Ever been called a “joiner”?

Well, good for you, because writers who are willing to connect and mix with other writers tend to be happier and more productive than writers who isolate themselves or resist networking with peers. And joiners also have an easier time becoming known.

Have you taken a few hours to think about which associations might make the most sense for you to join? When it comes to joining associations, it’s really not the quantity, but the quality of your relationship with the association that counts.

Here are ten good reasons why you should make time to identify three associations you can join and get to know better:

Memberships…

…are typically inexpensive.

…grant you access to like-minded others.

…augment your professional status.

…allow you to interact with members of your audience.

…help you keep up with the latest industry trends.

…earn you a reduced rate for continuing education.

…sometimes offer additional benefits like insurance or legal assistance.

…serve as a newswire for professional achievements.

…can act as networking hubs.

…provide opportunities to give back to your professional community.

Membership organizations are not all created equally and, most often, they are only as good, friendly, and helpful as the people who run the network.

I’ve made it a personal policy to choose only the membership associations with the friendliest administrators, the best resources for members, and most apparent win-win attitudes towards partnering with members.

Why not? There are so many writing associations to choose from. I don’t have time for rude or aloof administrators, crummy resources I can beat with a Google search, or organizations only interested in their own earnings who refuse to share even a modest honorarium with authors or other professionals who provide services for their members.

For example, one organization I heartily endorse is Willamette Writers because they are always membership focused, not me merely Willamette Writers focused.

Another great membership organization, whose conference I’ve not yet attended but whose administrators have been a joy to communicate with is the Oklahoma Writers’ Federation.

And another great “association” that is actually not an association at all, but still manages to be a treasure trove of great resources and networking opportunities for writers, is Writer’s Digest. Obviously I’m biased, since I’m a Writer’s Digest author. But I think if you look closely at the Writer’s Digest offerings, you’ll see that they are setting an exemplary tone and offering a bevy of resources for writers of all experience levels. If you want to take advantage of a membership-like status with Writer’s Digest, you can sign up to become a VIP Member. [See the badge over there in the right-hand column of this blog to get more info. >>>]

You will see me buzzing these organizations a lot wherever I go because they understand one thing that we can all stand to remember: good news travels fast. And you will likely hear “the good news” repeatedly until you decide to become a member. And if you’re not hearing any good news or member buzz, then maybe think twice about an organization or do some more research before you opt in.

Next year, after you’ve been a member for a full membership cycle, assess how valuable your association was for your career. Naturally, you get back to a certain extent what you put in. So don’t sit back and expect an association to do for you. Associations can only give back, when you also invest.

But you’ll never know until you take a membership association for a test-drive.

Have fun, have good boundaries, and enjoy the ride!

[This post has been updated from a 2009 post that appeared in the old Get Known Before the Book Deal blog.]

Well, I wasn’t going to publish this because it feels fairly controversial. But then I read Mike Shatzkin’s post on Why are you for killing bookstores? And at the end he said:

The book business has always been one with very low financial barriers to entry. Ebook publishing makes getting into the game even cheaper. It is also going to bring increased competition to book publishers from content-creators outside publishing.

Pay attention to that last line. It’s future tense, right? But from what I’m seeing, it’s not in the future at all. Increased competition has already been happening and it’s been happening in spades since the New Year.

Fear of authors developing and owning their own platforms seemed to be a concern at Digital Book World and, at first, this fear struck me as paranoid and ungrounded. I have a few semi-developed thoughts for publishers on whom to partner with and whom to not partner with moving forward in this brave new world of publishing.

Publishers would be wise to choose their authors carefully because every contract signed represents a partnership. And the more we see a spike in folks whose clear intention is to use Internet publishing tools to get rich quickly to make the most of their peaking visibility, so the need also increases to talk about how much this has to do with leveraging the stamp of approval granted by traditional publishers.

Specifically, I suggest that publishers do not to partner with authors who would seemingly like to see them go out of business. The folks whose behavior concerns me most belong to certain crowds: the infopreneur crowd, the blogger crowd, and the pirate crowd. What these people have on their sides are:

• Speed
• Networks of people who have large networks of people
• And lots of jargon that they use to hypnotize people before they hard-sell them

Seems to me that there are a large number of people online, who have risen up in competition with traditional publishers…and ironically, some of them have recently become traditionally published authors.

I mentioned, who I am talking about, so I want to be clear who I’m NOT talking about:

I’m not talking about self-published authors, who are making a go of producing themselves. Those budding platform-building skills are going to come in handy once/when those authors become traditionally published. I absolutely don’t see self-published authors as a threat to traditional publishing. (Perhaps Harlequin is on to something with their new vanity press arm? Not really sure yet.)

I’m also not suggesting that because a traditional author self-publishes some of his or her own work, that he or she is a threat to traditional publishing. Far from it, I think this only expands the authors’ reach and connection with fans, which is good for future book sales of any type (assuming the author does a decent job self-publishing).

I believe that authors should retain rights to the majority of their body of work and only partner with publishers on a project-to-project basis. This keeps everybody on best behavior and prevents authors from becoming perpetual indentured servants to publishers.

I think multiple book contracts need to go away all together, so that authors can choose to partner with publishers for the right reasons–because they want to and it’s win-win–and not because they have been indentured by a multi-book contract. But this is really another topic…I digress.

Back on point, I’m also not talking about authors like Cory Doctorow. I think Cory partners with publishing professionals and the public in an open, guileless, transparent way—not at all similar to the ways that authors who I suspect would like to put publishers out of business. These are those who are using time limits, disappearing billboards, and escalating price points to divide and conquer.

Other signals of desperation include infomercial-like landing pages that scroll on and on for days, the constant hard sell in close proximity to the otherwise widely admired charismatic author, and the promise of six-figure secrets to those buy in–but only if you buy in now.

I think anybody who promised their spouse last year that they would be making six figures by now wants to save face. So off they go to chase down the next pot of gold at the end of the blog-your-brains-out rainbow. Have we had enough of these wild goose success blueprints yet?

Please. Say. Yes.

In the meantime, you can buy legitimately helpful tools in the form of books over at your local bookstore for ten to twenty bucks. Or even take them out at the library for free. But in this new marketplace such antiquated behaviors are not sexy anymore. Not to the cool kids anyway. No, no. They want the latest info-products, tele-classes, and other whatnots from whoever has recently been blessed…by your published authors.

And like Mike Shatzkin said, you don’t have to go to the bookstores for these, because, like e-books, you can’t buy them there. And when you buy them in lieu of purchasing books from traditional publishing, you aren’t just putting bookstores out of business. You are putting publishers out of business, too.

As you can probably tell, I’ve hit my limit. And I’ve lost faith in several people I formerly held in newly minted esteem. That’s pretty much over for me about as quickly as it started over the past, oh, twelve months. I don’t need your third-tribe-jargon-stuffed-cool-kids-better-buy-now-garbage-overload-hard-sell with a little insider wink to seal the sale.

I’ve never bought in and I sure don’t plan on starting now. And I’m one of the lucky ones because all I’ve lost is time spent peering into my Google Reader.

Pay attention, publishers. Watch out for authors who turn into hard-sellers. Bottom line: Some of your authors do not look to partner with you. They look elsewhere to partner, and they take your stamp of approval with them and leverage the heck out of it for their own benefit and the benefit of their cronies.

To me, these authors seem bent on taking your good name, leveraging it for their own purposes, becoming publishers themselves, and creating a brave new online world where only the swiftest and the best hard-sell copywriters survive.

That means you are out, publishers. Did they forget to send you that memo?

Wake up. Look around. Subscribe to your author’s e-mail newsletters.

Some of your authors are partnering with you…and some of your authors are seemingly not.

I guess I’m just wondering: Why ARE you partnering with them?

And how’s that working out?

Or am I the only one who is wondering?

Your writing career isn’t just about landing one book deal and then scrambling like crazy so folks will hear about your book, and then scrambling to get a second book deal, and so on. No. There is a more strategic and steady way to lay the groundwork so you can avoid scrambling altogether.  ~ From Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platform

Prepare to be amazed by how much you can do to market your book.

How little sleep you can do it on.

And to plumb the depths of your commitment to your writing career.

This accurately describes the situation of the newly published author.

You’ll launch your book with an awful lot of good intentions.

You’ll try to say, “Yes,” to as many people as you can.

But by this point, you will be running a sprint, not a marathon, so it’s easy to forget to take care of yourself.

Try not to forget your health. Or you’ll pay for it.

Do healthy things to counter-balance the surges of nervous energy that you will likely experience–a good review here, a bad review there–it’s all par for the author obstacle course.

Ground yourself in healthy habits that will keep you plugging along. The old-fashioned ones still work: good food, regular exercise, and lots of rest.

And, hey, go for it! You worked long and hard to get to this point.

But don’t kill yourself.

Don’t be so frenetic that you alienate others.

Don’t forget to thank everyone who helped you get where you are.

I talked about the importance of saying no and sticking to your plan last week.

Just remember who is steering the book-publicity ship.

You.

And yes, only a remarkable book will do.

I do not agree with anyone who thinks the quality of a book no longer matters. I think quality matters more than ever.

Word of mouth has never been so powerful in making or breaking book sales. So you’d better write a damn darn good book. Because you are not just flinging a book out there into the marketplace like a Frisbee and hoping that readers will jump up out of the crowd and grab it.

No.

You are going to be the public face of your book. The mouthpiece for your book. The representation of your book. And nobody wants to represent a poorly written book.

Am I right?

So you will be ready. You will write a really remarkable book. Because you spent all that time ramping up for it (see step one). Right?

And step three will go so more smoothly if you write a remarkable book.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Get Known (below). Come back tomorrow for step three.

Let’s get this part over with: The reality is, most books fail. What I mean by fail is not that they don’t sell thousands of copies, but that they don’t sell even one thousand copies. Agents and editors want authors to have a strong platform because authors with platforms sell books. The bigger the reach of an author’s platform, the more books they are likely to sell. It’s that simple. ~ From Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow An Author Platform (Writer’s Digest Books)

Platform development is an inside job. Despite what you may read online about how you can slap together one lickety-split, resist the temptation to do just that. The same goes for the latest online trends everyone is rushing to get in on. You’ll get to them. But first comes platform planning. ~ From Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Online Platform (Writer’s Digest Books)

Here’s where you want to be by the time your book launches. You want to be:

Recognizable: Not just new to your audience, but already recognized by your audience

Credible: Not just somebody who has a niche, but the go-to person on the topic or in your genre

Omnipresent: Not just visible, you want to be everywhere

And you want to accomplish all of this before your book is even written.

Kind of a tall order?

Well, simply put, if you are not recognizable, credible, and omnipresent by the time your book launches, you’re going to have your work cut out for you after the launch.

And I can predict without even knowing you that if you don’t have these three qualities set in motion before your launch, then you will likely be disappointed after your launch.

How are you going to prepare to build your platform in a smart, steady way that will position you as you want to be by the time your book is ready to launch?

60,000 words, 264 pages, and thirty-six exercises [Amazon link].

All as far in advance of your book launch as possible.

Because clarity about your platform before you build it is the warm-up exercise for the real race. The book promotion race.

And if you are not in shape when the time rolls around for it, all I can say is that you will wish you were.

Of course, there will still be plenty more to do once your book is written. But clarity about what you are doing and what you hope to accomplish before the book is released is definitely the first step.

Certainly, if you hope to avoid author overload, you definitely need to ramp up your platform before your book launch.

Come back tomorrow for the next step.

Before writers establish an author platform, they typically establish a writer platform. Over the past decade, thousands of writers have parlayed established influence into traditional book deals. Landing a traditional book deal is still an effective way to exponentially increase your credibility and visibility.

Your “platform” refers to what you do in the world with your professional expertise that makes you visible and influential in the world. Having friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter is not your platform, unless the majority of those people know who you are, what you do, and are enthusiastic about your work.

I thought I would offer some advice about how to slowly and steadily establish a lasting platform. You may note the lack of fanaticism in this advice and the emphasis on enduring success instead. I’m a mother and a wife, a freelancer, a speaker, a teacher, and a blogger, so aiming for balance is the only way I can afford to work if I plan on sticking around for the long haul.

This advice has worked consistently for my students over the past several years. I think you will find that a grounded, step-by-step approach works just as well for you if you choose to follow it:

1. Develop a platform topic that you love and can work on tirelessly for the next few years. Your passion of the moment should come in second to the topic you could delve into deeply for a good, long time. Prior professional education and a depth of personal experience are going to be a boon to your platform if you have an eye on a future book deal.
2. Hang back from establishing a blog on your topic until you have cultivated a wealth of content and experience working with others on specialty-related activities that lend credibility and trust to your name. Others will tell you to start blogging immediately, but don’t, if you want to be efficient with your time and money.
3. Instead, gain authority by seeking publication in established, highly visible publications both in print and online that serve your target audience. Avoid the kind of publishing that anyone can accomplish, like posting on article sites, and work on your professional communication skills instead. By all means, avoid the content mills offering writers slave wages with the promise of future earnings.
4. Don’t begin any kind of marketing campaign for any product or service offerings until you have established yourself as a go-to person on your topic, again saving you time and money. Before you look at ways to serve others directly, channel your expertise into the best service methods possible based on your strengths and weaknesses. This is a meaty topic that is covered in-depth in my book, Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platform (Writer’s Digest Books 2008).
5. Then, develop a product or service that can become one of several multiple income streams over time that will support your goal of becoming a published author. For example, teaching classes over the years has allowed me to re-invest more of the money I earn from writing books back into book marketing. Make sure any offerings you produce are released conscientiously and are integrated into the professional writing you already do. Otherwise, you will seem like you are all over the place and just trying to score a buck.
6. Don’t expect your platform to support you financially for at least one or two years, as you micro-invest in it, re-invest in it as it grows, and expand your visibility.
7. Once you have a professional publication track record in your niche topic, then it’s time to hang your online shingle. I’ve seen this accomplished in as little as six months by exceptionally focused students. Take a portion of the money you’ve earned writing and invest it in a professional quality online presence.
8. A low-cost way to do this is to purchase your name as a URL and use a hosting site like GoDaddy.com to host a Wordpress.org blog. I use the Thesis Theme, which you can see in action at my blog. In this way, a blog can also serve as your website where you post your published clips, offerings and bio. If you don’t have a ton of money to invest in the look of your site, you can always pay a designer later.
9. Delay partnering with others on joint ventures until you have a clear idea of your own strengths and weaknesses in and around your topic. And when you do partner with others be extremely discriminating. Make sure the partnership is going to be win-win-win for everyone involved.
10. Start an e-mail newsletter or e-zine with those who are most interested in your topic. Build your list by invitation and then grow it into a permission-based following over time. Create an expected, ongoing dialogue that is mutually beneficial to everyone involved and your list will grow.
11. Now you are ready to start blogging. And yes, I mean while you continue to do all the things we’ve already discussed. Be sure to zoom-focus your blog on what you have to add to the conversation that is already going on about your topic. Don’t just share information; make an impact. Make your blog a go-to, up-to-date resource for your audience.
12. Partner selectively with others who serve the same general audience that you do with integrity and humility. Spend time getting to know folks before you decide to partner with them. You can’t afford to taint the reputation you have worked so hard to establish by partnering with just anyone.
13. Now that you have an established niche and audience, definitely participate in social networking. I like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn because they all offer something unique. The best way to learn is to jump in, spend an hour online each week until you are up and running. Follow the instructions for getting started provided by social media expert Meryl K. Evans.

This start-up plan for a writer platform will eventually blossom into an author platform. From start to finish, implementing a solid platform following this advice should take you about a year. By the end of that year, you will have established yourself as a serious contender in both professional and online circles, without killing yourself for some huckster’s promise of overnight success.

Have a plan. Leave a legacy in words, connections and professional influence. If you are consistent, by the time the year is done, you will have made effective use of your time and money in 2010.

I wish you the best of luck in your platform-building efforts!

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It’s pretty rare for me to read a book and think, Wow, this book is the perfect compliment to Get Known.

But I’ve just found one, and now I’m in search of others. Got any ideas for me? Know any books that cover topics that are complimentary to the author-platform topics covered in Get Known?

Here’s my review for Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, Crush It, Why Now Is The Time To Cash In On Your Passion (Harper Studio).

I had heard about Gary Vaynerchuk from a few folks when I decided to attend his talk at Book Expo America 2009. Naturally, my first response was, “Well, this guy is a little over the top for me…but I’ll see what I think.” Far from being put off by Gary, I was charmed by his laid back no-baloney cut-to-the-chase message. It was then that I decided to get and read his book. Now that I’ve read “Crush It,” I’m convinced that, like Seth Godin’s books “Permission Marketing” and “Tribes,” “Crush It” is a book that everyone needs to read. And hey, if you are at all down in the dumps after what has been a tough year for many, I highly recommend that you drop whatever you are doing and read this book. I’m not sure that passion can replace a paycheck in anything less than six months to a year, but certainly, if you have ever contemplated that possibility, this book will give you the nudge you need to focus on your strengths and turn them into prosperity. I look forward to reading more of Gary’s books, which I hope will be coming down the publishing pipe soon.

Why do I think Crush It! is a nice compliment to Get Known? Well, in Get Known, I focus on finding a niche that can result in a traditional book deal. Whereas in Crush It!, Gary focuses on finding what you are passionate about and then turning that love into work. Obviously, since his passion turned into a huge multi-book deal, his method works, as well. (Okay, perhaps a bit more effectively than mine.)

But let’s not forget that Mr. Vaynerchuk, just like every bestselling author I’ve ever heard of has been working on his platform tirelessly for many years. Consistent hard work is still going to be the best indicator of future success whether you are blogging or writing for a book in partnership with a publishing house.

And finally, I agree with Gary’s definition of passion. I also like his explanation of DNA and how it impacts choices and decisions in business. And, probably the most important point, I like Gary. He’s present, he’s energetic, and he keeps things real.

I think every writer should read Crush It! as we head into 2010 and then read Get Known. They make a great one-two combination.

The New Year is almost here. Can you believe it?

Happy holidays, everyone!

Here’s all the exciting stuff I have coming up in January:

I’ll be making an announcement on Monday, January 4th about the direction I’m heading in 2010. I’m going to keep you hanging until then. But I’ll give you a hint: it’s exciting!

I’m launching three Dream Teams of former students in January (more). We are going to lay out our goals for five months and then slam-dunk them. And then we’ll do it all over again in the fall? Not one of my students yet? Keep reading.

On Tuesday, January 5th, novelist Therese Walsh will come by to discuss her debut, The Last Will of Moira Leahy (Shaye Areheart Books). More here.

On January 13th, the first round of 2010 classes will begin. I’m offering Writing & Publishing the Short Stuff and Turn Your Specialty Into Course Curriculum. Abigail Green is offering Personal Essays That Get Published. You can learn more about classes here.

On 3:30 p.m. on January 24th, I’ll be hosting the Northwest Author Series in Wilsonville, Oregon featuring children’s author Amber Keyser on How to Use a Critique Group at the Wilsonville Public Library.

On  January 26th and 27th, I’m attending Digital Book World in New York City. I’ll be on a panel called: Teach Them to Fish, Empowering Authors to Market Themselves. Seems fitting, right? Learn more about Digital Book World.

And on Sunday, January 31st, I’ll be offering a live, three-hour workshop at the Wilsonville Public Library called Power Up Your Platform  for the Internet Age. I offered this workshop in Eugene in October and it went over really well. I can’t believe how much work we were able to get done in such a short time. Is your platform ready for 2010? Learn more here.

Photo by cobalt123

Last week, I talked about how we need to strive, in our online communications, to save readers time so they can learn all they need to know about us as they go clicking by.

In my latest book, Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow Your Author Platform (Writer’s Digest Books), I outline what you need to do to clearly communicate who you are and what you do. Learn more.

Like most professionals, I spend quite a bit of time online these days. Perhaps this explains why I have less spare time than ever. The more time we spend spreading our “real” life out into our online life, the more important it becomes for writers to communicate concisely and precisely who we are and what we are all about.

If you strive, in all of your online communications, to save folks time, then they can learn all they need to know about you as they go clicking by. You might even gain someone’s respect, admiration or strike up a conversation, by keeping what you need to get across short and to the point.

But if you your communications online are muddled, scattered (a little bit of info here and another little bit way over there with no links in between), and poorly composed, then you will repel folks rather than attract them. I can’t tell you how many times I have become curious about someone online and then tried to follow their trail of links to learn a bit more…only to end up clicking and clicking and clicking without learning any of the key pieces of information I’m looking for.

In my book, Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow Your Author Platform (Writer’s Digest 2008), I outline what every writer needs to clarify in order to make smart choices about what to communicate and how.

Your Name
Let’s say, because it’s such a popular name, that you name is Jennifer. This means that you have one of the most common names around (It’s true, I can vouch that the most popular name of moms who take my classes is indeed Jennifer.) Are you going to go by Jennifer, Jen, Jenny, Jenni, or something else? You might think this is a minor consideration but not according to search engines like Google, who will find you a lot faster and more accurately if you pick one name as your “writer name,” make it as original as possible (use a middle initial if necessary), and stick with it over time.

Your Identity
Remember that song by The Who: “Who are you? Who? Who? Who? Who?” I always think of that while I’m clicking links trying to figure out who the heck somebody is. And guess what? If I can’t figure it out in just a few clicks, then I don’t care anymore! What these mystery folks really need is an identity that they can spread around the Internet making it easy for someone like me to figure out quickly who they are and what they are all about.

Now some people like to substitute the word “branding” for identity, but I’m not partial to the former. Are you a writer or a pharmaceutical company? Are you a writer or a can of soda? Are you a writer…you get the idea. Be who YOU are and spread the word in a professional manner. This takes more thought than you might expect because it’s part of the story that precedes you, goes with you, and lingers behind you, everywhere you go. For more on this topic, start reading on page 175 and don’t stop until you figure out your Otherwise Known As.

Your Tagline
My tagline is: Make the most of what you have…to author! A tagline’s job is to communicate in one short line what you offer. As you can see, my tagline is even a play on the word “offer.” Instead of the common phrase, “Make the most of what you have to offer,” I use author instead. The substitution is intended to get your attention and spark your thinking about what you might author. Does it work?

To be continued on December 18th…

In my latest book, Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow Your Author Platform (Writer’s Digest Books), I outline what you need to do to clearly communicate who you are and what you do. Learn more.