Authors And Social Media

We talk a lot about exposure in the publishing world, and in the market today, it is more than important to get your name out there to the readers of the world. We simply do not have the luxury of being "discovered" at the local bookstore like we used to. Let's face it. That opportunity is pretty limited due to the lack of bookstores anymore. It is for this reason that authors need to really take every opportunity to use social media to get their names out there.


For established authors, they already have a lot of name recognition, so when we get ready to buy a book, the odds are we gravitate to the known names. How are they known? They have their name in as many places as possible.


If you think about it, when you get onto any of the social media sites, you see many of the same names popping up over and over again. The idea is simple. The more we see the name, the more we remember the person. Publishers have also taken advantage of that name recognition when they release books back to back from the same author. You get hooked on an author and immediately want to read the next book (which conveniently comes out in a couple of weeks).


The problem I am seeing, however, is that many authors are really missing the mark when it comes to the use of social media. They either don't send out relevant information about their books and their writing, or they just don't release information in a timely fashion. One Tweet every week or so is not going to draw in the traffic. Tweets that come every hour become annoying. The key is finding the happy medium.


The same goes for blog posts on Facebook posts. Readers want to know about you and your writing career. They want to know where you get your inspiration. Posts that show pictures of just your cat are probably not going to get a lot of attention.


Now, will social media drive up sales? There is no promise of it. What I can say is that if readers do get hooked on what you have to say through social media, the odds are they might start following you and your writing career.