Special to the Inland Empire Business Press
by Guest Blogger Tim Sunderland, Gonzo Marketers.
I have a secret: I am writing a novel. Secret #2: I’m learning things that can help businesspeople.
I ‘ll have the rough draft by August. Then it will take a few months to clean it up, do some re-writing, and produce the final manuscript. I’ll find an agent who can sell it to a publisher. Soon afterwards I’ll collect my Academy Award for the screenplay and retire to a home with an ocean view. Ha!
In the meantime I have been investigating the publishing world. For first-time novelists, social media–Facebook, Twitter, blogs, podcasts–are mandatory. A few ingenious writers have even used these new technologies to set the industry on its ear.
Agents and publishers look for writers with a following. A Facebook site with 5,000 fans proves you have one. Likewise for a blog. If people are visiting a blog to read what you have to say, and they know you are writing a novel, then you have something. The same for Twitter.
How powerful is a blog for a writer? www.WritingExcuses.com, a blog/podcast addressing fiction writers, recently mentioned Mary Robinette Kowal, the 2008 recipient of the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, despite having never published a book. In a recent writer’s conference Kowal admitted that the award was based in large part on her popular blog. Her only published works were some short stories. Not only does Kowal have this award, but now she also has the street creds to get the attention of literary agents and publishers and start selling larger works of fiction.
Seth Hardwood, a college writing instructor in San Francisco and a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, took social media a step further. Harwood wrote a crime novel–Jack Wakes Up. The hero is Jack Palms, a one-hit actor turned has-been. Harwood recorded the entire novel in a series of hour-long podcasts and distributed it through his blog and ITunes–for free! No cost! Soon Harwood was approached by a print-on-demand publisher. Later the book was picked up by Three Rivers Press, a trade paperback imprint of Crown Publishing Group of Random House. We’re off to the races.
But Harwood didn’t stop. He is a shameless self-promoter. Using podcasting and his blog he exhorted his followers to, on one specific day (Palm Sunday, in honor of his character), purchase from Amazon as many copies of his book and electronic downloads as they could. It worked! Jack Wakes Up skyrocketed to the top of the Amazon charts and search engines. More notice, more recognition, more sales. All because Harwood grasped how he could use social media to manipulate the market and build enthusiasm. Social media bloggers–some famous–picked up on Harwood and gave him props on their pages. Their fans checked out Harwood and many became his fans. You get the idea.
What’s the connection to small business? Mary Robinette Kowal and Seth Harwood, novelists working in anonymity, used social media to find a market and sell a product. They realized that because of the nature of social media, there are no rules. They could make their own. As Randy Lopez of Johnson Gray Advertising recently pointed out at a meeting the AMA-IE, “If you don’t know much about social media, don’t worry. It’s all going to change tomorrow anyway.”
Social media is a way to create markets and customers and change the game. You should be using it.