"Social media only sells social media"? Really?

There's been a great deal of talk on t'interweb about the articles by Ewan Morrison, such as this recent one, on various aspects of modern writing and publishing. (I'll be meeting Ewan soon, as we are two of the 50 international authors picked to take part in the Edinburgh World Writers' Conference from Friday to Tuesday, as part of #edbookfest. I'm sure we'll be talking about ebooks and

Blog/tweet = success: chicken or egg?

An email the other day raised an interesting question. With the sender's permission, I will answer it here.


Hello Nicola
We met on the stairwell before going into your Skills Session on "Looking for a Publisher" at the Glasgow Aye Write book festival.  I was wearing a red necklace and admiring your beautiful turquoise and green necklace. [Always a good way to start an email, though I feel my

What has Twitter ever done for you? (With a competition)

This post is to launch the NEW, updated version of Tweet Right. But wasn't the first one as perfect as a perfect thing? Well, of course. But then Twitter and Tweetdeck screens changed and suddenly there were bits in Tweet Right which no longer precisely applied. I'd wanted to be able to say, "You'll find that button to the top right of your screen" or, "It's the icon that looks like a red banana"

The 90/10 promotion rule: what to do with the 10%?

I said a while ago that I favour the 90/10 rule for self-promotion on social media. In other words, if you spend 90% of your time there being generous - offering my three pillars of Friendship, Information and/or Entertainment - people will allow you to spend the other 10% promoting yourself, whether that means mentioning that you have a book out or telling your friends about a nice review, or

Twitter etiquette - careful with DMs

A load of people have asked me to write about this. DMs - Direct Messages - are a source of enormous irritation on Twitter and I feel the urge to lead you gently (or possibly even crabbitly) through the etiquette of this thorny subject. After all, lovely writers, you don't want to bug the pants off people and make them not want to read your book, do you? Or make them unfollow you? (Because that

AUTHOR PLATFORMS - MY SOCIETY OF AUTHORS CONF PRESENTATION

During the conference event that I mentioned here, I said I would make my powerpoint presentation available to anyone who wanted to see it. So, I include the link below.

Please note - it can't make full sense without me there to talk about it. This was just the bare bones and there was a great deal of explanation about each slide. Also, the formatting has disappeared in the transition to Google

RESOURCES FOR ONLINE PLATFORM-BUILDING

Today I'm speaking at the Society of Authors conference in Edinburgh. My topic is Building an Online Platform and I will first be explaining to the audience that in forty minutes it is impossible to say even a decent fraction of what they need to know, and therefore that I will be putting a small resource list on my blog.

So, here it is! It is only supposed to be a starting point for beginners

TWEET RIGHT COMETH!

And about time, too, I hear you say! Well, I was going to publish it in September but the nagging demand has been increasing so I thought, why wait? It's nearly ready, I'm nearly ready, the Edinburgh Book Festival is nearly starting. The designer - Andrew Brown of Design for Writers, @abaloo on Twitter - has finished the wonderful cover. I've ordered promotional cards and dreamed up activities

#lessinteresting books - YOUR CRABBIT OLD BAT TOPS TWITTER TREND

OK, so you know I'm a Twitter fan. Hell, I'm writing a book on the subject (which is why I recently took down my series of how-to-tweet posts). But yesterday something very unexpected happened to me on Twitter. It was entirely unplanned but, by chance, it brought followers and attention. Oh, and people berated me for embroiling them in a hopelessly addictive game.



A few minutes after the

TWEET RIGHT

Are you on Twitter? If you are, and if you tweet nicely, I have an opportunity for you. If you're not on Twitter but are thinking about it, or you are but aren't really sure what you're doing there or why, I am planning something for you, too. Gosh, I'm kind to you!

For that latter category of Twitter virgins and novices: I am writing a bookette about why and how to use Twitter, growing from

TWITTER FOR AUTHORS - PART 5: HASHTAGS and #FF

This is one of my temporarily removed and now temporarily reinstated posts giving tutorials on Twitter. Please note that my forthcoming short ebook will do this much better and more conprehensively and more clearly! If I were you, I'd wait...

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After my post on Sept 11th, I hope you've all got lots of followers now. Or at least a small but perfectly-formed

TWITTER FOR AUTHORS - PART 4: NEW FOLLOWERS

This is one of my temporarily removed and now temporarily reinstated posts giving tutorials on Twitter. Please note that my forthcoming short ebook will do this much better and more conprehensively and more clearly! If I were you, I'd wait...

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Just a quick one - me doing you a favour rather than trying to tell you anything. I have removed my teacher hat for a

TWITTER FOR AUTHORS - PART 3: TWEETING IN THE VOID

This is one of my temporarily removed and now temporarily reinstated posts giving tutorials on Twitter. Please note that my forthcoming short ebook will do this much better and more conprehensively and more clearly! If I were you, I'd wait...

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If you've read my first Twitter post, you'll know WHY you might want to be on Twitter if you're a writer. And if you've

TWITTER FOR AUTHORS - PART 2: BEGIN TO FOLLOW

Please note that Tweet Right will be published as an ebook very soon and will cover this information much more clearly and elegantly and in much more detail. Details at the top of the blog.
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I wasn't planning to do this but so many of you joined Twitter after my earlier post today that it seemed to me that the best way to do a quick and useful follow up would be to

TWITTER FOR AUTHORS - PART 1: WHY?

My blog posts about Twitter are now best covered in the ebook, Tweet Right. 
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I have removed the content of this blog post because the free sample of Tweet Right covers the ground. Download it here.