Now that I've taken the Twitter plunge, I'm being beguiled by suggestions from various sources that a blog is pretty much de rigeur these days as part of the 'platform-building' we're all supposed to be into.

Hope this isn't a stupid question, but what is the etiquette about linking to other sites? I'm thinking sites of great usefulness like WW's Emma, of course, or Nicola Morgan's 'Help, I need a Publisher', and of course WriteWords itself. Is it the done thing to ask permission first or do people just link anyway?

Oh no you have made me worry now - I have linked to my blog (hoping this was ok to do) and am now worrying this is not the done thing. I have been away from Write words having babies and things so I may not be following the rules, so to speak...

The trouble is my writing is based on my blog so traffic that way would be hugley appreciated.

Evey
x

I think people just link anyway. But I really wouldn't rush into a blog. 'Building a pltaform' is more of a US thing, than UK. And some UK agents & publishers are still wary of the internet, considering it self-publishing if oyu put up an extract of the mss. It's of more use if you are regularly writing short stories and flash fiction, and use it to showcase your writing.

Oh no, I wasn't planning on inflicting that on anyone. I'd just been reading lots of posts on the RNA blog, and they pretty much suggested it was becoming more and more important.

It seems to me - and I checked this yesterday with Meg Davies, late of MBA and now her own Ki Agency, and John Jarrold, and they agreed... it seems to me that what agents and publishers really want to know about a fiction author is that you're net savvy - that you know how it works and have ideas about how you could (and couldn't) use it to promote yourself. That you're making connections and friendships and nodes on networks, so that later, when you want to tell people about your new novel, those connections are already there.

"platform" is really only relevant to non-fiction, where being known as someone who can speak with authority in your subject is SOOOOOO crucial.

As a fictioneer, if you can build up a following with a wonderful blog, that's great. But it's not a problem if you don't.

Yes, be on Twitter - seems to me the easiest and least time-sucking way to learn how social media can work for you. Ditto FB, perhaps.

Yes, have a blog IF you can sustain it. A dusty-looking blog where the most recent post was months ago and then it was only saying that you've given up writing the first chapter because the cat's been sick, is worse than nothing.

As for links, no you don't have to ask permission, any more than you have to ask The Times permission to link to them. You're not, after all, invading something. I'd always ask permission if I wanted to quote, obviously.

You don't need permission to post a link - just to quote material if it's more than a line or two. And if you're going to give credit and link back to the source, most bloggers will be more than happy to give you that permission.

I think blogging is very very useful for a writer. You need to be interested in the on-line form though - it's not like writing a story, or an article, or anything else other than itself. And you need to make time for it, and make a decent job of it. A bad blog is worse than no blog.

I disagree slightly with Naomi's point. Hodder have people whose job it is to teach their authors twitter and how to start and maintain a blog. They are very very keen on it, and aren't in the minority.