Advice

A Bridge To The Quiet Planet: A Few Thoughts On The Final Run

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

All right, A Bridge To The Quiet Planet is out.  Done.  So it was a bit later than I expected, and the final run on it gave me food for thought.

WATCH SWITCHING BETWEEN SOFTWARE: I found some annoying artifacts from moving from one piece of software to another – there can be subtle differences.   I had to do some annoying search and replaces.

THINK OVER STYLISTIC CHOICES EARLY AND FOLLOW UP: You may make certain formatting choices – like bolding certain things (business cards or telepathy), certain uses of quotes, etc.  Make sure you’re consistent.  I found ONE case of not following my own formatting, and I nearly missed it.

DO A SERIOUS READ-THROUGH AND CORRECTION EARLY: I wish I did this.  Take, say, an early draft, and edit it as if it’s for print.  This will help you find your mistakes, issues, common problems, and get plenty of distracting tiny errors out of the way – so you can edit.

KEEP A LIST OF ERRORS YOU FIND OR WORRY ABOUT: This helped me a lot.  As I did my final readthroughs, I kept a list of suspicious things or choices I want to review.  This let me do some amazing fine editing easy because then I could globally search.

SEARCH AND REPLACE IS YOUR FRIEND IF YOU DO IT STEP BY STEP: Global search and replace can mess up your document (as we all know).  However going slow, reviewing EACH possible replacement (or doing it by hand for each found) let’s you avoid problems.  Also it acts as a second review!

YOU CAN ONLY DO SO MUCH: At some point you can’t edit forever.  So don’t.  Learn your limits.  In fact . . .

GO EBOOK FIRST: This is a trick I evolved from a friend.  Do an ebook first, and distribute it.  It gives you immediate feedback, then you can update the ebook quickly.  Go print a bit later (like I’m doing it 4-6 weeks later).

KEEP A “LIVE” DOCUMENT: A big advantage of going ebook first is feedback.  So I keep a “Live” document I’m always editing as a core, representative document.  That will become the print book – but if I find errors I modify all 3 documents (ebook, Print, Live) for later.

So lots of lessons to share.  I’m certain I’ll have more to share – I think I need to make a kind of writing checklist sometime!

Steven Savage

The Social Self As A Business

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

To mark this post historically, this was posted the day Tumblr decided to cut out some adult content (it’s hard to tell exactly what they meant, it got weird)  This was quickly followed by an algorithm that clearly was terrible not doing it’s job, and leaving people to discuss leaving.  When you can’t exactly spell out a vision for what you want to do, that vision seems to be “stop some nudity”, and your system is bad, yeah people are going to leave.

This doesn’t entirely surprise me, an old hand at watching internet companies shoot themselves in the food.  I’ve seen sites and services appear and vanish, sometimes quite sadly.  This has led me to an important but unpleasant truth.

You have to run your social media presence like a business.

What do I mean by this?  Simple

  1. Social media is vital to our lives (for some of us more than others)
  2. Social media companies rise, fall, and change.
  3. To reach your social media goals, you have to consider your vision, make a plan, and have expenses – just like a business.

For me, a writer, this is more vital – but also as my writing is a hobby, it’s almost more effort.  I mean it’s hard to disentangle my audience, my fellow authors, and my sarcastic video game posts.

But it still comes down to this – business decisions affect social media, social media is connected to our lives, so we have to run that part of it like a business.

No, I don’t like it.

I don’t like knowing something may vanish the next week because of a merger.  I don’t like seeing people leave a site due to some weird policy change.  I dislike wondering who’s harvesting my data.  It’s tiring and it’s exhausting, and annoying, not to mention a bit dehumanizing.

But this is where we are now, when business decisions affect where you post recipes and if you repeat an Overwatch meme about Hanzo’s shirts.

Maybe in time we can build more humanized platforms.  Maybe we can get others to evolve.  But until them your social media life has to be run like a business, especially if you have any large groups, complex plans, side businesses, media presence, etc.

If it helps, what I do is actually review my social plans once a month – who’s planned what, do I want to host an event, etc.  I’ve had to work my social media reviews into that, along with my marketing reviews for my books.  It helps, but it’s annoying.

And again, I don’t like it either.

Steven Savage

How To Support An Author You Like

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Things That Cost Money:

  • Buy the author’s books.
  • Buy ALL the author’s books.
  • By the author’s related merchandise
  • Buy the author’s books and give them as gifts.
  • Buy the author’s books and donate them to libraries.
  • Support the author’s Patreon, Kofi, etc.

Reviews:

  • Review the author’s book on publishing sites
  • Review the author’s book on goodreads.
  • Blog a review on your blog/tumblr/etc.
  • Give a book review on Twitter.
  • Give a book review on Facebook.
  • Give a book review on Tumblr.

Conventions:

  • Suggest the author speak at a convention.
  • If you host a panel at a convention, ask the author to be a guest.
  • If the author can’t attend, put out flyers for their book at a convention.
  • Have a dealer or artist’s table? Carry the author’s book as well!

Promotions:

  • Put out flyers for the author at libraries, bookstores, etc.
  • Mention the author in your own newsletter.
  • If the author has a sale, let people know.
  • If the author does a promotion, ask how you can help.
  • Give the author’s stuff away as part of your own promotions (“Get this book, get a free copy of this other one”).
  • Start a promotion with the author at www.prolificworks.com

Bookstores:

  • See if a local bookstore will carry the author’s book
  • See if a local bookstore will invite the author to speak.
  • Put out flyers at these bookstores.

Book Clubs:

  • Suggest the author’s book or books for your book club.
  • Have the author speak at your book club.

Blogs:

  • Ask to cross-blog with the author.
  • Help the author blog on other pages.
  • Do a blog tour with the author.

Podcasts:

  • Suggest the author to podcasts you follow.
  • Invite the author to your own podcast.

Social Media:

  • Follow the author on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc.
  • Promote the author on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc.
  • Join the author’s newsletter to keep up on them.
  • Get OTHER people to join the author’s newsletter.
  • If the author has a LinkedIn page and “Author” as a job, give them a rec!
  • Invite the author to your slack/discord.

Art:

  • Do fanart of the author’s work if you’re into it – author’s love feedback.
  • Offer your services (at a price, of course) to the author.

Support:

  • Be a beta reader (and hey, free book)
  • Help A/B test book covers.
  • Refer artists and editors and the like to the author.
  • Refer the author’s editors and artists to other people.

Services (that you SHOULD charge for, of course, but maybe at a discount)

Offer to do cover art for a book.

  • Offer to edit.
  • Offer to translate.

Collaborate:

  • Do a multi-author work with the author (and others).
  • Refer any multi-author works, zines, etc. to an author.

Steven Savage