you have in there and can I see it?)

Get it?

Authenticity is vital in this business. And I don’t mean you immediately begin confessing your deepest flaws to everyone in sight. You only confess those flaws if they solve someone else’s problem. You only talk about those things if they are the solution to someone else’s problem.

How to grow tomatoes and green beans in the same raised beds? Yes, interested. The fact that your only good outfit for your book signing is covered in cat hair, not so much.

Three reasons to be authentic (it’s easier than people think it is):

1. You find your expertise. (I’ll talk more about how to do that in upcoming posts.) What do you like to talk about? If it is cat hair, you may need to start a blog for fellow cat owners, not gardeners.

2. You find your audience. (I’ll also be talking more about this in upcoming posts.) Who else likes what you talk about? Who else would be interested in your fascination with cat hair on your black sweater? Very bad example, but you get the gist.

3. You merge it all together. Take one part your expertise, one part your audience’s needs, one part your particular twist on the topic. Voila! Now you have something you can talk about until you run out of oxygen.

Action Tip: Take inventory of what you know. We’ll talk about it again shortly.

So, you’re on Twitter! Congratulations. That’s quite an accomplishment. You filled out a simple form and voila! (Sometimes it is the most simple things that take the most energy, I know.)

Now what?

There’s a lot of people on Twitter and if you take a look at just one person’s Twitter stream, you’re going to feel like running away. Very far away. You’re okay. Relax. Everything is fine. You are not going to jump in head or feet first. You’re going to think this through one step at a time.

Step #1: Who do you follow on Twitter?

That may seem difficult, but really, it’s not. What’s your niche? Are you an author? Are you a business owner? There’s where you start. I use http://www.wefollow.com as a starting place. I go there and add myself by location (Seattle), occupation (writer), activities (social media, novels), and interests (publishing, publicity, PR, marketing). But you only get five categories, so really think. Must you really inform everyone on Twitter that you collect ceramic frogs? Is it vital or just kinda crazy cool? That’s up to you. But you’re establishing yourself as a BRAND on Twitter, so if that works into your business goals (say you resell ceramic frogs to other ceramic frog collectors) then it works. If you’re trying to establish yourself as a business consultant (and your brand has nothing to do with frogs), perhaps not so much.

Once you’ve added yourself to Wefollow.com, you can just go visit those same categories you now belong to. Click on #writer or #ceramic frogs (ha!) and find out who else is on Twitter with those interests. Those are people you should follow. But be selective. If you see a whole lot of folks that are all fellow writers, adding all of them may not be the best approach. “But,” you argue, “I’m a writer! Those are my people!”

Sure, but do you want to have as your audience just other writers? What about agents, editors, publishing people? If your book is about environmental issues, wouldn’t you want to follow folks who would be interested in what you have to say about that? Say, editors for National Geographic or Nature? It’s about finding an audience that wants to listen to what you have to say. It’s no good to just find more followers just like your mother or your friends who will think you are a genius, but won’t gain you much of a following. (We love our mothers and friends, but they don’t constitute an audience much of the time.)

The best part is that if you find people to follow that just may want to listen to what you have to say, they will turn around and follow you! (You’ll have to create amazing content in just 140 characters; more about that in a follow-up post.) And they’ll recommend you to their followers and on and on. Hey, some of these cool people you just met on Twitter will retweet your content out to their audience.

Now that is Twitter at its best.

Next time, what do you say on Twitter?

We’ve got a lot of new readers coming into this blog, and I get so many questions about Twitter every day, that I’ve decided to do a month-long feature on Twitter and how authors can use it better. Part One will be about what Twitter is used for.

A lot of authors (and small businesses) tell me that they are overwhelmed by the thought of micro-blogging. “It’s too fast-paced,” says one author. “What is the point?” or “It’s full of worthless chatter. There’s nothing on Twitter I want to read,” say others.

I wish I could convince them about Twitter, but I can’t go around talking every author into using Twitter (for one thing, I only have 24 hours in a day), so if you’re an author and are wondering if using Twitter is a worthwhile endeavor (or if you have author friends who are still on the fence about Twitter), read on.

1. Twitter is an excellent way to get to know others in your niche and to produce quality content for those who follow you. Your Twitter feed should be full of folks that you want to meet and talk to in order to: 1. further your career, 2. build your business, or 3. earn expert status. Once you begin interacting with folks who share your interest, you’ll then meet all sorts of interesting people who you can follow, and who in time, may follow you. But that depends on the content you create.

2. Twitter increases your visibility on the Internet (the Library of Congress has archived every single tweet, did you know that?) and helps you to be seen as the expert you desire to be. If you bring your brand to Twitter (what is your brand? this may take some thinking about BEFORE you jump on Twitter, or if you’re like me and got on Twitter and then rebranded), you’ll need to be blogging, replying, posting information that is geared to your platform. More specifically, you’ll need to Please Write Like You Talk to your audience. (How do you know what your audience wants to know? You need to find out before you start Tweeting, or again, if you’re like me, you figure it out sorta by accident and then must redirect.)

3. Twitter builds your tribe. Ever had a posse? That’s what it can be like using Twitter. You have folks who follow your Tweets and as a result retweet (don’t know what that is? don’t worry; I’ll explain in a future post this month) interesting ideas from you out to a larger audience (this really works!).

Basically, Twitter is another form of blogging. Rather than 500-word chunks, you’ll be dispensing information out in shorter bursts (140 characters or less) and there’s an art to mastering this. Not everyone who blogs well will know what to do on Twitter, but don’t worry, if you’re looking for DIY info on utilizing Twitter, you’ve come to the right place.

Action Step: What would you talk about on Twitter? What are your interests, what magazines do you read, what websites/blogs do you follow? What do you find yourself thinking about most of your day? What do you already talk about (or blog about) on a regular basis? Answers to those questions will point you in the right direction.

Yikes, so much going on over this ebook kerfuffle with iPad. An important update from Michael Cader at Publishers Lunch (if you don’t get his Publishers Lunch free emails–or his Publishers Lunch Deluxe paid emails–you SHOULD!):

We’re going to keep grinding our way through the idiosyncracies and challenges of life under the agency model, understanding that all of this is a constantly moving target. [emphasis mine]

While Random House has gotten all the attention as the biggest trade publisher whose titles are not available via the just-launched iBookstore, it should be underscored that so far, very few companies of scale outside of the Agency Five have a presence there. [emphasis mine] In addition to those already announced–Perseus, Nelson, Workman, Sourcebooks, and F+W–we found lists of titles from Hyperion and Kensington (henceforth known as the Non Five).

But the list of absent publishers is much larger. For now it includes Abrams, Andrews McMeel, Bloomsbury, Chronicle, Harlequin, Hay House, HCI, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Norton, Regnery, Rodale, Sterling, and Wiley. Also missing are prominent Perseus distribution clients like Grove/Atlantic, rising indie publishers like Quirk and Skyhorse, and all the big university presses. [emphasis mine]

We know that at least some of the publishers listed above are far along in their discussions with Apple and hopeful of reaching agreements soon. Among the issues are Apple’s hardcover price parity requirements balanced against Amazon’s reported unwillingness to negotiate changing to an agency model with any companies outside of the Agency Five, plus the time period Apple gives publishers to change their pricing with other customers to comply with Apple’s agreement.

While the Non Five we reached declined to discuss their plans and conversations about terms, the current state of play is more or less self-evident. Apple’s published terms of use indicate they are an agent for all books in the iBookstore, just as Amazon clearly denotes when the ebook is sold and priced by the publisher rather than Amazon. If you check the Amazon listings for Kindle titles from any of the Non Five, you’ll see that they are still sold by Amazon.

While the Agency Five have moved to agency terms across all their ebook retailers, the Non Five are currently driving a hybrid model: agency for Apple, and wholesale everywhere else. The big question–for the Non Five as well as for other publishers still negotiating with Apple–is how long and how well a hybrid model is sustainable.

And then this link from the Times on the green-ness of the new iPad (an interesting viewpoint considering over 300,000 iPads were sold in one day), but can we rejoice that over 250,000 EBOOKS were sold that same day? That’s a lot of books and not a single tree was used in their printing! Woohoo!