Selling the Author

[Madman Starryteller]

It is sometimes expected that you reveal a lot about yourself alongside your text work. Who you are becomes as important as your work. It's been said that as we market our books, we should also market ourselves.

What are your thoughts about that? Do you have a marketable author profile? Do you prefer to stay anonymous? Mystery might even make you more interesting?

For me it's a bit difficult. I have a flawed past and I am flawed now as well. In one way I want to stay anonymous because I fear people will care about my past and my journey perhaps even more than my work. I want my work to be the focus, not me.

Do you want to separate the author from the writing? It might be hard since we write based on ourselves and how we see reality.

How do you feel about selling yourself in this sense?

 

[JT Woody]

I try to leave myself out of my x/twitter postings (thats the only author site i have).
I dont see it as relevant to the product i am selling. Sure it makes you more relatable, but i can be relatable with how i interact with people. But i choose not to tweet about my life.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

No need to share intimate details of one's life, but readers are curious about a writer's connection to his or her work. One can talk about inspiration, writing philosophy, and how one's background and taste in literature affected choice of location and genre. If I had a nickle for every time someone asked if my book is based on personal experience, I'd have quite a nice little stack of coins by now. The answer is no, I am not my character and she is not me, but I shared some of my experiences and memories with her. Example: my father once picked a flower for me from the biggest magnolia tree in Arkansas. I put that in the book. Little things make readers happy.

How many photos of the book cover and summaries of the plot can one put on social media before people stop bothering to look at it? I include things like photographs of the aforementioned magnolia and the bayou that inspired a location in the book. There are also photos of people at book signings or holding my book, including a perfectly lovely set of photos of Writer JT Woody peeking over the cover. You got plenty of s, my dear. Thanks!

 

[Set2Stun]

Do you want to separate the author from the writing?

Yes, absolutely. I'd much rather remain completely anonymous and have readers only care about my writing, and nothing else. But unforch, that's not how things work.

If I were a super-fascinating, engaging genius with movie star looks, yeah, I would be pushing myself as the selling point for my work. Alas, I'm just a simple farmer, and am not all that interesting. I just don't have that "zazz" that would immediately draw in members of a possible audience. And I know I can't change that, and I'm never going to try.

All that being said, I've since accepted that social media engagement is necessary. I didn't want to, but I created a website, a Facebook account, and a Twitter account, and then launched my book into the ether. Oops - not a lot of people cared, because I had no followings on those platforms. No one to get a copy and spread the word through their own networks. It was just me, a nobody on the internet with zero influence, posting about a book I'd released. And why would random people care about that? A title and cover can only get you so far.

So, I've been working on correcting that, albeit belatedly. I'm regularly writing a blog, even if only a handful of people are reading it at best, and I've started actively engaging with the writing community on Twitter (though it seems to be chock full of frauds, phonies, bots, and solicitors). Whether these efforts will reap any benefits in the future remains to be seen, but I can tell you that doing nothing doesn't do anything for ya.

 

[Pyroglyphian]

I prefer anonymity generally — not so much as a commercial strategy, but as an antidote to (what I perceive to be) unhealthy behaviours and impacts endemic throughout social media.

For commercial purposes, my main writing interest atm is non-fiction. I’m feeling that this would benefit from the authenticity of a real person behind the ideas. However, I think there are some important differences between marketing non-fiction versus fiction, so I’m not sure if my view is very helpful in this thread.

Mystery is inevitable though. We may develop a sort of kinship with a favoured cultural icon, but we can only know other people imperfectly; fantasy, mythology and projection fill the gaps in our understanding. I agree: this can make a person seem more interesting than they are, when actually they still put their pantaloons on one leg at a time!

For me it's a bit difficult. I have a flawed past and I am flawed now as well. In one way I want to stay anonymous because I fear people will care about my past and my journey perhaps even more than my work. I want my work to be the focus, not me.

Perfect for your memoirs though!

 

[Homer Potvin]

I don't really think readers care at all about who the author is. Just what the author has produced. Like, the only thing about Stephen King I care about it what he writes. None of his personal details would affect my opinion one way or the other. Different story with non-fiction, obviously. Or maybe if the author was a seven foot tall quadriplegic who wrote who uses their nose to type, somebody (not me) would be more interested in buying it. But overall, who cares?

Regarding marketing yourself as an author via a profile, socials, and the like, everything I hear says that's more or less required if you have any prayer in being successful. Like anything in business/life, people will support you if they like you and won't if they do not. Whether it's meet and greets, or small signings, or other events, that will definitely work. I'll almost always buy a book or a CD of a whatever if I meet somebody and like them, even if I never read/listen to the thing. But they come off as a dick, I won't even if it's something I like. Big difference, though, between people you meet in the flesh or interact with directly on a social or something than an anonymous name with an author bio.

 

[Catrin Lewis]

I agree: this can make a person seem more interesting than they are, when actually they still put their pantaloons on one leg at a time!

I don't. Should I put that in my author bio?

 

[jazzabel]

This is a tricky issue for any author with a complex situation, and these are many. From women authors who are also fleeing violence at home (so have to be anonymoius and very careful), to people writing things that don’t jive with their ordinary lives, or other projects. The readers always want more personal connection with the author, especially if they strongly connected with their writing or characters. It’s the parasocial relationship issue all content creators are dealing with.

Agents and publishers say that they want large SM following, but if you could be “cancelled” by the mob du jour for any reason, then you can be as popular as you like, publishers and agents won’t touch you. I’ve seen this even with some highly popular authors losing contracts, movie deals cancelled, being dropped by their agents, booksellers competing who will obstruct their book(s) in the stores more, and then the terrible toll this has taken on them financially, personally, MH-wise etc.

I settled on deciding how much my personal info each project warrants, in order to have a healthy chance of achieving what I hoped it would achieve. It’s really up to each of us to set our boundaries, and the readers and others will just have to accept them. Ultimately, it is the writing that brought us together, and that I endevour to deliver to the best of my ability. Otherwise, no matter how much you give, it will never be enough for everyone, and unless you love exposure in the public eye, it can get very stressful. Think about your writing career in the long term, what would give you distance and peace of mind to carry on writing, rather than worrying about personal exposure.