Many authors simply dismiss Twitter. They imagine Brooklynites and Los Angelinos strolling city streets while on their smartphones punching tiny keyboards. If the demographics of your book’s readers don’t match those who use Twitter, why bother? No one seems interested in tweeting what they ate for lunch, where they went shopping, or the funny thing their kid said. How can you say anything meaningful or valuable in one sentence? Dismiss Twitter at your own risk, writers. With 554 million users, the average number of tweets per day is 58 million as of May 7, 2013. Projected advertising revenue from Twitter for 2013 is $400 million. It might surprise you to know only 43% use their phone to tweet.  Every day another 135,000 people open a Twitter account. Forty percent don’t tweet at all. They read other people’s tweets. Twitter is not a megaphone for an author to pick up and shout into the Twitterverse: “Buy MY book!” Many self-published authors continue to use Twitter in this way, much to the annoyance of their Tweeps. Twitter is a many-to-many communication channel which makes it more like a crowded party with many conversations going on simultaneously. Join the conversation only when you have something to say, something of value to share with those whom you have been reading. Twitter is more interesting, more fun, and more fruitful if you consider it a writer’s tool instead of a marketing platform. Twitter possesses tremendous research potential for a writer of non-fiction and memoir. The…

So you’ve searched Google and Go.Daddy to determine that your author name is available as a domain name. Great. But before you buy a domain name and begin building the foundation for your electronic home, open a Google account and set up an administrative email address through Gmail, using your author name. This is the name you will use consistently across all communication formats—print and electronic—as an author. Voila. You have completed Baby Step Two. Gmail is free and easy to set up. Use it strictly for administrative purposes, separate from your personal email or an email account set up at your new domain address. Why? Because you need a distinct and secure email address to use whenever you need to provide an address for the development, administration and management of your electronic persona as an author. When you choose a content management system (like WordPress) to design your website, this is the email you’ll provide. When you set up an RSS feed for your blog, this is the email you’ll provide. When you… well, you get the idea. From Google, you should also get a unique API key. What is that? It’s the thing Google and other search engines look for in code to find you and retrieve your information. This “key” opens up important programs you will use to build the walls and stairs of your new cyber home. It is an application interface (API) key you must keep private and secure, like your social security number. Be…

Too often I hear writers say they don’t see the point of social media, while others say they will use it after they’ve written their book. It’s a common refrain: writers just want to write. Many writers shy away from social media because they think it is nothing more than hype and sales. These are the same people who use Google search engines, rely on online banking, and carry a cell phone. Their anti-technology rant and avoidance of commercialism seems only to apply to their own craft. Let me be honest: you can’t send in your manuscript in a typewritten format today. It must be a digital submission, even if you have Kindle-proofed your manuscript. Instead of resisting, consider social media as tools in your writing shed. These tools will make your work easier if you treat them as such and don’t become a tool to them. You can use social media to write, research, build an audience platform, publicize and sell a book, attract invitations for speaking engagements and guest appearances, and create a direction connection with your readers. Social media will improve your writing. Those who whine that they won’t have time to do both – write and use social media  – need a reality check. If you have a 500 word daily writing goal to produce 10,000 words a month, it will take one year to produce a manuscript of 120,000 words. Let’s compare: the average blog post is 500 words. So if an author blogs once a week…