A look at social media, authors and publicity

I recently interviewed Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife, and I asked her if she tweets, or plans to, and how she feels about fans who want more from her. After all, she barely has a website. I also asked for her thoughts on the Facebook group that was started: “Audrey Niffenegger, please stop painting and write more books!”

Her response was simple, “I do not Twitter, I don’t have a Facebook page. I also don’t have a television,” she said. “I think it’s important to pick and choose what you’re going to spend your valuable time doing.”

The reality is she doesn’t have to tweet about her books to build buzz and her success is not dependent upon having a compelling online presence through sites like Facebook. A lot of authors don’t do social media – but many authors (including some of the bestselling kind) do.

And, chances are, unless you are Dan Brown, you are one of those authors who will benefit greatly from social media and using those skills and sites to garner publicity for you and your book when it’s ready. (Let’s face it, PR budgets are always the first to get slashed. And if you are a debut novelist or just breaking out, your publicity budget probably won’t garner you the whirlwind press tour of popular, established authors.)

I’ve worked with many in-house publicity teams and, though they are amazing, they can and will only do so much. Some authors – like Jennifer Weiner (New York Times bestselling author) for example – have a PR person/agency in addition to an in-house publicity team and they still self-promote. Weiner does tons of self-promotion on her blog, Twitter and Facebook. When her newest book just reached the best-seller list, she immediately tweeted about it and received ^5s from around the social media world.

The bottom line is you will have to do some of your own publicity. And social media can help you do that.

In fact, I got a call from a debut novelist whose book is coming out early next year by a major publisher. She’s unsure what her publisher is going to do in terms of publicity. She’s a friend on Facebook and she’d seen some of my social media publicity for my author clients.

Her biggest question about Twitter and building social media skills and presence: “Is it too early?”

And I said to her, as I say to you all now, no it’s never too early.

Start building and expanding your readership – through your blog, Twitter, Facebook, whatever sites you are using – and those readers could potentially stick with you all the way. Finished 10,000 words? Got a request for a partial? Finally landed that slippery title? Got your dream agent and he’s a helpful, handsome guy from San Francisco or an industry icon in New York? Share it with readers and they will be more invested when you reach major milestones and your book finally does come out. And be smart about your audience – reach out to the people that make the most sense. Other readers, authors (authors are generally very supportive of other authors) and other industry people who are a good fit.

Oh, and regarding Audrey Niffenegger and her Facebook fans who want more from her?

“I spend large parts of my day in a quiet room, drawing or writing. But I am not a very fast writer, so any one who gets annoyed at me for my slowness is just spinning their wheels. I am not able to work any faster than I do now, alas,” she said.

Who knows, maybe one day your readers will be hammering you for more, more, more! But not if they don’t know about you first.