Bragging Rights

You have to be willing to brag about yourself a little bit if you are a writer. More politely it’s called promotion and this is how you get the word out about your work. If you’ve written a book, short story, any article in a magazine or newspaper, or maintain a blog, you need to make people aware and let them know who you are. You don’t want to tell people “I’m great, my book is great.” Instead you want people to know that you wrote a book and what it is about that book that will interest them. Give people a reason to want to read your work.

A popular form of promotion for authors and their books is blogging, but you don’t want every blog to be simply “read my book” or “look at all of the great reviews”. A blog post should raise some interest in you, in your writing, and sometimes in your book. Instead of always posting excerpts, reviews, or the terrific bargain your book is, you might want to write a thought provoking post about a subject dealt with in your book, perhaps find a connection between the story and something in the current news, anything that will provide interesting reading. At the end of the post, add your web-site link, a graphic of a book, or a buy link for one of your novels. Just don’t make people think they are listening to constant bragging.

Participation on social networks is another popular method of promotion. Again, not everything is about you or your book. Post frequently as part of ongoing conversations, post a witticism here or there, and always make sure that the YOU people are seeing IS the you that you want them to see. If you come off being a pretentious bore, self-absorbed, nasty, argumentative, then folks will avoid you and they will not be interested in learning more about you. Be real, be nice, be informed and people will want to be your “friend” – if people are interested in knowing you, then they will learn about you as a writer. Always keep it a “soft-sell” and you won’t scare potential readers away.


Writing exercise: Choose an object in your house that “sees” a lot of action. Write a diary entry for that object and talk about the things that were seen or said. For instance, my refrigerator would probably mention the assorted folks who come into the kitchen and stare into the fridge for several minutes just to make faces at the leftover pizza or groan at the older and should-be-thrown out before it walks out stuff. The fridge might have a lot to say about the state of mind of the individual preparing dinner – was he/she rushed, picky, indifferent? Were there leftovers put back into the fridge? Let the fridge make an assumption about the success or lack of about the meal. You get the idea.


Writing prompt: Give first names to your ten most used items; for instance my son calls his car Charlotte. Make a list. Then give a very brief explanation why that name fits that particular object.