Selling a Novel in 140 Characters

Writers today have to engage their audiences in conversation. But does it distract from actual writing?

If you want to succeed as a writer, you need to have a digital presence. At least, that was the message my publisher passed on to all its writers over a year ago. We needed websites. We needed blogs. We needed to tweet our new posts on our websites and blogs. We needed to engage in a conversation with our readers, because without them there would be no book sales, and without book sales our publisher would fold.

My book Shop Girl Diaries began as a weekly post on blogspot. I was working in my mom’s chandelier shop at the time, and wrote about the comedy of retail and the quirky characters that would come in to chat and barter. Friends and family told me my blog was funny, so I thought: Why not promote it? I created a Facebook page dedicated to the blog, and began putting together a mailing list. I randomly decided to post the link to my blog on Salt Publishing’s fan page, and, incredibly, a week later, someone from the company contacted me to find out how I might turn the blog into a book. The publisher’s interest in my writing may not have been quite as keen had I not had a visible following on Facebook, which, to them, meant potential buyers of the book.

I felt indebted to my readers from the very beginning. Every encouraging comment reminded me I had an audience, and that was what I’d always wanted. I never screened comments. I can’t remember why I made that decision, but I think I felt to screen them would show an oversensitivity on my part.

Except for one strange comment from someone with an evident foot-fetish, I received no negative feedback for months. Then, one day, someone sent me a message to tell me I was “the most mundane and uninteresting person” he’d ever encountered, and to ask that I stop “inflicting” him with my blog. It was a long, angry Facebook message that led to a lump in my throat and a horrible wave of doubt.

I dealt with this negative response by writing a blog post about it. I didn’t criticize the person, I just analyzed his message, line by line, and, in the end, his message undermined itself. My readers criticized him for me – which was funny – and they posted more enthusiastic comments than ever before.

It was reader loyalty that got my blog nominated for the Completely Novel Blog Awards 2010. I was aware that my blog had much less of a following than many of the other 20 blogs that were shortlisted for the award, but I kept thinking: What if? So I embarked on a mini campaign encouraging my readers – to some extent one by one – to vote for my blog.

Winning the blog award in the category of published writer felt brilliant. I was thrilled that people had made the effort to vote for me. Even now, a year later, over 50 per cent of the traffic to my blog is directed from the Completely Novel winners page. By voting for me, my readers have helped me make contacts I might not have made without winning this award. At the same time, it’s important to note that, had I not spent two years dedicated to writing it, there wouldn’t have been a blog worth nominating in the first place. There won’t be any loyal readers if you don’t put any work in.

Shop Girl Diaries was published over a year ago, and now I feel pressure not only to write a new book, but also to keep my readers interested. This is the reason I won’t stop blogging. It’s also why I’m on Twitter, eager to be part of the giant conversation taking place among authors and readers around the world.

The problem is that activity on the internet takes place at such an alarming rate. It seems like writers are churning out articles and blog posts every other second. Observing this overwhelming productivity, I’m often prompted to tweet something banal, just to make it look like I’m doing something too. Unfortunately, this can be enough to put off a discerning tweeter who will then cease to “follow” me.

Posting something on the internet might be speedy, but writing a novel is not. Writers have to find the balance between cultivating readers and writing the books they hope their readers will want to read. After all, while I’m trying to think up the most fantastic 140 characters of my life to impress my Twitter followers with, I’m not thinking about the plot for my new novel, and I’m certainly not writing it. Writers can’t do without readers, but they can’t do without writing either.