Weblit promotional checklist

Oh, wow, thanks! i so needed something like this and this is really helpful. I'm curious though if i can have all this as i'm using wordpress. i'm not quite sure how to really utilize it for my advantage though. i'm so looking forward to the move to DN when i can.

--Get a Project Wonderful account.
--Sign up here!

-- Have something worth reading.

@MeilinMiranda, Sheesh, how could I forget sign up here. Or the PW account for that matter.

@GabrielGadfly, that goes without saying!!

Thanks for the list, Karen.

Not for nuthin', but how about signing up at the EpiGuide, ahem? http://www.epiguide.com

(How effective is PW? I haven't signed up as an advertiser, but I'm not hugely impressed with the ads I'm getting as a publisher. Jewelry and Adam Lambert are the main topics.)

Okay, this may sound a bit stupid, but I'm asking anyway. How do you tell when you "have something worth reading"? I'm working on a story, and I'm suffering my fair share of writer's anxiety. You know, those spells of "gah! everything I write is crap and nobody will ever love me!" My plan is to start posting on a lj account because it's simple and has the basic commenting and following features. At what point do I decide it's time to move over to Digital Novelists and start worrying about all the promotional stuff given above? When I have five readers? Twenty? A hundred?

Thanks for the suggestions, Karen et al., I do think you hit most of the current promo biggies. If I ever do get to an audience-building point, I'll definitely be looking this post up again.

One other idea is to offer bonuses to readers for *their* promotional activities. Something like, for every ten readers who email you showing you that they've reviewed you at webfictionguide, you post a bonus chapter or art or something. MeiLin, I think you had a couple bonuses like that at one point, yes? Do you think they helped?

I can't answer when to put stuff up. I put up my site immediately--web developer, me--advertised, and boom, I had readers.

Reader-driven promo: Yeah, initially I had targets for WFG reviews, twitter followers, facebook followers, and so on.

I'm in the same boat that you're in. I recently started posting my work, and I'm terrified that no one will like it. I'm in a constant state of 'Yeah, I can do this' and 'Gah, I gotta take this down before somebody sees it!' I'm currently posting on wordpress, but like you as soon as I'm able I'm gonna move to Digital Novelists.

I've got 'readers' but you can't count them as they're my friends, and one's job is strictly as an editor...if you define editor as someone to read to make sure I stop finding the chase and cutting to it. >_<

My idea for bonus stories was to just post them if I got positive feedback, as I just started I haven't gotten any feedback from actual readers. Just the people who I asked to read and give me their opinions.

I think you know it's good enough to post when you can put it aside for a month, look at it afterwards and go, "Hey... that's pretty good. I'd read that." Writers are usually their own worst critics.

You can also join a writer's group and get feedback. That was what made me understand that my work was publishable.

That, and when you've done your utmost to root out and slay all typos and other micro-errors.

Hi Karen

Great checklist and I've already started some of the things you mentioned. However could you or someone else please tell me how RSS works and what exactly it is? As to the Facebook, I've started a personal Facebook page but should I start a professional one where people click on if they're a fan or not?

Cheers!

onaya3

RSS: Really Simple Syndication was the original acronym and still the most used. Essentially, it's a way for people to be notified when your content updates, usually in an RSS reader like Google Reader. (More from Wikipedia.)

How it works: It's usually generated by your content management software--WordPress, Drupal, whatever you use to manage your site. Almost all of them have RSS generation capability. If your software doesn't have RSS capability, you can use Feedburner, which is now owned by, wait for it, Google. Feedburner or your software generates a file written in what's called XML--eXtensible Markup Language. This file is called your "feed." People then subscribe to your feed using a reader. (RSS readers are also known as aggregators.)

Why it's useful for us: It lets our readers know when we update, without their having to check on our sites all the time. You'd think we'd want people to check on our sites all the time, but a lot of people don't want to do that, even though they like reading our stuff. Having an RSS feed or two (or 500+ if you're a Drupal user--long story) is a good communication tool between you and your more impatient readers.

Hope this helps.

I'll add one more...

Put a small amount about it on TVtropes.org and specifically mention to your fans that it would help if people put tropes up and linked to your work's page with trope examples.

I've gotten a lot of non-WFG readers from there.

Take a look at the Legion of Nothing's page. It's 99% done by fans (most of it within the last 2 weeks, though it's existed for almost a year now).

It may be that this is something to do after getting a few readers rather than before, but who knows?

I think there is a HUGE gap between writing stuff, even when you're moderately sure that your stuff is worth reading, and having those first few hard-core fans. What I've read so far just doesn't seem to be replicable for others; Seth Harwood said that he did a podcast (what, just one?) and then all of a sudden he was "everywhere". Others have said they acquired fans instantly because they were webmasters (hmm...I'm one also). Something's missing.

Now in saying this, I don't mean to be negative, just real. I just don't think you can get from A to B by just doing podcasts or being a webmaster (or being on Twitter, etc). I rather suspect that people try random approaches until one of them works out, and then suddenly, on some magic Monday, they wake up with 1000 troo fans and they too are another overnight success story.

Ok, that last bit's cynical, but fundamentally, I'm not sure anyone really knows HOW their stuff became successful -- or at least I'm such a stickler for individual steps that I can't see them beneath the happy paint.

That's kinda why we're here: to find those dozens of things we can do to build awareness until hopefully we reach critical mass. I don't think there's any ONE thing we can each of us do for our stories; there are many things we can do, we should the ones we can do, and we should keep at it. That's the secret to "overnight success." My editor tells me that one of her friends is an "overnight success"; he got that way by having long-standing relationships in the publishing industry before he wrote his book.

Zoe: I've been thinking about that (sometimes I'm a little angsty about the fact that Addergoole fills so many tropes so nicely), but was uncertain of the etiquette - i.e., on That Other Wiki, it's considered a no-no to begin your own wiki page.

Any info on that?

~Lyn

Yeah, I checked out TVtropes too yesterday and definitely want to get into the tropification of tropology (the site is definitely a celebration of them and really, as a cultural study, it's fascinating). But I am not sure of the entry point. Jim?

FWIW, I've already added Addergoole to a trope page (I Am Who?) But I have the same concern as you and Karen--I'd love to have a Chatoyant College page there, but worry that it's Just Not Done.

<3 Thanks! I hadn't even thought of/seen that one.

~Lyn

TVTropes doesn't care about notability, but while it's okay(ish) to start your own page, you probably should try to get your readers to do at least some of the work. =p

I should have responded to this earlier...

I don't know if people should or shouldn't start their own page. Here's how mine came about:

I happened to be on TVtropes and searched for Legion of Nothing and found that someone had put Legion in under a couple tropes as an example and linked to a "to be defined later" empty page. Therefore, I waited, found that no one filled it in, and so I put in a very short paragraph describing the story.

I also put in a link to my story.

After that, I put up an obvious link to the Legion tropes page, and encouraged people to add their own.

After that, people added a couple at a time for a few months. Then, just recently, a fan (or fans) added a whole lot.

My observation is that things are wide open. If no one adds anything to it though, I suspect it will eventually be deleted. Also, if people add piles of totally promotional stuff, I'm suspecting that new rules about self-promotion will eventually emerge.

I suspect that doing what I did (creating the Legion node and a trope link or two) probably won't bug anybody.

Nice list! Looks like I'm on the right track as I've hit just about every suggestion except Muse's Success, which I just went and jumped on!

So far I've had good luck using Project Wonderful to drive traffic to my serial, and I accept PW ads on some of my other sites and they are generally pretty cool. In fact, that's how I first found out about both Alexandra Erin's Tales of MU and Meilin, from PrW ads that ran on one of my sites.

One thing about RSS, my site does have direct RSS capabilities (I run Wordpress) but I use Feedburner because I think more people stumble on it there? I'm not completely sure, since I only have a bare bones understanding of it, but it seems to me like people who are using Feedburner to read various things can somehow browse to find things that that might not if they had to find my site directly. I could be wrong...

I couldn't say. It's worth a split test, though!

Hallo again

I just wanted to say thanks for answering my question about RSS and everyone sharing their ideas of where to join and what to do. I also wanted to let you know I've found this forum EXTREMELY helpful and I've also recommended Weblit to other writers.

I've tried almost everything recommended by joining, applying and networking like crazy. I joined Muse's Success but I didn't end up putting up my site coz my novel won't be displayed entirely which it asks for. I've published 'Circulate' and I'm gonna publish (most likely self publish) another book 'Scent' this year and I'm all for, "try before you buy" by posting lots of excerpts. I even temporarily posted my drafts online when I was writing the books coz feedback is important.

However if I may pose one more question? I've submitted my new writing site http://onaya3.blogspot.com/ to websubmit, google, yahoo, bing etc etc a month ago but it still won't come up in searches. Is there something else I need to do? I'm waiting to hear back from Project Wonderful and one or two other sites to generate traffic, but am I missing something?

Cheers,

onaya3

It takes a while for sites to come up in searches; give it time.