Tag: support group

Author, Family, Feedback, Fiction, Marketing, Novel, Promotion, Publish, Reader, Real Life, Writing

Live together, die alone!

Linda Cassidy Lewis

If you were a LOST fan, you recognize the title of today’s post as the motto for survival on that mysterious island. As a writer, it often seems I exist on an island too. Looking back on this past year of blogging, I saw that I had written three posts about the need for writers to support each other.

Although members of my family offer support for my writing in other ways, they don’t beta read for me. My number of non-writer friends is small and only one of those has read or expressed any other interest my work. Fellow writers are my readers. One brave writer has even volunteered to read my novel for the third time.

I suppose it’s understandable that writers best understand the support other writers need to keep working in face of incredible odds. In a recent blog post, Michelle Davidson Argyle expressed hurt that some family and friends did not support her by reading her indie-published novella Cinders. That’s sad, but more disturbing is a fact lamented in the comments on that post. Fellow authors don’t always support each other either!

In my two years of blogging, I’ve “met” a few published authors. I’ve also become aware how important promotion is for a book’s success. Most of the authors I know online work hard to publicize their own books. This applies to traditional, small press, and indie published books alike, but especially to debut authors. Since I, too, plan to be one, I’m concerned.

Unfortunately, those authors who need the least publicity get the most from their traditional publishers, e.g.: King, Grisham, Franzen. Midlist, debut, and small-pressed authors get only a little help from their publishers. Indie authors have to do it all themselves.

Fair is fair. I can’t expect my fellow writers to support me, if I don’t support them. In 2011, I plan to make a bigger effort to seek out, read, and spread the word on debut novels—particularly those novels written by authors who’ve chosen the indie path.

No author wants to “die alone.” Can we all vow to live together?


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Fiction, Group, Links, Marketing, Opinion, Promotion, Writing

Support your fellow writers!

Linda Cassidy Lewis

Not so long ago, I wrote a post where I referred to this community of writers as a tapestry. I’d like to revisit that idea in this post.  We hear a lot of talk about social networking and self-promotion in the publishing industry. Long gone are the days when a writer could simply write and leave the sale of the work to their publisher’s publicity department. Nowadays, unless your name is already a household word, publicizing your published work is mostly up to you.

So here we are, already utilizing one of the best ways we have to publicize. And this is where the tapestry comes into play. If we want the weave to be stable and durable each strand of warp and weft must be strong. Each strand must be of high-quality twist. Single fibers spun together to create a continuous yarn.

Each of us is a fiber. Social networking spins us together. But what weaves that yarn into a tapestry? I believe it’s the support we give one another. Not only by visiting and commenting on each others’ blogs, which is very important for our often fragile egos, but by going the extra mile in promoting each other in these ways:

  • When you find a blog that teaches or blesses you, add a link to it in your Blog Roll.
  • Tweet or reTweet a link to the blog posts that spoke to you.
  • Mention names and link to worthy posts in your blog posts.
  • Remember to trumpet others’ published stories or books if you enjoyed them … or even if you didn’t, but think someone else might.

When I do these things, I help to weave that tapestry. I don’t stand a chance alone against the Big Name Writers. I need your help. You need mine. Working together we each succeed. Otherwise, we might just end up an ugly pile of threads.

In the Spirit of the Tapestry, you’ll notice, over there on the right, I’ve added links to some of my new favorite bloggers: Suzanne, Kirsten, Natasha, Dayner, and Victoria. You’d do well to visit those and my Writer and Poet friends’ blogs. And if any of you on my Blog Roll would prefer being listed under a different name, let me know.

I’d also like to honor a request to promote the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference. There’s a weekend session, June 12-13 or a week long session June 13-18. There will be workshops and classes for writers of fiction, non-fiction/memoir, children’s books, and poetry. Check it out.

Do you know other ways we can help each other get our names out there?

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