By which I mean "Social Media Sucks".

Or does it?

I mean...

Twitter seems to be pretty banal and there are four levels;
- real people who don't really have a reason to be there
- real people who want to network with similar and who can probably manage smalltalk at parties without wanting to stab others in the room
- auto-tweeters who get massive follow counts by jigging the system
- very generous sounding young ladies who are doubtless getting quite cold

But in the first three cases (haven't ventured to find out about the fourth) the output is mostly banal and meaningless. The occasional witticism doesn't, for me, balance the time it takes to sift through the rubbish to get to them.

Then there's Facebook and... Maybe I'm just not using it right, but only really serves a purpose for keeping in touch with people you _actually_know_ in real life. Otherwise, it's as banal as Twitter.

Not tried Google+ and don't really want to...

Blogs seem to be dieing or have died since Twitter and writing forums in general _also_ seem to have died as Twitter has grown.

But in none of the above do I get the idea that it would influence sales or popularity of writers in any way shape or form. So why the hell is a social media presence such a big deal for a writer?

Baffled of Dublin

Agree with you about Twitter. I like Facebook for staying in touch with friends in family (and having conversations that are actually traceable, and not limited by character-count). The way videos, articles etc. come with thumbprints also makes it a lot more user-friendly, I think.

But yeah, vastly overrated, the lot of them!

I take Twitter how I find it when I feel like dropping in, like walking into my local pub. Sometimes a good conversation flourishes, sometimes not. Sometimes I can be bothered to track back seeming banality to work out what's being talked about - which is often interesting - and sometimes I can't.

But if I never went in, I'd never have had those conversations, as they're often not with people I know in other fora.

Networking? I suppose so - I've got gigs via Twitter. But it's networking as part of a more general engagement with assorted bits of the world, which I wouldn't have time/energy to pursue individually by more substantial media. Yes, Twitter is insubstantial, but that's its merit as much as its defect.

And there is the undeniable fact that my blog stats had been stable for a couple of years before I joined, and in the first three months of posting links on Twitter, my average hits per day pretty much doubled, and stayed that way.

So I think as an adjunct to other, more substantial web and real life presences, it's useful.

there is the undeniable fact that my blog stats had been stable for a couple of years before I joined, and in the first three months of posting links on Twitter, my average hits per day pretty much doubled

Which, I agree, is better than the other way. You have an undoubtedly good reputation and following, and a number of your posts have been informative and useful to me.

Straight-up, though, how much has your blog contributed to your writing success? Would you, for example, be starving in a much smaller garret if you hadn't blogged?

Straight-up, though, how much has your blog contributed to your writing success? Would you, for example, be starving in a much smaller garret if you hadn't blogged?

Yes, because it's been a very important part of my teaching, which is more part of my own writing life than I'd have expected. Put crudely, people who might want to learn from me also buy my books, people who buy my books sometimes think they'd like to learn from me, writers who've liked what I've said steer their own students towards it, people who might hire me to teach look at it...

Yes, it's slanted towards people who are interested in how writing happens, but then my novels are a bit like that anyway. It's also a big part of the fact that I think I do quite well at events - that much of what I should/could be talking about there, I've thought through and articulated already on the blog.

Come the next time I need to jump up and down and shriek about a forthcoming novel, the blog will tilt a bit more towards that kind of thing - and I'll have got round to integrating it with my website, which it isn't very well at the moment.

I realise that that's partly because my chosen way of filling the gap between what my books make and what I need to live in is teaching. But I assume that someone who did that through reviewing, or non-fiction, or whatever, would hopefully find an equivalent integration of all the different things they do.

BUT, my blog is the kind which is about a particular subject. There's no denying that the general, chatty, whatever's-going-on-in-my-life kind of blog has been almost wholly superseded by FB and to some extent Twitter, as many of my general-blogging friends would confirm: you just don't get the conversations in comment trails on your blog that you do on FB/Twitter, because the latter are better set up for it.

BUT, my blog is the kind which is about a particular subject. There's no denying that the general, chatty, whatever's-going-on-in-my-life kind of blog has been almost wholly superseded by FB and to some extent Twitter, as many of my general-blogging friends would confirm: you just don't get the conversations in comment trails on your blog that you do on FB/Twitter, because the latter are better set up for it.

Yes, I think that is the difference. If you actually have something to say that others find useful, a mass broadcast like Twitter can be and a blog as documentary reference resource is worthwhile.

So I guess that makes you a special case...

No, it just makes me one kind of case - there are loads of great blogs out there, which are about something and have a good readership.

But I do think that writers have to address the question, when it comes to online presence, that we all had to tackle in the case of our fiction years ago: why should anyone listen to me? Another option would be something like the History Girls group blog: that's saying lots and lots that people really want to read, and so doing very well.

Luckily, humans are disposed to listen to other humans, but you do still have to be being or saying something.

you do still have to be being or saying something.

Yep. That's why I occasionally contribute to a blog, but would never have one for myself. One or two posts a year is hardly going to set the world alight and even people who found the articles interesting would have forgotten about me by the next.

I guess I'm still disappointed to see the comparison of numbers between tweeters who "work the system" with auto-tweeted spam and have 20k+ followers (which is a depressingly large number), people who are occasionally interesting (and typically have fewer than a few hundred followers) and people who emit a constant stream of inane banality and occupy the middle ground. (Plus those, like me, who mainly tweet facile banalities but only occasionally.)

I think there is only one writer tweep I've seen with a high follow count whose tweets are still actually tweets from him rather than auto-tweeted spam links... and even he typically tweets lyrics from songs at regular intervals, just, you know, to make sure people don't forget about him. (Admittedly, he listens to good music and chooses the lyrics to quote pretty well...) [And what is the copyright situation on quoting another artist's lyrics verbatim in any case?]

But I saw a blog (linked on twitter ) that did the sums for sales take-up and (based on what seemed reasonable assumptions) even 100K followers converted into so few sales as to be pretty negligible.

G

Agree with you thats why i like facebook more than twitter.

I think there is only one writer tweep I've seen with a high follow count whose tweets are still actually tweets from him rather than auto-tweeted spam links

Oh no! There are loads and loads of really fascinating writer tweeters who have huge follows and are 100% genyoowine.

Neil Gaiman - 1.5 million!!!

Ian Rankin - 26k

Maureen Johnson (YA but extremely sharp and hilarious for anyone of any age) - 50k

I actually did a talk on this - good and bad egs of authors using twitter so I trawled through a lot of examples of both...

I don't think twitter really sells books, not in any great quantity anyway, but as Emma says, it's more about networking and keeping up with the gossip - and from a reader POV it's about open access and feeling part of the conversation with your favourite writers.

Margaret Atwood's good to follow, and it's definitely her, too.

it's more about networking and keeping up with the gossip - and from a reader POV it's about open access and feeling part of the conversation with your favourite writers.

Yes to both of these

The thing is, it's like a railway network - it's genuinely difficult to quantify what leads to what, and what you'd gain if you built a branch line.

As far as I can see, Twitter almost exactly reproduces Real Life, as experienced in your local pub - the boors, the bores, (and a boar: @ErnestPig), the people who'd be interesting if you had anything in common and vice versa, the person who you chat to who might ask you to do a job for them next month, the distant cousin you occasionally buy a drink for, close friends who you also go on holiday with but are still pleased to nod to across the public bar....

The only difference is that it's easier to ignore the boors and the bores on Twitter.

As you've started Gaius and as I'm feeling the effects of having had to much to drink (probably, and before my husband shouts at me to come to bed), I'll give you my honest opinion which I may regret in the morning or may not.

There's so much emphasis with aspring authors right now to build themselves a web presence which I and even experienced authors have tried to do so, but which I wonder if makes the difference. I've tried to tweet, and it seems others have tried to tweet/retweet (either as wannabe or traditonal authors)their popularity, but I wonder how much really makes the difference. In most cases, you get wannabe authors/real authors just following each other, but it's not a 'real' following. And I'd rather that someone has read something I've written, or a blog that they're interested in that they like.

Twitter even for those that are famous doesn't work in the right way. And as for facebook - really it's just about friends or acqaintances supporting friends. I'm not saying that for some that there are fans out there, but it depends on the coverage that the artist/author gets.

I'm not sure there is any form of social media out there that really represents us as writers. Just my opinion though

Personally, I think it's a fallacy that you need a web presence before you're published.

If you want to self-publish then yes, a web presence is a good idea, otherwise how do you build a reader-base?

But for traditional publishing it's still bookshop presence that counts and your web base has very little to do with that.

I honestly don't think that the mainstream publishers really notice it when they're acquiring - except in cases where the book is directly related to the website/blog. Yes, if you're writing a book about falcon wrangling and you maintain the premier falcon-wrangling blog in the UK with a dedicated list of 100,000 subscribers to your falcon-wrangler newsletter, then perhaps. But for your average debut novel, it makes little difference. An author who is promotable and willing to engage after the fact is great - but it's not going to make or break a submission. The quality of the book does that.

I honestly don't think that the mainstream publishers really notice it when they're acquiring

I can't speak in general terms, but the two specifics I have details on, I know it was a factor.
G

a factor in them being rejected, or a factor in them being acquired?

What I mean is, I think most mainstream publishers are delighted if an author has a platform, but I don't think they'd reject a novel on the basis of a lack of platform, if they loved the book.

Obviously that might be different for very small and e-only publishers, which rely more on the author to do the legwork - I don't know very much about that sector of the business but I could imagine it might make more of a difference for them.