Professional Update/Upcoming Comedy Performances

Dear All,
 
My apologies in advance to anyone who has already seen this on Facebook or elsewhere. But once again, I would love a little help spreading the word about my upcoming performances.
 
I) Executive Summary: What I'm Up To
 
- Polishing a novel, The Loneliest Planet, which I've been writing for the last six years. The manuscript will go to agents and publishers in early 2015 (I swear!)
 
- Lecturing about online marketing for writers at colleges and adult education centers around Boston.
 
- My one-man show, The Chronic Single's Handbook, will be featured at theater festivals in Orlando, FL; Atlanta; and Edinburgh, Scotland; this spring and summer.
 
 
II) Pleading and Groveling
 
Can you help me get the word out about my upcoming shows?
 
- Mention to people you know who might go, post on Twitter, Facebook, etc. (Sample Tweets and links below. Also, I inserted my online flyer and link at the end of this note.)
 
- I'm happy to reciprocate and share your events or news on Twitter, Facebook, etc.
 
Sample Tweet:

A friend performs his show Chronic Single's Handbook: FL (5/14-24) Atlanta (6/5-8) Edinburgh (8/1-16) Go or RT http://www.chronicsingle.com/2014/04/the-chronic-singles-handbook-shows-for.html
 
Sample Facebook Post:
 
A friend will perform his one-man comedy play, The Chronic Single's Handbook, in Orlando, FL (5/14-24) Atlanta (6/5-8) Edinburgh, Scotland (8/1-16). The play is about a never-married guy who takes a trip around the world looking for the woman of his dreams. Please go or share. http://www.chronicsingle.com/2014/04/the-chronic-singles-handbook-shows-for.html
 
III) More Detail Than You Want
 
1) Here are some links to youtubes of me performing two scenes from a December performance in Boston. For the upcoming theater festivals, I'll have props but no mic, which means I'll be able to move around the stage.
 
- Opening scene:
"Chronically single? You've got lots of company"
Content warning for adults situations, black tongues, sadistic medical professionals.
http://youtu.be/zuzpRPWGg_c

- "One Day in Thailand"
Lady boys, tuk-tuk scammers, and the day I was almost gay.
http://youtu.be/p8AF_xhXctg

 
IV) Online flyer for the show
 
The link: http://www.chronicsingle.com/2014/04/the-chronic-singles-handbook-shows-for.html
 
The actual flyer:

"The Chronic Single's Handbook": Shows for 2014

The Chronic Single's Handbook: One man's global search for love

A solo performance inspired by actual events  
featuring Randy Ross 
 


 
Exotic Locales

Pepto-Bismol

A body-spa named The Curious Finger.



Early praise for The Chronic Single's Handbook:
 
"Hysterical, side-splitting, profound, a tour-de-force of droll insight. One of the year's best."
-- Randy Ross, writer/performer, The Chronic Single's Handbook
 
"The balance on your credit card is overdue. Please remit immediately."
-- Bank of West Boston



Upcoming Shows (all shows last one hour)

1) May 14-24 Orlando International Fringe theater festival

Dates/times
- Wed, May 14 (11:30 pm)
- Fri, May 16 (9:00 pm)
- Sat, May 17 (4:20 pm)
- Wed, May 21 (10:30 pm)
- Sat, May 24 (3:15 pm)

Location
Red Venue, Lowndes Shakespeare Center
812 E Rollins
Orlando, FL 32803
Directions

Tickets, more information.
- Cost: $12, plus one-time $9 fee for a festival entry button, which is required to see any show at the festival (sorry).

Sample show program


2) June 5-8 Atlanta Fringe theater festival


Dates/times
- Thurs, June 5 (8:00 pm)
- Fri, June 6 (11:00 pm)
- Sat, June 7, two shows (5:00 pm and 9:30 pm)
- Sun, June 8, (2:00 pm)

Location
Highland Inn Ballroom Lounge
644 N. Highland Ave.
Atlanta, GA 30306
Directions

Tickets, more information 
(tickets and prices available in May (should be $10 to $15. In addition to tickets, you will need to buy at $3 festival entry button.)

Sample show program

3) August 1-16 Edinburgh Festival Fringe theater festival

Dates/times (all shows start at 7:05 pm or 19:05 using local 24-hour time)
- Mon-Sat, Aug 4-9
- Mon-Sat, Aug 11-16

Location
theSpace @ Surgeon's Hall
Nicholson Street, EH8 9DW
Edinburgh, Scotland
Directions


Tickets, more information 
(tickets are 8 British Pounds, or about $12; there may be other fees)

Sample show program


4) Boston-Area Appearances

Dates/times
- May 1, with Judah Leblang at Somerville Public Library (details)
- Events calendar with more listings.



5) Watch Videos Excerpts from Recent Performances

 - Opening scene: "Chronically single? You've got lots of company"
Content warning for adults situations, black tongues, sadistic medical professionals.

- "The Day I Was Almost Gay"
Content warning for prescription drug abuse, gooey sunburns, and men kissing on the lips.
 


Thanks again!

--rr

Top Secret Work Habits of the Successful Novelist

 

 

Recently, I've been working on my novel at the local library, where I don't have Web access to distract me. Last week, a successful novelist* started coming in to work on what I'm assuming is his next book. So, I've had the good fortune to observe his routine, which I'd like to share.

11:00 a.m.: He arrives, starts his computer.

11:02: As computer boots up, he scratches his forehead with the eraser of a yellow pencil. (I'm guessing it's a Ticonderoga #2)

11:04:  He stares deep into his screen. I imagine his synapses firing, forming succinct, pearly prose.

11:07: He presses two keys with his right hand. And again stares deep into his screen, synapses fire, prose knit and pearl. The sight moves something deep inside me; I have to look away.

11:15: I glance back and the novelist has his head down on the desk. He's taking a nap. Synapses need their rest, too.

12:00 p.m.: His head is up and once again he peers deep into his screen. He scratches himself again with the pencil eraser. (It appears to be the same yellow pencil.) He pauses and checks his watch.

12:01: He leaves his seat, cell phone in hand. (He probably has to call his New York editor, or his New York agent, or possibly a reporter from Vanity Fair.)

12:15: I look out the library window -- the novelist is sitting on the lawn, talking on his cell phone. Minutes later, he flips the phone shut, and walks off in the distance. His computer is still open on his desk. (It appears to be a new wide-screen Dell with a tasteful black case.) This is a public library -- isn't he worried that someone will steal his computer? Oh, right, the man is a true artist, he is not attached to his possessions.

1:30: The novelist returns with a half empty bottle of Diet Coke. Food and drink are not allowed in this section of the library. But he writes fiction, genre-busting fiction. He lives to break rules. He drinks his soda in open defiance of the library establishment.

1:32: I look up and the novelist's head is down, his face to the side, his eyes closed. He must be recharging the synapses.

2:00 p.m.: The novelist packs up his computer and pencil, and leaves. He is a model to us all -- it doesn't matter how much you get done, the important thing is to get that ass in the seat.
 

*This story was inspired by actual events and an actual novelist I observed. But identifying features have been changed and exaggerations added for entertainment value. It appeared in the journal Calliope.

 

Other Humor for Writers:

Why I Hate Twitter

First Encounter with Keywords

First Encounter with SEO

Atribution for radar photo: By David Merrett (Flickr: Giant Wurzburg Radar) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

 

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Marketing Concepts for Authors: All You Need to Know on One Page

Do you need an MBA to be an author? No, but applying basic marketing concepts may save some time in building your platform.

The basic strategy for online book marketing is to lure potential readers to your site with useful or interesting information, and then pitch them your book. (Yes, it's a little gross.) You do the hard-selling on your site to people who have already shown an interest in you or your work. Don't hard-sell people you barely know using social media. (More on this below)

Here are some other concepts to keep in mind.

1) Who Are Your Readers?

Some experts will tell you to imagine a single reader, the perfect reader, their age, job, family, house, car, favorite TV shows, which hand they wipe with.

This can be tricky, particularly for fiction writers. As I've mentioned previously, my novel-in-progress is about a never-married hypochondriac who takes a trip around the world looking to change his luck with love. The story has several potential types of readers, including people interested in travel, dating, and humor. I've further subdivided these groups as follows:

- Travel: adventure travel, around the world travel, people who like to complain about travel, and sex tourists.
- Dating: bitter single people over 35, smug married people, miserable married people, readers of erotica.
- Humor: raunchy humor, humorous erotica.

How am I going to go after each of these groups? One group at a time.

2) Where Do Your Readers Hang Out?

Online
The usual suspects: Social media, Web sites dedicated to your topics, search engines

Join some groups, add some keywords to your site or most popular posts, see if your traffic increases. If not, try some others. 

After a couple of months on Twitter monitoring different travel hashtags and travel experts, I've found a few that appear to be useful and have produced either followers or clicks back to my site: #RTWnow (for people interested in planning trip around the world), #careerbreak (people considering a travel sabbatical), #bootsnall (a Web site for travelers.)

A tool like Hootsuite makes it easy to monitor and post to different groups and hashtags on Twitter. (click to enlarge).

Offline
Meet Up groups, lectures, organizations, trade shows, readings you give and attend, social events you attend.

To keep track of these people, I just started a simple monthly newsletter using a free service called MailChimp. I plan to collect cards and e-mail addresses from people I meet out and about who are interested in my book or my topics. When people ask what I'm doing with myself, I describe my book and what it's about. If they're interested, I'll ask for the order: "Would you like to be on my e-mail list?" Am I as shameless as a real-estate broker? Of course!

(Full disclosure: I just started this e-mail newsletter two week ago and only have three subscribers. Yes, I'm a knucklehead: I've been talking about my novel-in-progress at parties, giving readings, meeting people at lectures, and even giving occasional lectures -- for three years now -- and didn't collect a single card. Did I mention that I'm a knucklehead? But you have to start somewhere.)

Sample of a very basic newsletter I created using MailChimp. (It required a few hours of set-up and fiddling.) Click to enlarge.

3) How to Connect with Potential Readers

Online
- Don't spend all your marketing time hanging out with other writers, unless they are your audience.
- Don't make bald pitches for your book. (Sorry to keep repeating this -- but it's like screaming, "Hey, look at me, I'm a douchebag!" Sending a direct message with a book pitch to a new Twitter follower is a great way to lose that follower.)
- Do answer other people's questions, comment on their comments, like their comments, follow them.
- Do offer tips, links to news items, links to stories you've written, links to Youtubes of you reading in public or audios of you reading at home.

(Audios are relatively easy to make using a microphone and a free audio editor, such as Audacity. Spend an afternoon reading book excerpts into the mic and editing them. Do a bunch and upload them to a free site, such as box.com More on audio in a future post.)

Offline
- Pitch yourself as a reader at conferences, art festivals, literary open mics, folk-music open mics, story slams, poetry slams.

- But how can you pitch yourself as a reader if you don't have a published book or a book from a big publishing house? I don't have a published book; hell, I don't even have a finished book yet -- but these techniques have helped me get readings at decent venues:

*Read at a literary open mic over the course of a few months, do a good job, become a regular, graciously pay the $5 cover charge each time, buy some beers. Then ask the organizer if you can be a featured reader. Once you've been a feature, you can include that credential when pitching other events.

*Get a video. Some events and slams video-tape participants and will offer to sell you a video of yourself. Is it a rip off? Yes. Does it make you look like a pro? Possibly. Here's a video I've posted before that was taken at a story slam in Boston. It cost $10 to participate in the slam and I believe the video cost me about $35. Did I win the story slam? Of course, not. Would you consider me as a reader?

4) How Much Time Should You Spend on Book Marketing?

One well-know agent suggested that unpublished authors spend no more than 10 percent of their writing time on marketing.

I'm about six months away from finishing my book and circulating it to agents. Considering the long odds of finding an agent and a publisher, and the fact that agents and publishers want to see that an author can market his own books, I'm spending about 20 percent of my writing time on marketing. Is the marketing interfering with my writing? Damn straight. Would I spend this much time on marketing if I hated it? No way.

5) The Simplest Advice

One marketing consultant told me: "You don't have to do everything [online, offline, live readings]. Just pick something you like and become good at it."

My favorite marketing tip comes from U.K. author Jim Murdock: "Traditional marketing techniques don’t work very well online. Being a decent bloke who takes a genuine interest in other people and isn’t always selling at them does … but not quickly."

More Book Promotions Tips:
- Linked In Tips for Authors
- Tips for Reading Your Writing in Public

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Tips for Reading Your Writing in Public

Though my book isn't finished, I've read excerpts from it more than fifty times at venues in Boston, New York, and once while on a ski vacation in Revelstoke, Canada. I've also received instruction from a friend who is a professional performer.

At this story slam, I was terrified. I was there to video-tape a friend and wasn't expecting to perform. (Despite my jerky performance -- note the left hand flopping around-- I won.) Worth noting: I face different directions depending on which character is talking, and each character has a different accent and cadence. All things described below.

The Tips:

1) Choose Short, Complete Scenes that Stand Alone (This can work for fiction, non-fiction, and memoir)

A complete scene is like a miniature story: there's a beginning, middle, and an end. There's narrative tension, conflict, and some kind of resolution. If the scene has some dialog, all the better.

Ideally, you want to rewrite the scene for a reading so that any background is woven into the story. Nothing is more boring or tedious than listening to an author provide a laundry list of characters and background material before he starts to read.

2) Did I Mention: Keep Each Piece Short?

In my experience, seven minutes for a piece is probably the maximum. An ideal length is five minutes. An even better length is three minutes.

If you're doing multiple pieces, mix in pieces of different lengths.

Another reason for shorter pieces:
- At a poetry slam or a poetry open mic, you can read anything you want -- including pieces that are not poetry -- as long as the piece is under three minutes. If anyone asks, you're doing a "narrative poem." You don't need to win the slam, you just have to get up on stage and read your piece.
- At many story slams, your piece has to be less than five minutes in length. If you're over the time limit, you'll be penalized. Too far over and they may yank you off the stage.


3) Dialog

Attributions: Move them to the beginning of the sentence; this makes it clear for the listener who is speaking.

Better yet, use a different voice or accent or cadence for each character. For internal dialog or a character's thoughts, talk in a softer voice. Starting every sentence with "he said" or "she said" gets boring, fast.

Try a physical gesture to differentiate a character. If a character has a beard, scratch it when he's talking.

Also, the narrator should always face the same direction, while other characters can face the opposite direction. In my pieces, I turn my head to the left for the narrator and to the right for other characters.

Some easy voices options:
- quick and nervous for neurotic characters
- slow for confident for braggarts
- a Spanish accent
- a Russian accent
- a Southern accent
- a flirty woman's voice
- a deep man's voice for an authority figure

You also may want to avoid scenes with too many characters. Three characters in one scene is the most I've been able to pull off.

4) Rewriting a Piece for a Reading

- Simplify: Unless you're writing poetry -- which we aren't -- simplify or cut descriptions of scenery and people unless they're really memorable. The scene should focus on action. Instead of using three words to describe something use two. Instead of "a giant, three-headed snake," say, "a three-headed snake." Instead of "white, crusty stains," say, "crusty stains." (In the videos above and below, I used the three-word versions of these phrases, which I have since cut to two.)

 - Remind: If you have a detail or character mentioned early that returns later in the story, emphasize the detail on first mention and then remind readers when it appears later-- don't assume they'll remember something from three minutes. As a listener, you have less time to absorb the story.

5) Other Stuff to Remember

- If you're reading of a printed page, print out the text in a large font. (I use 18 point). If will make it easier for you to look up at the audience without losing your place.
- Mark in pencil on the page, when you're supposed to make certain gestures.
- Pause after jokes, or key lines, let them land, let people laugh. But start reading before the laughter has completely subsided. If no one laughs, take it like a man and keep going.
- Practice at open mic events, where nothing is at stake.
- Memorize a short piece or two -- you'll stand out from the other readers.

- Record video at one of your readings and post individual stories on Youtube or your Web site. (Useful when you're pitching yourself -- you can direct organizations to a recorded performance.)
- Stage fright: Yes, you will have it. Sometimes the day of a big performance, I develop flu-like symptoms, including aches, pains, a sore throat, nausea. I wonder why I'm doing this to myself, again. But once I start performing, it all disappears.
- You will bomb occasionally. An audience will be small, too politically correct, too politically incorrect. (I've read pieces to an audience one week who loved and the same piece to an indifferent audience the next. That's show biz.)

This piece went over well at the this Cambridge story slam, but bombed in front of a younger audience who found the title, "The Day I Almost Became Gay" offensive. (Before performing the piece for the first time, I ran it by a gay friend who said it was fine. Did I mention that's show biz?)

6) Where to Find Venues at Which to Read

- Open Mikes.Org
- Poets.org
- Google: "Story Slams." Most big cities offer them.
- Walk into a small bookstore and offer to read. If person you're addressing is behind a computer, direct them to your Web site -- you did post a video of you reading at an open mic, right?
- Other venues: public libraries (they often pay), adult education centers (they also pay), art festivals, folk music open mics (they often allow a story-teller to tell a short story. You are a story-teller, right?)

For More Tips for Writers, See

- Easy, Sleazy Book Marketing Tips
Change you traffic measuring tool, join a Facebook Like-fest, and if anyone asks: "But officer, everyone else is doing it."
- Query Letter Confusion
When one agent says A and another says B  and a third says ... How I dealt with the situation and what I learned. Includes links to sample query letters. Oy.

Free Ebook for Signing Up for This Blog

- The Ebook is a collection of short stories, off-color humor pieces, and excerpts from my novel in progress, "The Loneliest Planet: A Handbook for the Chronically Single."

Enter your email address:

- The ebook is a pdf and available by clicking here 
(I trust you) 

Online Book Marketing: Alexa

Alexa compares your site traffic to those of other Internet sites. Unless you get more than 1,000 visitors a month or rank in the top 100,000 sites by traffic, Alexa claims its statistics are not reliable.

But on a rainy day, Alexa offers a good option for depressing yourself. Here's my ranking (yes, it's raining today). Double-clilck to enlarge this image.

So, according the image, there are 5,271,639 Web sites that get more traffic than I do.

A listing of the top sites offers few surprises:

    1  Google  
    2  Facebook
    3  YouTube
    4  Yahoo!
    5 Baidu.com (A Chinese language search engine)   
    6  Wikipedia
    7 Windows Live (Search engine from Microsoft.)
    8 Twitter
    9 QQ.COM (China's largest and most used Internet service portal.)
    10 Amazon.com
    11  Blogspot.com
    12  LinkedIn
   

Query Letter Confusion: When One Agent Says A and Another Says B

Recently, I went to a writer's conference and paid an extra $140 to see an agent. Her advice contradicted other advice from a previous agent whose advice contradicted a previous agent, whose advice contradicted a previous agent, and so on.

The whole experience left me feeling a little like this (best with sound OFF)

My history of contradictions

2008: I write first draft of a travel memoir
- Agent A:
- "No market for travel memoir, add more personal stuff make it memoir."
- "Also, remove analogy in query letter saying book 'combines person journey of Eat, Pray, Love (EPL) with sexual frustration of Portnoy's Complaint.' Publishers are tired of hearing about EPL, and Portnoy is too old."

(for sample of query letter, see Query Letter Circa 2008)

2009: I rewrite as a memoir
- Agent B:
- "No market for memoirs unless you're a Kennedy.
- Also, I like your query letter." (Still had EPL and Portnoy in query letter.)

2010: I rewrite as a novel (add fictitious characters, places, change plot.)
- Agent C (after reading first 20 pages and query letter)
- "How much of this story is true?
- Me: "Maybe 10 - 25 percent. I have visited all the countries in the book."
- Agent: "Have you ever thought of making this a travel memoir? Also, kill reference to Portnoy; all people think about is the masturbation scene."

2012: Rewriting novel again, now none of it is true, but I'm having a blast writing it. I remove reference to EPL and Portnoy in query letter.
- Agent D:
- "Not really sure of genre or positioning of this book."
- Me: "Well, it's kind of like the personal journey of Eat, Pray, Love with the sexual frustration of Portnoy's Complaint."
- Agent 4: "I like that, put that up high in query letter."

(for a sample of query letter, see Query Letter Circa 2012)

Upshot: All agents' comments conflicted and made sense. In the end, I'm going to pick and choose and cross my fingers that someone likes it. For example, instead of Portnoy and EPL, I'm going to follow one suggestion and mention current authors with books with similar themes: "The Ask," by Sam Lipsyte and most stuff by Jonathan Tropper.

For Publishing Tips and Tribulations, see:

- Easy, Sleazy Book Marketing Tips
Change you traffic measuring tool, join a Facebook Like-fest, and if anyone asks: "But officer, everyone else is doing it."

-  Book Marketing for Nitwits: Keyword Phrases
What's my brand? Who's my audience? Who cares? I don't have all day for this; just help me boost my traffic enough to impress an agent.

Versions of Query Letters

<Note: these query letter versions are background for a post called "Query LetterConfusion.">


1) Query Letter Circa 2008: Travel Memoir

Dear Agent A:

I think your author J. Maarten Troost is the funniest non-travel writer/travel writer. In Lost on Planet China, I really liked the addition of the chain-smoking sidekick, Jack.

My non-travel/travel book, Rats in the Lobby, Snakes in the Wine, chronicles how a never-married hypochondriac takes the trip of a lifetime and spends most of it alone reflecting on why he's still single at age 48. This 65,000-word memoir combines the personal journey of Eat, Pray, Love with the sexual frustration of Portnoy's Complaint.

2) Query Letter Circa 2012: Novel 

(Note new the new title. When I read this at a class run by two agents in New York in 2010, it drew laughs. Both agents requested to see the finished manuscript. An agent at a conference in 2012, didn't think it was funny and suggested I put back the line about "personal journey of Eat, Pray, Love with the sexual frustration of Portnoy's Complaint.")

Dear Agent D,

The Loneliest Planet features Randall Burns, a never-married hypochondriac who takes a trip around the world looking to change his luck with love. Planet is a novel about relationships as seen by a man, a difficult man.

An old Life cereal commercial starred a fussy boy named Mikey who hated everything. Imagine Mikey at 48, recently laid off, and spending his days pounding away on Match.com as if it were a game of Whac-A-Mole. That's Randall Burns.

One day, Burns reads a chirpy travel book promising love and romance abroad. Soon after, he blows his severance on a $20,000 solo trip overseas. During the journey, he strikes out with women on three continents, experiences loneliness that would have broken Papillon, and ruminates about old girlfriends. Jay with the cute shiksa nose dumped him because of a pair of socks. Ricki? A pair of shoes. Why hadn't he married Jackie with the nice trust fund? Why did all his exes have masculine names?

On continent four, he meets a Western sex tourist and his girlfriend du jour who offer a tour of Phnom Penh brothels. Burns is lonely and desperate. But he is also a germaphobe, and the one thing he fears more than dengue fever and squat toilets is V.D. In the end, he learns to enjoy undercooked beef, to embrace solitude, and to accept himself the way he is -- single.

Unlike Burns, I have kicked the Match.com habit and now focus my online energies building a platform by blogging, publishing a travel site, and using social media. I have taught travel seminars and read excerpts of Planet more than forty times at venues in New York and Boston. In 2011, an excerpt was a finalist in the Drum/Side B Dual Publication Award and was the winner in a Boston story slam. Previously, I was an executive editor at PC World magazine for seven years.

The Loneliest Planet is about 75,000 words long and ready for review.

 

<Back to main story on agent contradictions.>

Book Marketing for Nitwits: More Twitter

Last week's encounter with Twitter left me feeling a little raw.

But Internet book marketing experts say Twitter is the way to go. So, I'm back at it. (My Twitter page)

Quick review of last week's Book Marketing for Nitwits article about Twitter:

Step 1:  Determine how much time to spend on Twitter.
I set a goal of 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening. Ha! Spent twice that the first day, but my goal is to whittle it down with tool suggested in Step 2.

Step 2: Downloaded a bunch of tools.
Only one I'm using is Hootsuite, which makes tweeting, responding to other people's tweets, and scheduling tweets for the week relatively painless. It also let's me follow certain discussion groups, such as #pubtips and #amwriting.

Now, on to this week

Step 3: Find Good People to Follow

When considering who to follow on Twitter I had two goals:
- Stalk agents and publishers in hopes of getting them to notice me and buy my book manuscript, if I ever finish it.
- Attract followers who might visit my blog or one day buy my book.

a) Stalking
First, I searched Twitter for "literary agents" and got a bunch tweets from desperate people like me asking where they could find a literary agent. Then I looked up an agent I had met at a conference and looked at who she was following and who they were following. I followed and followed. I lost track of where I began or why I was doing this. After two hours, I stopped and asked myself: Why am I bothering with all these agents who will probably never follow or notice me? And does it matter? We'll all be packing boxes for Amazon in six months. 

Can't give up. 
Experts say Twitter is the answer.

The next day, I returned to following and stalking with a better attitude. I checked out more agents profiles and looked to see what hashtags they used to post their tweets. (That's how I found #pubtips. Here's a good list of existing hashtags and info about how they work.)

I also used Twitter's List feature to create my own private list of agents who were active tweeters. It turns out some of these agents mainly tweeted about their love of artichokes or their clients' books. I will soon dump them.

Two agents that seemed worth following:
@StrachanLit
@jasonashlock

Then I created a separate list of publishing experts and added an industry pundit that many agents followed:
@Porter_Anderson.

I also added a few book editors who were cited in agent tweets.

Finally, I tried to track down authors in my genre (comic novels about whiny white guys) and their agents. One author, Sam Lipsyte, didn't have a profile (at least not one I could find.). Another author, Jonathan Tropper, had a profile. I followed him, but couldn't find his agent.

The nice thing about the List Feature: When I'm in a rush, I can check only tweets from people on my lists instead of scrolling through tweets by everyone I'm folllowing.

b) Attracting Followers

- The more I've been tweeting, the more followers I've gotten. (No surprise.) Some have even read my Twitter profile and clicked over to read my blog. (Nice surprise.)

- Would they ever buy anything from me or click my "donate" button on the right side of this page? Unclear.
(You did notice my new "donate" button, didn't you?)

- I've stopped automatically following anyone who follows me and I've abandoned some of the sleazy book marketing tactics I adopted earlier.
  

<Next page of Book Marketing for Nitwits: More Twitter>

Book Marketing for Nitwits: More Twitter-2

Step 4:  Start Tweeting

I'd always been a plain vanilla tweeter. I sent messages with links to my blog posts. I occasionally commented on other people's posts. I'd even added a few hashtags, which I hoped would make my tweets easy to search, kind of like keywords. But an online marketing book I've been reading listed more advanced tweeting advice and acronyms, including: "MT," "via," and "h/t" for letting followers know that you're cribbing someone else's tweet.

While I was contemplating these new acronyms and advanced tweeting techniques, I received a Twitter alert that a published novelist whom I'd never heard of wanted to follow me.

Twitter pay dirt!

The novelist had over 100,000 followers. I sent him a note asking how he got so many followers and did they buy any books. "Don't know, don't know," he said. Obviously, he was holding out on me.

The secret must be in his tweets, after all, he was a published novelist and I was an unemployed writer. But his tweets looked like those of everyone else, like the lyrics from a tired Beatles's song:

8:00 a.m. "got up, crawled out of bed"
8:12 a.m. "ran a comb across the two hairs on my head."
8:31 a.m. "and looking up, I recalled I had no job.
8:47 a.m. "stumbled downstairs and had a beer."
9:30 a.m. "back in bed in seconds flat."
10:00 a.m. "mother knocked on my door, and I went into a dream."

After reading the published author's recent tweets, I returned to a contemplative state:

Do people really read this crap?

Do I really want to write this crap?

But at a recent writing conference, the experts insisted that Twitter was the best tool for finding new readers, so I'm going to give it another week. (I'll do anything to avoid working on my novel.)

<more book marketing tips and tribulations>

Update on Easy, Sleazy Book Marketing

It's now been about a month since I joined groups on various Web and social media sites that promised to boost my online audience. My numbers have jumped as noted previously.

But since installing a tool called Hootsuite, which allows me to easily monitor my followers' tweets, I'm noticing a disturbing trend: A lot of my new followers are spammers, perverts, and other types of online cretins. I'm now going back and unfollowing many of them.

My strategy now is to follow only people who:
- offer useful tweets: interesting links and interesting short messages that don't require clicking.

- are agents, publishers, or writers that I'm interested in.
- are experts in fields related to my book: travel and humor. (I have yet to find a dating/relationship expert I want to follow.)
- are not promoting something, such as their book or latest scam in every tweet.

Yeah, I'm a knucklehead for trying to cut corners to build an audience.

Book Marketing for Nitwits: Twitter

Diary of a Book Marketing Novice: Twitter

I've had a Twitter account for two years and it's generally been a waste of time. Realizing that problem had to be me and not Twitter, I borrowed not one, but three, social media marketing books from the library.

The bad news: SEO and keywords were a blast compared to Twitter.

The good news: Anything is better than working on my novel.

The better news: There are still other lucrative careers that don't require book marketing skills or finished novels. For example, this company now has an opening for a field biologist.

According to the three social media marketing books, I needed to think about my online marketing as a hub with spokes. The spokes are Twitter, Facebook, SEO and other tools that drive traffic to my hub, which is this blog. Unfortunately, the 12,000 page views I drove to this blog last year generated $8 in revenue. But that's all going to change. So, I opened the books and began.

Step 1: How Much Time Should I Waste on Twitter?

The books recommend tweeting two to five times a day. That seemed do-able if you don't have a job, which I don't. For a reality check, I looked at how often some people with jobs tweet.

- Chelsea Handler has 4 million followers and tweets about two to four times most days.

- Steve Martin has 2.6 million followers and tweets about the same.

In the end I decided my role model should be Zach Galifianakis who has 1.8 million followers and tweets two to three times some months and other months not at all.


Step 2: Install Requisite Tools

The books recommended dozens of tools to make up for shortcomings in Twitter. I started with tools that make it easier to track of followers and their conversations. These included Tweetdeck and Hootsuite. Tweetdeck needed to be downloaded onto my computer. Hootsuite runs off a Web site. I hate installing programs on my computer, so I went with Hootsuite, which then required me to install a bunch of its own tools.

Next, I installed other tools that were supposed to automatically send a thank-you message to anyone who followed me. One product called Autoresponder claimed to be free and then tried to charge me $2.50. (Image 1) I cancelled it, but not before it got into my Twitter account and sent a message from me to my followers that said how much I loved the product. (Image 2)

Image 1: Free product with fee I overlooked. Click to enlarge.

I used Twitbacks.com to create a new background for my Twitter page that listed my Web sites and a more extensive bio. It looked like crap. I removed it, but not before it sent a message to all my followers saying how much I loved the product.

Image 2: Two add-ins that inserted messages from me raving about their products.

I installed more and more of the recommended Twitter tools. I couldn't stop, didn't stop, until my virus checker flashed a message that it my computer was being assaulted. Minutes later a tool for tracking my Web traffic mysteriously stopped working.

Six hours had passed and I hadn't added a single follower or generated a single tweet. I stand corrected: Twitter is not better than working on my novel.

(more)

How Writers Can Earn a Living

This group of previously unemployed writers found work!

The key is being flexible and adapting to the new publishing environment: remember we are not writers, we are entertainers.

Best of all, their new careers did not require book marketing, platform building, social media, or groveling before publishers.

(Content warning: men eating lightbulbs, being run over by cars, hit with sledge hammers.)


Here's the link

Book Marketing for Nitwits: SEO

Diary of a Book Marketing Novice: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)


Last week, I came up with a bunch of keyword phrases that will surely lure Google users to my site, boost my Web traffic enough to impress agents and publishers, and land me a six-figure book deal that will lead to groupies, People magazine cover stories, and stints in rehab.

But identifying the right keyword phrases is only step one in the SEO process. The words don't do any good if they just sit in your spreadsheet. You have to add them to your Web site so Google can find them.

Here is my step-by-step process for adding keywords to this blog.

1) Open yet another book on Internet book marketing, read section on SEO that discusses Meta tags and includes lengthy discourse on HTML. Close book and go outside to look for a cigarette butt that isn't smoked too far down. Smoke it. Little kids across the street watch with great interest.

2) Back at desk, search blog's Help section for info on Meta Tags. Find an article from 2009 that claims Google doesn't care about Meta tags stuffed with keywords. That makes two of us.

I abandon Meta tag exercise and move on to section on "Title tags."  Another discussion of HTML. Close book and search fridge for beer. Find a half bottle of wine that smells like old gym socks. Drink it.

Note: Title tags are the words that appear at very tippy-top of browser window and identify the Web page you're viewing.

3) Back at desk, search Google for: "How do I edit title tags in Blogger." Find an article on how to alter your title tag so Google will like you better. The article recommends copying some code into the bowels of Blogger. The instructions make no sense. I follow them.

Now the titles of my Blogger articles appear before the blog name. For example, the title text for this article now reads:

"Book Marketing for Nitwits: SEO | The Loneliest Planet by Randy Ross"

instead of

"The Loneliest Planet by Randy Ross | Book Marketing for Nitwits: SEO."

Is this idiotic? Yes. Do you want to risk making Google unhappy? Didn't think so.

Note: Though all the cool kids use WordPress for their blogs and Web sites, I use Blogger because it is supposed to be easier. I'm pretty happy with it. Also, Google owns Blogger -- you must get some SEO bonus points for being a good customer. (Too see this in action, click the title at the top of this page "Book Marketing for Nitwits: SEO")

4)  Wine kicks in, Title tags section of book now makes sense. These tags are derived from the actual title of my blog posts. I go into most popular posts in my blog and stuff article titles with keywords. Now, have a writer's blog that reads like it was written by non-native English speaker. Change titles back to originals.

<page 2>

<Link to story on Twitter>

Book Marketing for Nitwits: SEO - P2

Diary of a Book Marketing Novice: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Page-2
 
<continued from page 1 of article>


5) Book Marketing book recommends creating article descriptions packed with keywords for most popular articles. Blogger has a field for each article that allows this. Easy.

6) I notice that Blogger also lets you create Labels for articles. No such thing as too many keywords: I create Labels with words that will no doubt attract my readers. Labels include: "happy ending," "sexy massage," and "mile high club."

7)  Other sections of Book Marketing book discuss embedding keywords in articles, graphics, text links, plus the use of keyword density analyzing tools.

Look down at computer keyboard: It is covered with sweat. Check Facebook page and find strange posts from someone who sounds a lot like me. Enough online book marketing for one day.

8) Smoke another cigarette butt on front stoop; kids and parents watch. Remember more ideas for a keyword-packed Labels.  

9) Back at computer, add Labels for "erotic humor" and "how not to find love." Recall that I paid $500 to meet agents at an upcoming writers conference. Agents may ask for my Klout score, a measure of success at Social Networking. I sign up for Klout. It doesn't work. Done with book marketing for the day.

10) Pack bag for gym. Remember that I might be able to boost Klout score -- if tool ever works -- with something called Twitterfeed, which automatically takes new blog articles and posts them to Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In. This tool works as advertised. But will it mangle posts and make me look like an idiot? Doesn't matter, I'm done with online book marketing for today.

11) Repack bag for gym. Recall that a tool called Friend or Follow will make it easy for me to identify people I'm following who aren't following me. Following more people than you have following you is a sign of desperation and low Social Media status. I sign up and start dumping people. Within an hour, I am following 447 people and have 458 followers.

12) Halfway out the door. But have to check Web analytics to see if 10 yours I've spent today on SEO has started to boost traffic.

Traffic has spiked: I'm a genius!

Then check to see source of new traffic: All changes I made to my site were counted as new traffic. But no one needs to know that. (You won't tell anyone, will you?)
___________

More Book Marketing for Nitwits

1) Easy, Sleazy Book Marketing Tips
Change you traffic measuring tool, join a Facebook Like-fest, and if anyone asks: "But officer, everyone else is doing it."

2) Book Marketing for Nitwits: Keyword Phrases

My Easy, Sleazy Book Marketing Results

Results from using "Easy, Sleazy Book Marketing Tips" for a month or so.

1) Facebook Fans: added 75 fans (Now 1961 up from 1886)

2) Twitter Followers: added 270 followers (Now 444 up from 170 from 270)

Still not sure if I get Twitter or it's useful for fiction writers in my situation, but plowing ahead anyway.
Also, used an online tool called friend or follow to dump people I was following who didn't follow me back. My opinion: It looks better to have even number of following and followers.

3) Linked In: added 90 connections (now 890 up from 800)

4) Goodreads, I've just been clicking away and added 92 friends (142 friends up from 50)

What does this all mean? Not sure -- my numbers still aren't big enough to impress a publisher or agent. If I keep at it for a year. Maybe. How much time am I wasting? A lot. Probably an hour or two a day.

Has all this boosted my all-important traffic to my blog? No. Seems only sure way to increase traffic is to write more good blogs. Which also takes time. Time that should be spent FINISHING MY DAMN BOOK.

Has it increased sales of my little ebook? No.

Can I offer any useful advice?

What are you kidding?

Book Marketing for Nitwits: Keywords

For months, agent blogs have been exhorting writers -- even fiction writers -- to build a massive online platform of potential readers. So, last week I took the plunge and borrowed "Online Book Marketing" by Lorraine Phillips from the library. (If I had the dough and could be guaranteed this would get me an agent, I surely would have paid for it.)

Note: The book is geared toward non-fiction writers, but it was one of simplest, most clearly written books on online book marketing that I'd seen. I decided to see if it would work for fiction writers.

One the first steps: Figure out my brand, my audience, and find keyword phrases that will entice readers to my site when they perform online searches. (Key part of successful platform is a Web site that gets lots of traffic.)

My brand is supposed to be me. But that made no sense and I had to get to the gym in six hours, so I decided that my brand would be my novel in progress, "The Loneliest Planet: A Handbook for the Chronically single." The book is about a never married hypochondriac who takes a trip around the world looking for love.

In describing my book, a few keywords came to mind:
- weird travel
- lonely single guys
- failed relationships
- personal growth through suffering
- puerile humor

And a few possible audiences
- men seeking naughty massages.
- women who think all men are pigs.
- politically-correct men who think all men are pigs.
- people who like the Three Stooges
- other writers who might take pity on me and buy my book.

(I'm not saying these are great search terms, but I had to start somewhere. Plus, I still had book to write, I couldn't spend a week on this, and the gym closes early on Sundays.)

Then I read the first couple of chapters and decided to take the following steps:

1) I went to Amazon and looked at comparable books' pages for keyword phrase ideas.

Comparable book: "About a Boy," by Nick Hornby:
A section called "Inside this Book" listed "Key Phrases" that included:
"Kurt Cobain," "Dead Duck Day," "Macaulay Culkin," "Planet," and  "Upper Street."
At the bottom of the Amazon page, under a section called "Tags Customers Associate with This Product," I found "too expensive for kindle," and "contemporary fiction."
Not so useful.

Comparable book: "Portnoy's Complaint," by Phillip Roth:
In a section called "Inside This Book," "Key Phrases" included: "The Monkey," "Uncle Hymie," "Puerto Rican," and "Bubbles Girardi."
Worthless.
The customer tags for this book were equally worthless.

Comparable book: "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell."
"Key Phrases" included: "Baby Dolls," Silicon Valley," "Red Bull," and "The Skank."
"Tags" included" "drinking," "stupid," and "swamp donkey."
Beyond worthless.

I gave up on the Amazon idea.

2) Then I looked at comparable authors' Web sites and Web sites on similar topics, and then ran those URLs through a slick Internet marketing tool called Abakus recommended by the book. (The tool tells you what keywords those sites use.)

3) Finally, I took this whole mess of keywords and ran them through Google Adwords keyword research tool to find related terms and to pick the terms that Google claims get the most hits.

Elapsed time: about eight hours. I'm not sure why it took so long, but it did. And I never made it to they gym.

Results: a spreadsheet filled with terms ranked by how popular they are. See my keyword spreadsheet

More on SEO/Keywords for Writers:

- Part II: Search Engine Optimization in Plain English

- Part III:  Search Engine Optimization in Plain English


*Art attribution for nerdy green alien: By LadyofHats (did it myself.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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Book Marketing Keyword Phrase Spreadsheet

My spreadsheet of possible keyword phrases

This is page 2 of blog on Keywords for Nitwits. 

Note: Those phrases that are popular have a number next to them in parenthesis. Those phrases that were not popular have no number. The idea is to pick the words that are most useful and most popular, such as "world sex (2.7 million)," "vibrator (1.8 million)" and "find love (1 million)." Apologies for my weird abbreviations in the spreadsheet -- like I said, I couldn't spend all day on this -- which I did.

Content Warning: Some naughty words in the spreadsheet. If you're from Cambridge, Massachusetts, you might be offended.

Click on the spreadsheet blow to enlarge it.