Who are you?

This week I have been thinking about the author presence and the fundamental who-ness of public and private life.

Who are you,

on facebook?

on twitter?

on your blog?

on your website?

in the bookstore?

in person?

to your fans?

Are any of these seperate whos, the same person? Are you such a split personality that you need therapy?

I have been talking with friends about the public private life of the author...much like teachers...when their students discover them in the supermarket. (OMG Miss Crisp eats the same apples I do...or she’s seen me being whiney, now I know she will hate me...)

Since I started blogging on author marketing and other musings...learning in public about this tricky promotional world... I have seen the internet face of people change, about as fast as some publishing houses....From a few years ago when people put their whole lives out there, to now, where suddenly the public private balance is swinging more to private. (it’s about time.)

If you want to live your life in public, fine, but remember the people who live with you might not want to have public lives.

I admire the third child of Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne who refused to have any part of the publicity show that her mother cooked up to revive Ozzys career. (What? You didn’t know there was a third child?) That is a brave stand to take and I hope that aspiring authors are keeping an eye on their families reaction to publicity. Is it fair to the kids or is it emotional exploitation that will come back to haunt you....

People occasionally ask my advice on website content...the first thing I tell them is to decide who YOU want to be in public. This colours everything you do online. Because once you click that post button it is out there for the world to see...and even if you remove it later... it will remain search viable in archived threads. Ouch.

For myself I try to keep my family hidden from view (mostly because I can’t remember their names and it’s embarrassing to say thingumie in public) and myself too. (coz I hate pictures of me)

I am on twitter purely to keep up with blog posts...twitter is great for this. I use a feed that posts my blog titles to my twitter followers and receive tweets of blogs that I follow. I also use Alltop which creates a virtual magazine of up to the minute content drawn only from blogs and websites that interest me...astronomy, space tech, gadget tech, children’s publishing, marketing, commentators that I like...great for researching.

I blog, so that my name is searchable and that any kids who stumble across my book and do an internet search can find me and get to the Bones book website if they want. And for anyone else out there who stumbles across me, I hope that they find something interesting and relevant on author marketing to think about.(waving to my hidden followers....)

I privately email and play on a wordpress site...that one day may morph into a public website (or not...depending on whether any publishers pick up any of my novels currently languishing on their desks...)

Nathan Bransford has bogged on author privacy recently here. A great post as ever...there is a comment on Neil Gaiman’s fiancé Amanda Palmer who lives her life on line purely for marketing purposes as a musician....as Neil blogs and tweets obsessively I guess he is fine with it...although he has kids....(hmmm one of my novels deals with the fall out of a parents famous public life on a child...)

The great Jane has blogged on two wonderful posts I recommend you read on writing, for the money? Jennifer Topper on why she has a free ebook novel...and Mark Barrett has a fabulous post on a new interpretation of Yogs law - that money should flow to the writer not away from the writer. It has a whole new perspective on the changing face of the middlemen in publishing...ie how content gets to readers...Go read and ponder...

To answer my own question at the beginning...

It’s a wysiwyg. (what you see is what you get)

I don’t think I’m any different on line.....hahahahahahahahahaha. ducking now.....

maureen

PS Alice Pope Of CWIM fame posted this video on her blog...take it away Erin.....

1000 reasons to read this post.....

This week having pushed the kids out the door back to school...I tried to turn my attention back to the WIP. Which one tho...well both...also conference fine tuning is happening as well, so as usual the hours fly by.

For the revision of Craic I came across a great little list, The best checklist around on revision. posted on Agent Nathan Bransford’s blog. Nathan works out of the San Francisco office of Curtis Brown, Fiona Inglis from Curtis Brown, Australia will be our guest at Spinning Gold.

Some of the list Nathan has posted

- Does the main plot arc initiate close enough to the beginning that you won't lose the reader?- Does your protagonist alternate between up and down moments, with the most intense towards the end?- Are you able to trace the major plot arcs throughout the book? Do they have up and down moments?- Do you have enough conflict- Does the reader see both the best and worst characteristics of your main characters?

So after cogitating on the list and thinking about Craic, My thoughts turned to Mars and what’s happening up there.

Poor Spirit has been stuck in a sand dune since May. There is a movement on Earth called Free Spirit following the tribulations and talking about how to free the little guy. NASA has created a website called Free Spirit where you can follow the team on Earth recreate the problem on Earth and work to fix it.

I have also come across a website called alltop.com which does a search by subject for the latest research on any subject. Absolutely brilliant if you want to become an instant expert on any topic for research purposes.

This week I came across one of the most thought provoking posts I have come across in a long time, 1000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly.

Kevin says that the true creative needs only 1000 True Fans to make a living...he sees it as a better fit than The Long Tail by Chris Anderson.

Here is a small taste of what Kevin is talking about but I really recommend that you go and read the whole post...It gives such food for thought to a creative in business...and isn’t that what we all are?

Other than aim for a blockbuster hit, what can an artist do to escape the long tail?
One solution is to find 1,000 True Fans. While some artists have discovered this path without calling it that, I think it is worth trying to formalize. The gist of 1,000 True Fans can be stated simply:
A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.
A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.

and from the 'Yeah Right' Box, the following video....
enjoy
maureen