Facebook, anyone?

Paul Whybrow

When Do You Stop Writing?

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Paul Whybrow

The Colony—Finding 'The Others.'

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Hi Tim, that seems like a good idea. I don't think I'm going to promote my Facebook activity - although most of it is writing related anyway, and I might think about a separate page when I have something to promote. It is interesting to hear how different writers manage the whole FB thing!
 
My fb username is j.c.stone, my profile pic is poison ivy from batman, be warned this is my personal page and i do play games, i try not to send out game requests i know how much people hate those! i also have a very sarcastic, cynical sense of humour so again take caution, send me a message on fb so i know who's who
 
Jennifer Stone said:
My fb username is j.c.stone, my profile pic is poison ivy from batman, be warned this is my personal page and i do play games, i try not to send out game requests i know how much people hate those! i also have a very sarcastic, cynical sense of humour so again take caution, send me a message on fb so i know who's who
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Lol most of us are the same. It's more for social interaction the sharing of contacts, than for business networking ;)
 
OK, it's time for me to admit that I am a total Luddite with regard to social media. I just feel very uncomfortable about having an electronic me 'out there', all soft and vulnerable. I joined Twitter once, released one tweet, realised it was totally not me and de-Twittered myself. Never felt so relieved. Never been on Facebook, and hate the idea of it--it just seems like a way to suck up your free time and generate irritation and annoyance. Why further complicate your life, I ask myself. But it seems like everyone does it, so I must be missing something. So can anyone tell me: why should I join Facebook? What is in it for me other than a loss of privacy and the presentation of an easy target for faceless trolls and flamers, or whatever they are called?
 
Well you don't have to have a total loss of privacy. You can set both your pictures and your posts to friends only so strangers can't see them. I often find information there much sooner than elsewhere. I even found out about Leonard Nimoy's passing before it hit the news here. Bad example maybe, but useful. If you want to promote your writing, it's almost a must, and I use it to keep in contact with people all around the world, so I'd be a bit lost without it. No one writes actual letters any more, which is slow, compared with 'instant', and emails, well people don't even make that much use of them ;)
 
Facebook is quite good because you can set your profile to hidden so no one will find it even if they search your name and you can add who you like x
 
Marc Joan said:
OK, it's time for me to admit that I am a total Luddite with regard to social media. I just feel very uncomfortable about having an electronic me 'out there', all soft and vulnerable. I joined Twitter once, released one tweet, realised it was totally not me and de-Twittered myself. Never felt so relieved. Never been on Facebook, and hate the idea of it--it just seems like a way to suck up your free time and generate irritation and annoyance. Why further complicate your life, I ask myself. But it seems like everyone does it, so I must be missing something. So can anyone tell me: why should I join Facebook? What is in it for me other than a loss of privacy and the presentation of an easy target for faceless trolls and flamers, or whatever they are called?
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Hi Marc. While there are trolls on FB, if you take care to set your privacy settings so only your Facebook friends see certain things, and if you don't add anything to your profile you wouldn't want strangers to know, it isn't that bad at all. You can choose not to friend people, you can unfriend them if they're weird or bug you all the time about shit, and you can even block them. Because I write in a digital world, without a social platform like Facebook, I wouldn't have a hope of pulling in readers. But I've had to learn to use Facebook to my advantage, and in a way that keeps me safe from cyber trolls and assholes looking to stir up shit simply because they can. I'm actually very selective about who I friend on there, and I stay out of drama by focusing on posting about my writing, posting about other writers and their work, and posting little things throughout the day that are innocuous, yet also about something other than writing, so it's not like I'm constantly slamming people with promo.

So, I guess it depends on what you want to use Facebook or Twitter for. It's an electronic age, and the younger your potential readers are, the more likely they are to be on Facebook, Twitter, and all the new social media platforms popping up. It's definitely a balancing act to use them, but still have time to, you know… write. LOL!!

Hope this helps in some small way. :)
 
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I forced myself to go onto Facebook and so on by way to trying to understand what my kids were involved in. Ditto with Twitter although I must admit that I rather enjoy the superficiality of Twitter and find that, using my writing 'nom-de-plume', ( matthenov) it gives me a medium to follow what other writers are up although it does strike me that there are more people out there claiming to be able to teach me how to write as opposed to people actually writing !

I find it incredibly easy to slip into the grumpy old English man personae and have to struggle hard to 'keep the old people out' so I always try to make an effort to understand what the latest social media trends are. I got caught out big time when the internet came out and dismissed it as nothing more than a fad and paid a substantial price for that in commercial terms with a business I used to own so do not want to make the same mistake twice.
 
I was almost housebound, sometimes bedbound in my forties. thin as a bone with pain because of rheumatoid illness. FB, LinkedIn, a home page, enabled me to find a new way of using skills, working from home. LinkedIn in particular, directly brought me a large contract, writing app material for a global telecom company.

I have sisters in France and New Zealand and Scotland. FB is the preferred channel of my sister in NZ, the others favour Skype now over the telephone. My brother's police and a social meeja eschewer; he picks up the phone for a chat. When he's off duty he wants peace and quiet and no added personal security risks, however nominal.

I exchanged a joke with a lit agent on twitter a few days ago, who then invited me to submit. I hadn't planned on trying her, on account of her work video consumption of cup-cakes. I assumed she wouldn't bite at my offering, and this may prove the case, but of course I'm giving it a go.
 
There are plenty of people on Facebook and Twitter claiming to know how to teach someone to write. I avoid them like the plague because you can't teach someone to write, and those people are always selling something that no one needs to pay for. Grammar and punctuation basics are available for free all over the Internet. All you have to do is Google it, find a site you like, and read. Then apply it when you write. As for the rest, you either have the passion and the drive to write, or you don't. You can't teach that to people. It comes from within them. They're born with it.

The Internet has made it too easy for literally anyone to upload a book and call themselves an "author." The hard part is in selling those books because there are now so many of us that the market is flooded, and there are too few gatekeepers left. That is both good and bad, because now, anyone can self-publish a book. Doesn't mean they're all bad books. Not at all. But it makes it very hard for those of us trying to make a living doing this.

Facebook and Twitter have their good points, but they are also the two most widely-used social media platforms for all those tens of thousands of aforementioned self-pubbed authors. I tend to avoid authors who do nothing more than spam everyone with promo all day long, and unfortunately, they come out of the woodwork by the dozens every week. I can't count all the friend requests I get from those simply looking to gather authors as FB friends so they can slam them with promo. Same with Twitter. I get followers all the time who do nothing but tweet promo, or tweet their "author marketing" crap all day long. When I get ambitious, I go through and block all of them, but that's a time suck, too.

If the first thing someone does after friending me on FB or following me on Twitter is to post a BUY MY BOOKS!! (complete with links) post or tweet to me, they're unfriended/unfollowed and blocked. It's SOCIAL media, not PROMO media, and so many authors do not understand that.

I have author friends I promote all the time, and I'm happy to do it. But we've built up a rapport over time. It's a mutual friendship/cyber thingy we have going. I like them as people first, authors second. Many of them I've met in real life. Many others live too far away, but I sure do hope I can meet them one day. :)

I have a small (relatively speaking) but very loyal following of readers because I TALK to them, I don't just toss promo at them. I know their pets' names, their husbands' names, and what they like to watch on TV. And they in turn know as much about me as any real life friend would know. And for me, that's the biggest advantage to FB. It lets me talk to people all over the world, and get to know them on a human level. That approach might never make me rich and famous, but I have steady sales because of it, and when I draw in new readers, it's because my loyal ones have spread the word, not because I had to pay anyone to do it for me. And no one - reader or author alike - has ever accused me of being a promo whore. :)

FB and Twitter can work well for you if you use them as ways to connect on a human level with others, not merely as a vehicle to flog your books.
 
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Lots of insightful comments here, thanks. So, to summarise and paraphrase, FB can help your profile and sales if you don't use it just as a tool to enhance profile and sales, but rather, as Tara said, as a way 'to connect on a human level...not merely as a vehicle to flog your books'....
I will look into it some more. It still makes me nervous, though. How do you actually start things going? I mean, you join FB, and then what? Do you just approach random strangers on FB (is that even possible?) and say 'befriend me'? It all seems a bit weird to me, but I expect it will become more clear if and when I actually get on FB.
 
Sort of... but don't try friend a whole bunch of strangers, Facebook is likely to see that as spamming and prevent you from friending anyone for a month. So there are controls as it were. Start with people you know (plenty here), then expand from there as you will soon get to know others. You will soon learn the 'ropes' as it were ;)
 
Marc Joan said:
Lots of insightful comments here, thanks. So, to summarise and paraphrase, FB can help your profile and sales if you don't use it just as a tool to enhance profile and sales, but rather, as Tara said, as a way 'to connect on a human level...not merely as a vehicle to flog your books'....
I will look into it some more. It still makes me nervous, though. How do you actually start things going? I mean, you join FB, and then what? Do you just approach random strangers on FB (is that even possible?) and say 'befriend me'? It all seems a bit weird to me, but I expect it will become more clear if and when I actually get on FB.
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Marc, I started friending authors in the same publishing house at first, and then branched out from there. In your case, you might want to start by searching for authors who write the same things you do, and send them friend requests. Be careful of sending too many in one day. Facebook gets weird about that. They think you're a spammer. Also, there are groups you can join having to do with books. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Again, be careful of joining too many in one day.

You can always PM me here if you have specific questions. I'll be happy to help. :) And of course, please send me a friend request. :)
 
Marc Joan said:
Lots of insightful comments here, thanks. So, to summarise and paraphrase, FB can help your profile and sales if you don't use it just as a tool to enhance profile and sales, but rather, as Tara said, as a way 'to connect on a human level...not merely as a vehicle to flog your books'....
I will look into it some more. It still makes me nervous, though. How do you actually start things going? I mean, you join FB, and then what? Do you just approach random strangers on FB (is that even possible?) and say 'befriend me'? It all seems a bit weird to me, but I expect it will become more clear if and when I actually get on FB.
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It might be helpful to look on FB for literary groups local to you, or some publishers might have their own page and you can send them friend invites, add me i'll share the proverbial out of your page lol
 
Thanks all. When I get a minute to get on FB, I will pester you all to be friends......not sure when it will happen, though, I seem to have no time for anything at the mo...
 
Marc Joan said:
Thanks all. When I get a minute to get on FB, I will pester you all to be friends......not sure when it will happen, though, I seem to have no time for anything at the mo...
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I hear ya! LOL!! In addition to trying to keep up with writing, I still work a full time job outside the home. My life is crazy. :)
 
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Paul Whybrow

When Do You Stop Writing?

  • Paul Whybrow
  • Replies: 8
Paul Whybrow

The Colony—Finding 'The Others.'

  • Paul Whybrow
  • Replies: 18
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