Real life contacts are needed for stuff for a book

Just got back from the office of a guy who gave me lots of drawings for my last book and who is letting me use more for my second. I made a special trip today to pick up the signed permission form.

The purpose of this post is to say how important networking is to be able to draw on contacts to provide you with things like this. We're told of the importance of social networking on the internet and everyone has Facebook and Linkedin pages with dozens, hundreds, or thousands of "contacts." But are these internet friends of friends of friends any good when it comes to drawing on them for something you need? In my experience, that only comes with direct IRL contacts, or IRL introductions to contacts. The guy I saw today is someone I had to jump through a few hoops for first, to get connected. Sending a Facebook friends request is cheap and easy, but I don't know how effective it is. Plus, the people I need to connect with don't have accessible Facebook pages.

Nothing replaces real life contacts. Networking still occurs at meetings everywhere. The trick with social networking is the development of real contacts with whom even an online relationship has exhibited a type of trust and understanding.

Realistically, I don't have many of those in spite of Twitter, Facebook and forums. However, I have not kept in mind how these contacts might benefit me in the future. I just sort of fell into communicating with some online people more than others.

These online contacts taught me everything I know about ebooks, social networking,web sites, book promotion, and more. I provide all I know when the opportunity presents itself.

Shelagh included my short story and interview in a couple of her published and ebooks. Another online group published a book together. On this forum, several thread are instructive on ebook cover design and more.

I don't know anyone in real life to help with these things. Yet, my real life contacts are the ones I need to get a day job - and I just don't have enough of those anymore.

LC wrote:

Just got back from the office of a guy who gave me lots of drawings for my last book and who is letting me use more for my second. I made a special trip today to pick up the signed permission form.

The purpose of this post is to say how important networking is to be able to draw on contacts to provide you with things like this. We're told of the importance of social networking on the internet and everyone has Facebook and Linkedin pages with dozens, hundreds, or thousands of "contacts." But are these internet friends of friends of friends any good when it comes to drawing on them for something you need? In my experience, that only comes with direct IRL contacts, or IRL introductions to contacts. The guy I saw today is someone I had to jump through a few hoops for first, to get connected. Sending a Facebook friends request is cheap and easy, but I don't know how effective it is. Plus, the people I need to connect with don't have accessible Facebook pages.

Well, I've certainly been drawn upon through all my contacts, LC. I've explained photoshop techniques to you, tidied up your photoshop attempts, given you URL addresses for professional editorial services (indexing) and been willing to help in any number of other ways. It isn't that social networking doesn't work; it's that there is very little appreciation shown for help and advice freely given.

Good grief. I didn't mean that information isn't exchanged and people don't answer each other's questions. Of course people help each other out of forums and elsewhere. And I've cold-called, or whatever the email equivalent of that is, people whose work I've seen online, to see if I could use it. Got nice stuff that way, too.

I guess when I said "social networking" I was thinking of all the cheap and easy Facebook and LinkedIn contacts. Real life contacts are harder, but pay off more. Just in my experience.

We agree that information is exchanged; maybe for you that information is not as helpful as information gained through real life contacts. For others, it may prove to be just as helpful or even more helpful.

From my experience, as many or more people I've helped over the years have shown no appreciation for the help given as those who showed appreciation ... and I've helped hundreds of people online over the last seven years.

I don't wish to diminish any help provided by anyone online. However, I am not sure how appreciation is shown other than thanks and helping others - the pay it forward sort of thing.

In my early days, I devoured all the info anyone provided and returned info that I had. In recent months, I haven't had a lot to offer though I have continued reviewing a few books.

Perhaps a suggestion about how one would feel appreciated is in order. I know I have a friend that I have provided untold hours and expense helping over many years time and the one time I needed her help, she didn't want to go out of her way even twenty minutes to meet that need. As a result, I realized she felt entitled to my help but in no way obligated to return it. It was quite an ah hah moment; sometimes there are friends who take and others who give and they balance each other out somehow, but an expectation that friends will help during one's time of need is an unmet expectation.

You answered your own thoughts on lack of appreciation online quite neatly, DK, when you said that it is no different to real life situations. You are absolutely right about friends who expect help because they are needy people. When they see certain strengths in their friends that they don't share, they accept help without feeling under any obligation to repay in kind. Often, they want to pay back a friend through a gift (which I have done many times for acquaintances to repay a kindness, but friends get my time in return). What they don't want to do is give up their time to repay a friend who has so generously given up their own time. The very best friendships are the ones that give and take.

Showing appreciation for help given is important. I know that I have often failed to show adequate appreciation. Regrets are no excuse. No one should be taken for granted. We all have feelings. Knowing someone cares about you or appreciates you is an expression of love. No one wants to feel used, however that is often the result. As mentioned, there are givers and then there are takers. I believe that those who give of themselves are rich indeed.

I never considered message board forums to be "social networking" the way that phrase is used. I've been posting on boards for 20 years and "social networking" was not how the interactions on it were described. It is a new phrase that describes the Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace- type sites where seven-times-removed people become "friends" because they're told it will increase their ability to sell, make contacts, find a job, whatever.

Which right there tells you how different those sites are from forums like this. So-called "social" sites are touted as places to sell your wares. On message boards that was called "spamming" and moderators quickly removed them.

And btw, I think we've all probably had "friends" who asked for, and got, a large favor but fell short when asked to return it. I have. What can ya do.

You gave me the idea of seting up a twitter account for Published Authors. I set it up about two hours ago and already have over 100 followers:

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I wish you luck with Twitter. First thing, my followers were cut off for some reason I can't fathom. They keep printing at my twitter account that my valid email address I've had since 2003 is not valid. Then, the followers I do have are mostly businesses. Do follow me. My twitter is dkchristi.

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You gave me the idea of seting up a twitter account for Published Authors. I set it up about two hours ago and already have over 100 followers:

I just checked it out. You don't have 100 followers. You have 100 writers trying to sell each other their books. A feed full of spam.

Ah, but if used properly, it is a feed for authors to share with their followers. I retweet the tweets, which the followers should then retweet to their followers. That way, other authors are advertising your books, which is much more acceptable to readers who, like you, don't have a taste for spam ... but they love free ebooks and 99 cents ebooks.

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Ah, but if used properly, it is a feed for authors to share with their followers. I retweet the tweets, which the followers should then retweet to their followers. That way, other authors are advertising your books, which is much more acceptable to readers who, like you, don't have a taste for spam ... but they love free ebooks and 99 cents ebooks.

Do all those authors have followers that aren't mostly other authors? And do you plan to retweet all 100 of them?

Just a reminder that many of the most avid readers are authors - they do read each other's books. In fact, I'll be a lot of indie books and ebooks without mainline publishers are read by aspiring indie authors and successful indie authors.

DK -I agree that most authors are avid readers (or should be!). And sales can be made to them. But I think the much larger readership pool is non-writers, wouldn't you agree?

Is your own reading mostly of indie authors?

Since indie authors cannot compete with commercially published authors, it makes sense to read other indie authors' stuff to learn about the competition.

LC wrote:

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Ah, but if used properly, it is a feed for authors to share with their followers. I retweet the tweets, which the followers should then retweet to their followers. That way, other authors are advertising your books, which is much more acceptable to readers who, like you, don't have a taste for spam ... but they love free ebooks and 99 cents ebooks.

Do all those authors have followers that aren't mostly other authors? And do you plan to retweet all 100 of them?

170 followers now.

200 followers. One of the suggested people for Published Authors to follow was me! LOL!

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Since indie authors cannot compete with commercially published authors, it makes sense to read other indie authors' stuff to learn about the competition.

Not sure I understand how the two are linked. Why is competition from indie authors any different from competition from commercial authors? What will be different in the indie author books that needs particular studying?

Re your Twitter followers, are you going to retweet every one of their books?

On Kindle, commercially published books are almost as expensive as print books. If self-publishers priced their ebooks at comparable prices, they wouldn't sell. So indie ebooks tend to be priced between $0.99-$5.99. That puts indie books in the same price bracket (in which the books compete against one another). The opposite is true for print books; indie books are more expensive and cannot compete with the commercially published books, which is why they sell hundreds not thousands of copies.

I don't write any tweets on Published Authors. I just visit a couple of times a day and retweet the days tweets that offer special deals, helpful blogs, book signings etc. it takes two clicks to retweet (put cursor under tweet, click on 'retweet' which opens a box asking if I'm sure, click on 'retweet' button and I'm done). It takes seconds to retweet (which is why gossip travels so fast on twitter). In the time it has taken me to write this post, I could have retweeted twenty tweets or more. I don't need to sort through loads of "What I had for breakfast" tweets because all the followers are writers and authors, so I can quickly scroll through going, retweet, retweet, retweet.

If the Published Authors Network on LinkedIn had not been set up already, I would have had to follow people to ask them to follow me back. As it is, the followers built up rapidly from one message on the LinkedIn group. That's how it works. It takes years to build up a network and then you can use it to great effect.

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On Kindle, commercially published books are almost as expensive as print books. If self-publishers priced their ebooks at comparable prices, they wouldn't sell. So indie ebooks tend to be priced between $0.99-$5.99. That puts indie books in the same price bracket (in which the books compete against one another). The opposite is true for print books; indie books are more expensive and cannot compete with the commercially published books, which is why they sell hundreds not thousands of copies.

Ok, but I wasn't asking about pricing, I meant how does the content differ. I asked if you, yourself, read indie books, in the context of DK saying that your Twitter followers aren't just authors trying to sell books, they're also readers.

I would bet that very few of your followers have read each other's books (unless they were pressed to do a review). They just want to sell each other their books. They probably read mainstream ones themselves.

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I don't write any tweets on Published Authors.

So we're back to: "Do all those authors have followers that aren't mostly other authors?" How should this whole business be "properly used," as you say?

Genuinely interested! Twitter's awfully popular, clearly it's doing something for someone.

Among others, I've read Betty's book and Joe's and published Alice's. I've also read literally dozens of short stories by indie authors (there are 31 stories in Forever Friends and 19 in Forever Travels, not counting those that didn't make it into the anthologies). You're asking the wrong person about reading stuff written by indie authors.

LC wrote:

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I don't write any tweets on Published Authors.

So we're back to: "Do all those authors have followers that aren't mostly other authors?" How should this whole business be "properly used," as you say?

Genuinely interested! Twitter's awfully popular, clearly it's doing something for someone.

Okay, new example. You're a textbook author. A year or so ago, one of the admin staff at the university told my husband that she'd seen one of his books on twitter. He asked me how this had happened since he doesn't have a twitter account. I said that a student probably asked for a recommendation. Someone suggested his book and it went into a feed that was then retweeted and ended up in the admin officer's twitter feed.