Let's talk a bit about online presence—how writers and other creatives are told (or expected) to have one whether they like it or not. You gotta be on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and blogging (well, maybe not blogging anymore, but I will! Sometimes! Screw you, conventional wisdom!).
So the two of you who pay attention know that I've been streaming on Sunday nights for *checks calendar* about a year now. I started because it looked like fun, because I thought it would be a good way to play games I couldn't play around my kids, and because I saw people gathering an audience and I thought, "Hey, maybe I could do that."
Understand, I know how hard it is to build an audience, and I know nothing makes that happen overnight. I never expected to have hundreds of viewers who would all run to buy my books. I figured I'd just build something small—like I did here and on Twitter and Facebook—and maybe, maybe when I had something to sell or to say, that would be another platform for it. And I'd get to play games in the meantime.
Anyway, it turned out not to be as fun as I thought.*
* For me. Other people have fun with it, and that's awesome, but it just wasn't meshing with my schedule or personality.
I am no longer streaming. Could I have built an audience? Sure. But I realized I was no longer looking forward to it, and the idea of not streaming felt like... relief.
And that's my point. When you're looking at ways to build an audience or online presence, you have to HAVE TO evaluate what works for you—what do you enjoy, what comes naturally, what do you look forward to (at least most of the time)? Because otherwise... it just won't work no matter how hard you bang your head on it.
And besides, streaming (and blogging and tweeting and instagraming and... tumbling?) doesn't sell books. Books sell books. And now I have a little bit more time to do that.
So anyway, there's your conventional wisdom for today. Also your general update: I'm still working on stuff for you to enjoy, but I've got nothing finished or announced yet.
I do have a progress chart for the mobile gamebook though (I post updates for this on Twitter and Facebook occasionally). Here's where I am:
I hope to have this thing turned in by early July. We'll see.
So what are you working on?
Totally agree on this. If you're not getting something out of it, don't do it. Common wisdom used to be You Must Blog, and yet now the net's littered with abandoned blogs, even by those who had large followings. And those who continue to do it, they do it because they have something to share, or use it as a journal, or whatever else. It's better this way. The same way poetry's pure because no one ever got into poetry to make a lot of money. People got into it because they love language, and that's what keeps them at it.
ReplyDeleteAnd if it means more books from you, that's even better.
My thoughts on all counts exactly. I no longer blog on a schedule but rather when I have something to say (that won't fit in a Twitter thread). But I do hang out on Facebook and Twitter every day because I enjoy it.
ReplyDelete