Checking out 'Scribd' and you should, too

Jane Friedman,
photo by Rowe Studios

Fellow writers, I am inspired to write another post based on a content tweet by Jane Friedman, invaluable friend to writers who want to be published or more published. Just to reiterate, whenever Jane tweets, I pay rapt attention. I even scroll through her tweets on occasion to see if there's something I missed. In confess that I'm a tactical tweeter and don't hang out on Twitter very often.

This time, Jane's tweet linked to a blog post she had written for Writer's Digest about a young widow who posted content on Scribd and has been very successful in building an audience for an eventual book launch as a result.

What is Scribd, you ask? Here's their line on themselves: They are the world’s largest social reading and publishing company. They've made it easy to share and discover entertaining, informative and original written content across the web and mobile devices. Their vision is "to liberate the written word, to connect people with the information and ideas that matter most to them."

If you want to find out more about Scribd's potential, you should read the article. Instead of rehashing that woman's experience, I'll tell you what I did.

Granted, I am only taking baby steps on the site. Scribd has a lot more capability than what I am currently using. Just so you know, it's easy to log on to if you are already on Facebook.  If any of your Facebook friends are on Scribd, they show up as "Followers" or at least that's how it appears. Even though Scribd tells me I have been a member since October 2010, I only uploaded my first two pieces of content to Scribd this week.

1. The first three pages of my WIP, WHO KILLED TOM JONES? (uploaded 3/21); and
2. The first 30 pages of WHO KILLED TOM JONES? (uploaded 3/22)

Today is 3/23. In those two days, I received more than 50 "reads" on each of those pieces. Now, while those numbers pale in comparison to the young widow's memoirs, I am really delighted with that level of activity in two short days. The fact is that I don't even know how all those readers found my excerpts in the first place. I don't think I would have been able to find them myself because I'm still learning my way around the site.

One of the things that became readily apparent is how major publishers are used Scribd to promote their new or newer releases by publishing excerpts.  In fact, by perusing those excerpts, I realized I needed to reformat the larger excerpt to look more like the others. So I added some bells and whistles to make it look less like a manuscript and more like a book. I did end up uploading the thirty-page excerpt as a PDF though, since the file was too large to upload as a word docx. I like the appearance of a PDF better. The pages are clearly demarcated, and it looks more like the published book excerpts on the site.

I plan to upload more excerpts, to try to learn how to use Scribd and get a handle on its potential. I have other pieces I can upload as well.

So, if you liked the 500-word excerpt of WHO KILLED TOM JONES? previously published on this blog, you can read 28 more pages at Scribd.

What do you think? Do you see yourself used Scribd to obtain more visibility for your creative writing? Any keys or insights on how to use Scribd more successfully?

A Four-Noggin Nod to 'Glass Cases'

I've been on Twitter for almost a year, following agents and publishers left and right, to hear what they're buzzing about, what excites them, frustrates them. And to gain snippets of their wisdom, 140 characters at a pop.

In interviewing author Margo Candela this weekend, I was struck by her contention that writers who want to make a career of it need "someone in their corner." Via Twitter, I've come to realize that some agents are in some writers' corners. Some publishers are clearly encamped in other writers' corners.

For Sarah LaPolla, for giving many writers a hand up!

But there's one agent who's in every writer's corner--Sarah LaPolla--recipient of a hearty Scrivengale four-noggin nod!

She's an associate literary agent at Curtis Brown, Ltd. and a writing enthusiast. She loves talking about books, publishing, pop culture, and promoting up-and-coming authors. She also writes articles that publishing wannabes's would be wise to check out such as this essay, The Obvious Symbolism Police, which was singled out as A Top Ten Fiction Article of 2010.

She showcases novel and memoir excerpts, personal essays, and short stories on her blog, "Glass Cases." All genres of fiction are welcome. Just about the only thing she won't showcase is poetry. (Sorry, to all my poetic friends.) In the past year, she's featured the work of fellow Wilkes writers Rick Fellinger, Amye Archer, and Anne Henry, to name a few.

Today she is featuring the first five pages of RACE CARD, a suspense novel I've been working on for almost three years. And this is not the first time Sarah's featured my writing. She posted an excerpt from my opera novel some months back, which got some very heavy duty feedback, for which I'm grateful.

"Glass Cases" is a wonderful outlet for getting exposure and valuable gut-level feedback. You will find out PDQ whether people are taking a shine to your work or not. Being on "Glass Cases" is similar to experience a someone picking up your book and reading the jacket and the first few pages to decide whether they like it, and want to take it home with them, or not--only virtual.

How to get your writing on "Glass Cases"

Send your work to Sarah's attention at glasscasesblog@gmail.com. Pieces should be no more than five pages (size 12 font, double-spaced) and pasted in the body of the email.

Also on her blog are guidelines for querying Sarah. If you are seeking representation, you'll want to check those out to see if your work is a fit for her interests.

Salud, Sarah! Grazie mille, "Glass Cases."

Writers and Social Media--Get On It!

This week, one of my former instructors from the Wilkes University Writing Program, Christine Gelineau, emailed me prior to the next residency for current students. (Alumni are always welcome on the community email forum--a neat feature of the program). Christine, an accomplished poet, and playwright Jean Klein teach the "Business of Writing" module, a series of upper-level craft classes that I found invaluable.

my opera blog

Christine asked if she could include a mention of my opera blog and networking successes at establishing my credentials and building an audience for my manuscripts even before they've found a publisher. She also was also interested in sharing any comments about the value/drawbacks of Twitter to student writers and the vast would-be published.

If Christine thought it might have value to graduate students in Wilkes creative writing program, perhaps it may have value on Scrivengale, too. Hence, this post.

Building an audience for a book

Here's a little history on my attempts to integrate social media with creative writing. While I was finishing my novel with opera as a backdrop (Spring Semester of 2010), in February of 2010, I established a blog called "Operatoonity: Everything you never knew you wanted to know about writing," which logged 12,000+ visitors since then. At the same time I set up two Twitter accounts, one as me (Gale_Martin) and one as my Operatoonity persona. There are lots of Twitter tools to help you quickly target people by interest, and I began following nearly everyone I found with an interest in opera: performers, houses, fans, conductors, and composers, thereby giving me a ready pool of people to interview for the blog. Through Twitter I also learned about opera from the content links others posted and about specialized contests such as Washington National Opera's songwriting contest, which I ended up winning first place (and an embarrassing number of cool prizes.)

Writers on Twitter

This October, as I began other manuscripts with themes other than opera, I realized I needed a writing/publishing blog, a stepping stone to an author's website, so that's when I established Scrivengale. I believe it was agent Janet Reid who said if fiction writers don't have a website they needed to at least have a blog or she'd be hard-pressed to consider their work.

Blogger has made so many improvements in their platform that a Blogger blog is a good stand in for a website because of all the pages you can add. Just by visiting other writing bloggers' sites, you can get a great overview of how these pages can be used to flesh out and plump up your blog. If you don't believe me, take a look at this writing blog, "Unedited," hosted by Jennifer Daiker, which has all the robustness of a website because of the extra pages she's created in addition to the home page.

If you have a writing blog, and you're not on Twitter, or not sending your content to Twitter, you are missing an invaluable opportunity to take advantage of built-in syndication features. The technology is there to Tweet your posts--even on Wordpress--and you are silly not to avail yourself of it. A quick review of my Scrivengale stats proves Twitter is the highest ranking single URL sending traffic to this blog and one of the top referring sites.

If you blogged back in the day (circa 2006-2008) as I did--sans Twitter and before the Facebook revolution--when you posted and prayed to the Google Gods that people would somehow find your blog, then you know how invaluable the social media are to bloggers developing followings and readers today.

As I told Christine, there are hundreds of agents, editors and publishers on Twitter that you can follow. If you are an unpublished, unagented author, you're lucky--very lucky--if they follow you back. However, I had an editor for a major publishing house follow me back because I asked her a thoughtful question after one of her Twitter posts.

Even if the glitterati from the publishing world aren't following you, you can always ask them questions by posting a mention to their attention, by using their Twitter user name preceded by @. If they check their mentions and deign to respond, you're in luck.

Regardless of whether they follow you or not, lots of agents and editors post links to their blog content--filled with pearly advice for would-be authors. And they dole out lots of industry tips, 140 characters at a time, too. Sometimes they make spur-of-the-moment offers to answer questions on a certain topic, read partials, and even whole manuscripts if you are willing to make a video, for instance. Even then, they may not always follow through on Twitter "promises" made. So be wary of that aspect of Twitter, too, that it encourages more impulsivity than regular email would because it has its own psychic energy or momentum. That energy is one of the great things about Twitter. Just don't fall prey to the impulsivity it allows.

Be professional

I read a hilarious essay about shopping for e-books while drinking heavily. While such a bald-faced confession seemed to buoy this memoirist's image, writers need to be careful when putting content out there, and not to say things you later regret, that tear down the personal brand you've been trying to build, one Tweet at a time. Once you launch your sentiments into cyberspace, they're gone--irretrievable--but perfectly able to come back to haunt you at the most inopportune times because Twitter content never dies.

I can sack my reputation with
one irresponsible Tweet?
Inconceivable!

Right now, there's a lot of information circulating on Twitter about writers acting unprofessionally, and that if they say anything to run down an agent or an editor, they are a tight network growing tighter all the time, and their gaffe will eventually come back to haunt them.

Yes, social media is making the world smaller, one byte at a time. You could conceivably sack your chances to be published with one foul Tweet flown in front of hundreds of publishing professionals. But the increased connectivity can work to a writer's advantage if you're smart and strive to be professional.

Unless of course, bad behavior is part of your writerly persona (like @BadBanana) or you're channeling an investigative reporter or something. Then by all means, skewer away.