Many moons ago, writers wrote (longhand or via typewriter - that's Louis L'Amour, by the way - before the desk computer or laptop). They wrote from start to finish, printed off the pages, boxed it up, and sent off their book (to an agent, editor, or the proverbial slush pile.) Once they signed a contract, writers started the next book. Did they worry about promotion? Nope. Did the publisher routinely take care of the book's cover? The print run? Distribution?
Yup, yup, yup.
Things are a bit different now. Some western writers are hanging on to the "old ways" by their fingernails. A blog, what's that? Why do I need a website? Tweeting is just plain silly, like teats on a bull.
Some writers believe they'd rather not put a "face" to their name, especially on Facebook. What's so social about Social Media? Writers might believe it robs them of precious writing time.
While that might be true (and some people waste hours on Facebook), you can say the same about answering the telephone, watching television, playing video games, reading others' books, exercising their horse, even sleeping. "Call me old-fashioned, just don't call me late to dinner."
It's all about networking. Surely you've heard that term. And while life happens, so does change. And friends -- the times, they are a-changing.
The most successful business man is the man who holds onto the old just as long as it is good and grabs the new just as soon as it is better. Robert Vanderpoel
Every writer -- no matter the genre, no matter how young or old -- has to consider they are IN BUSINESS. A hobby doesn't fly with the IRS. So every serious writer needs the basics besides a solid plot, characters and a finished manuscript. YES, a finished manuscript, because writers rarely sell on proposal (unless you're already published with a good sales track.) You want to sell, and make money doing it. Right?
First off -- will you use your real name? Think about what "public" really means. If you prefer privacy, come up with a pseudonym. And consider the idea of "branding" -- just like the old days of cattle ranching. Say Double-Bar L aloud -- it rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? -- versus a surname difficult to pronounce or spell. Think about the bookshelf, too. Top, middle or bottom? Where do you want your readers to find you? Remember, many readers purchase on-line now so that's not as important as it once was.
Does a name/brand matter? Yes. Readers need to find you, unless you're Louis L'Amour, Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. It's a fact. Your name is ON your book, and "brands" that PRODUCT as yours. And readers want to do more than crack open the spine. They want to know more than the story. They want to know YOU, the writer. And that means taking to "social media."
So. You're an author, with a book -- or several. A WEBSITE can be cheap, and sometimes easy. But they often LOOK cheap and easy too, so consider that if you're working your way up the ladder of success. A website can be your first investment. It's relatively cheap to buy your "domain name" for a year -- and cheaper for three years. Avoid the URL of "authorname" followed by blogspot.com or wordpress.com because people will remember "authorname.com" a lot easier. You also need an ISP like GoDaddy or Hostgator or some other host for your website, paying a set amount per month. You could also hire your grandkid, a friend or someone who knows what they're doing to "set up" your website. Shop wisely, because you ought to know how to maintain and update your website once in a while.
Next, consider a choice between Twitter and Facebook. Unless you're willing to tweet (and that means NOT constantly promoting your book - keep that to once or twice a month) about anything and everything, avoiding politics, religion and sex, AND re-tweet other followers' 140-character tweets, forget it. It's useful to get your name out there, but not necessary. FACEBOOK will do a lot more for an author. Caution: if your timeline is filled with gross photos, jokes or rants between family members, change the setting to private. Keep that stuff far away from your author name/brand. I've often seen authors rant on and on about the school parking lot idiots, or their a**backward relatives, or spout F-bombs and worse, and thought, "Whoa. That's not professional." Remember -- keep your author name *sacred* and stay on "topic."
How? Create an AUTHOR PAGE and profile. Post updates of your books, reviews, print or ebook giveaways, writing tips, etc. Think visual, too! Share other writers' inspiring photos, quotes or interesting ideas about books, reading, writing or whatever might relate to your book. For example, when my western mystery Double Crossing debuted, I shared all kinds of information about trains -- with photos from the CPRR.org website, details about the Pullman Palace cars, maps of the cross-country transcontinental railroad route, menus of the station houses along the way, etc. Quick visuals often "tell a story" faster than a long stretch of words. Even this blog post has visuals to give the eye a rest and add color and interest.
Which leads to the last option I'll share about Social Media possibilities -- and in my opinion, is the most fun. PINTEREST -- what is it? Think "virtual corkboard" or "scrapbook" only on the web. See the "sharp point" on the bottom of the P? Yup. PINS.
It's easy to become a member, too. It's similar to Facebook in networking potential. And it's also a way to spend hours exploring ideas for characters, costumes, places, food, celebrities, films, books, whatever your little heart desires. The minute Pinterest appeared, I signed up. Hey, I'm an artist and love visuals!
How can you use Pinterest to your advantage? I typed Pinterest.com into my browser, and then typed "western books" into the search bar -- VOILA! Click here to see. From book covers to film posters to baby shower ideas, it's all there as a visual feast. It's also pretty
self-explanatory to create your profile and "boards" before adding "pins" -- for example, either uploading your book covers from your computer or inputting the URL of the purchase links from Amazon, B&N or Smashwords. I recommend the latter, in fact, because it's another way to nudge readers to buy. To the left, the graphic shows a sample profile with boards.
I can hear the grumpy (cat) men whining aloud. "Why, why, why would I bother to use Pinterest? It's mostly for women! Men go to the bookstore, they buy my books, I'm fine." Uh, huh. Sure. But don't men want *more readers* to buy their books? Why limit your readership? So get over it. Say YES. You'll thank me for it. Check out my book board by clicking here if you want to see. Then check out the rest of my boards while you're there.
The same goes for women -- I'm here in Western Fictioneers to network with a lot more male writers and readers than my books would normally reach. It's not easy learning to juggle all this "social media" with a writing career. How can you do it?
Time management, of course. And knowing your limits, because you can't cover the Ponderosa in a day on horseback. The same goes for networking. Unless you're as famous as the late Louis L'Amour, who has a website and videos about his career, and a staff to keep his name/brand alive.
Hey, great idea. Maybe one day...
Mystery author Meg Mims lives in Southeastern Michigan with her husband and a 'Make My Day' Malti-poo dog. Meg loves writing novels, short novellas and short stories, both contemporary and historical. Her Spur and Laramie Award winning Double series is now among the Prairie Rose Publications book list. Meg is also one-half of the D.E. Ireland team writing the Eliza Doolittle & Henry Higgins Mystery series for St. Martin's Minotaur. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.
At last count, novels and stories I’ve written have been published under at least 35 different names. I say “at least” because back in the Seventies and Eighties I sold a few short stories that I never saw when they were published in various men’s magazines, but I know they appeared under other names. Some of these other identities were personal pseudonyms, some were house-names. Long before I ever became a writer, I used to read the Mike Shayne mystery novels by Brett Halliday. At that time I never had any idea that one day I would actually be “Brett Halliday”. But I was, contributing 36 novellas under that name to MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE during the Seventies and Eighties. To me, things like that are among the great pleasures of being a writer. (Along with not having to commute and being able to go to work in my pajamas if I want to, of course.)
The first Western I ever wrote was an entry in a house-name series: PECOS, #27 in the Stagecoach Station series, published by Bantam under the house-name Hank Mitchum. Since then I’ve written books in a number of different Western series, and in many cases, I was already a fan of the books before I ever joined the stable of authors. Working under a house-name has its advantages and disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage is that you receive little or no credit for the work you’re doing. Your name is nowhere on the book when it comes out, and although some people (mostly in the industry) know who writes which books, the vast majority of the readers have no idea and don’t really care. They just want an entertaining story, and I can’t blame them for that at all, since I was once the same way.
For example, back in the Sixties, I used to read paperback Westerns featuring Texas Rangers Jim Hatfield and Walt Slade. The Hatfield novels were published under the name Jackson Cole, the Slades as by Bradford Scott. I didn’t know the history of these novels, didn’t know that the Hatfields originally were published in the pulp magazine TEXAS RANGERS or that Walt Slade first appeared (although in shorter works) in the pulp THRILLING WESTERN. I certainly had no idea that the same author who wrote the Walt Slade novels as Bradford Scott (real name: Alexander Leslie Scott) also created the Jim Hatfield character and wrote many, but by no means all, of those novels by Jackson Cole. I just knew that I enjoyed the stories. The same holds true with the house-name Western series being published today. (As an aside, the Stagecoach Station series was created by long-time Western author D.B. Newton, and he was the first “Hank Mitchum”. During the Forties and Fifties, Newton wrote some of the Jim Hatfield novels for TEXAS RANGERS as “Jackson Cole”, though none of the ones that were reprinted in paperback. Still, as a fan of the Hatfield series, I found it very cool that I worked on a series created by one of the Hatfield authors and even shared a house-name with him.)
The advantages of working on a house-name series outweigh the disadvantages, as far as I’m concerned. With a long-running series, as a writer you have a vast legacy of previous books to draw on for inspiration. You have a solid, well-developed main character to work with, and yet at the same time you have the freedom to put your own spin on that character (within reason, of course). I’ve written nearly fifty novels featuring a certain mustachioed deputy U.S. marshal. In his appearance, his actions, his way of talking, are dozens of bits of influence from the other authors who have contributed to the series. Those influences combine with my own instincts as to how he should act and what he should say to create my own version of the character who is the same in many respects but subtly different in others. Those differences make it possible for me to read books in the series by other authors and still enjoy them, because they each have their own individual take on the character. You also have an established readership for these series, and your job is to entertain those readers as they’ve been entertained by previous books. It’s a challenge, but for me, a very enjoyable one.
Speaking of challenges, when you’re writing quite a few books under different names, often different types of books, sometimes you actually can get confused about who you are and what you’re supposed to be doing that day. Years ago, I was working on a novel set in Old Testament times while having a Western novel also underway. I was talking to the editor of the Western novel on the phone and mentioned that I had to be careful not to have the hero of the Biblical novel say, “Well, I reckon I’m gonna go slay me some Philistines.”
In the past month I’ve worked on projects that will be published under four different names, none of them my own. People have asked me, “How can you write a book knowing that your name won’t be on it?” For years my standard answer was, “I don’t care as long as my name is on the check.” Of course that’s not completely true, now or then. Writing has been my job for more than three decades now, and getting paid is important. But most writers love to see a new book with their name on it, and I’m no different. If we didn’t have egos, it probably wouldn’t even occur to us that people might want to read what we write, would it? I’ve been blessed with the ability to put those feelings aside when I’m working, at least to a certain extent. When I’m sitting at the computer, the words appearing on the monitor are my words. The book I’m writing is mine. When it’s published, my name may not be anywhere on it, but that has no bearing on the writing itself. I know it’s good, and I feel a surge of pride when I see the books in the store and know that people are reading them and enjoying them. So when you come right down to it, the answer to the question “Who am I today?” is simple and always the same.
I’m a guy writing a book, spinning a yarn. That’s all I ever wanted to be.
