Write Nonfiction in November

October is half over…That means it’s almost November. Time, once again, for Write Nonfiction in November! Whoo hoo!

I didn’t manage to post a blog last month. I was too busy setting up some really great guest bloggers for this year’s challenge. You’ll be so pleased with the line up!

And, to get things rolling, tomorrow you can listen to me talk about Write Nonfiction in November on The National Association of Memoir Writers (NAMW) teleseminar. If you recall, last year one of my guest bloggers was Linda Joy Meyers, founder of NAMW.  Meyers and I will be chatting about Write Nonfiction in November, my response to National Novel Writing Month (NANOWRIMO). For anyone new to this site, Write Nonfiction in November (WNFIN) is a contest that has fiction writers writing 50,000 words in 30 days during November. My blog challenges nonfiction writers to spend the month of November writing and completing a work of nonfiction. While they do so, the blog itself provides nonfiction writing, promotion and marketing information to help them sell themselves and their writing to publishing companies and readers. Additionally, via the blog comments, Write Nonfiction in November provides a forum for nonfiction writers to comment on their writing experiences during November each year.

During the NAWM teleseminar, I will discuss different types of nonfiction, including:

• journalistic articles
• personal essays
• inspirational essays
• booklets
• books

If time allows, I’ll also discuss:

• the difference between personal essay and memoir
• platform building on the Internet
• how to use your nonfiction skills to write articles to generate publicity for yourself as a writer
• how the business of writing can be a spiritual endeavor

NAWM  invites memoir writers from all over the world to connect, learn, and become inspired about writing their stories. The goal of our organization is to help memoir writers feel empowered with purpose and energy to begin and develop their life stories into a publishable memoir, whether in essay form, a book, a family legacy, or to create a blog.

Many memoir writers want to use writing as means for healing and transformation, so we assist in this goal by offering workshops, teleseminars, and interviews with writers and experts in the area of memoir, writing skills, therapeutic writing, spiritual autobiography, and healing through writing personal, authentic stories.

Myers, President of NAMW, has been a therapist for 30 years, and is the author of three books, a prize-winning memoir Don’t Call Me Mother, about three generations of mothers who abandoned their daughters, and two books on the ways that writing helps to heal emotionally and physically. Her new book The Power of Memoir—How to Write Your Healing Story will be released in January, 2010, through Jossey Bass publishers in San Francisco. She teaches writing workshops nationally, online, and in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Those who join NAMW receive a unique package of memoir writing resources including the NAMW welcome kit and a collection of online and hard copy resources to help memoir writers within all phases of the exciting journey of memoir writing.  Members also receive discounts on select NAMW teleseminars, workshops, retreats and other learning opportunities and materials.

To learn more about NAMW, contact info@namw.org or visit http://www.namw.org

Now…you do have to be a NAWM member to listen in on the teleseminar tomorrow. But if you are a memoir writer–or want to become one–this is a great time to go ahead a join this great group of writers.  So, hurry up and join and call in by 11 a.m. PST!

Here are the details:

Date: October 16, 2009
Guest Speaker: Nina Amir
Times: 11 am Pacific | 12 noon Mountain | 1 pm Central | 2 pm Eastern
Cost: Free for NAMW Members
Become A Member of NAMW Today to take part in this teleseminar!
To join: info@namw.org or http://www.namw.org

On this, the second to last day of Write Nonfiction in November, I’d like to devote a blog posting to how to build your platform and promote books on the Internet. The Internet offers a vast resource of free promotional tools, if we, as writers, only know how to use them – and actually use them.

I was speaking with a POD publisher the other day who told me that she can’t get her authors to do enough promotion for their books. Not only will they not build platform before their books come out, they won’t do it afterward either. I have discovered that a lot of authors are interested in hearing about platform building, but they just don’t want to do the work.  Here’s the deal, folks: As nonfiction writers, if you want to publish a book, the only way to get it sold (either to a publishing house or to actual readers) is to promote yourself and build a platform. Period. Platform and promotion = books sold. There’ s no way around this fact.

Before I even begin telling you what to do, I’m going to broach the topic that always comes up at the end: How much time will all of this take you? A lot. I know you’d rather be writing. I would, too. But, in fact, I spend about 80 percent of each week on promotion and platform building activities I’m going to tell you about…and there are so many more I could be doing as well (such as going out and speaking before live audiences). You have to do it, though. So, stop fussing. Stop procrastinating. Stop saying, “I just want to write.” The days when writers could just write have passed.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, here are my top five tips for promoting yourself and your book and building platform on the Internet.

Tip #1: Write articles for ezines and distribute them in ezine directories.  Plenty of ezines exist for each subject niche. You can easily find these by doing a Google search. Most don’t pay writers, but a few will offer payment, and if they don’t know you are being paid with the fact that the online publication will include your author’s bio and links to your website or locations where readers can buy your book on line. This will increase traffic to your website, where hopefully you have ways to capture their email addresses (like with a newsletter sign up), or result in book sales.

Beyond individual ezines specifically related to your subject matter, I suggest you sign up for specific ezine directory services. These tend to be services for which you pay on a monthly basis or each time you post an article. (I have listed several ezine directory services I recommend in my ebook, Using the Internet to Build Your Platform One Article at a Time -scroll down the home page to find it at a reduced price through the month of December.) The benefit to using these services comes in the fact that rather than submitting your article to 20 ezines individually, these directories submit them for you to many more than that. Plus, your articles remain in the directory and are available for ezines to find at any time in the future. My articles and essays have been picked up and used by an assortment of publications all over the world. This gives me enormous exposure. Each time someone publishes one of my articles, my bio (including the links to my website) is published along with it. This sends more traffic to my website.

Tip #2: Comment on Other People’s Blogs and Articles: By leaving comments here and there on the Internet, you let people know who you are and what you do, while also letting them know where to find you fi they want more information. If, for instance, you are a medical expert writing a book on medicine, you would want to comment on other blogs about medicine – in particular the type of medicine about which you write. Each time you leave a comment, anyone who clicks on your name gets sent to your website. There they discover more about you…maybe they read your blog and subscribe; maybe they see that you have a book for sale; maybe they notice you’ll be speaking in their hometown and decide to come hear you and purchase a book there. 

You can take advantage of the chance to leave comments by finding articles that relate to your writing projectsand that have been published and are available on line. A friend of mine has gotten a lot of traffic to her blogs and website in this way.

Tip #3: Use Google Alerts to help you find out when you need to leave a comment.The best way to discover when you should be leaving a comment somewhere online is to set up Google alerts to notify you each day of articles and blogs that relate to the subjects about which you write. Then you can look at these alerts and decide which ones are worth your time and energy. You can also set up an alert for you name.

Tip #4: Take time for social networking:  Sign up for Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace and use them. I was a member of LinkedIn for a long time and didnt’ get much out of it until I joined a few groups and participated in the discussions going on there. Then suddenly I started seeing these people going to my website and commenting on my blogs or offering to link with me in other ways. I recently joined Facebook, and I’m thrilled at the result. I have been able to form groups of friends in many circles related to my book projects. I already called on several people to help me promote something for a friend, and it worked great. I’ll be sure to do the same when it comes time to promote my books. Plus, you always have a presence on Facebook if you are using it. And that’s really important.

Tip #5: Review competing or competitive books on Amazon.com.  Okay, there’s a whole art to this, but let me just say that by reviewing books that are similar to the book you are about to publish or have published or are writing, you let readers know you and your book exists.  Again, you can send them to your website and hopefully capture their email address or at least make them a unique visitor.

More and more books are being published on the topic of promoting your self and your books on the Internet. Find a book that speaks to you. Read up. Then, take the time to do what you can on line. It’s cheap. You can’t get better than free. All you are spending is your time, but it will be worth it. Then use the paid services, like a PR pro, when you really need them.

I can tell you this: Using these tips, in about two years I built my website traffic from almost zero to between 3,500 and 5,000 visitors (2,000-2,700 unique visitors) per month.  (I attribute a small amount of this growth also to my monthly appearances over the last 11 months on Conversations with Mrs. Claus.) I see the difference in how many visitors I get by how many of these tips I employ each month. That’s how I know they work.

Since the Internet offers so many opportunities to promote yourself and build your platform, I asked Linda Lee to add a five more tips to my list. After all, she taught me a lot of what I know! If you recall, Linda offers website and blog coaching and consulting services as well as custom website development. The following information is just a bit of what you’ll find in the book she’s writing, You have a Website, Now What?

Tip #6: Find online “communities” that share your passion or interests. This can be a forum or a blog network, like the Moms Club, or Blogher or Red Room. There are thousands of choices out there. This is where you find readers. Whether your passion is writing, gardening, health, fishing, animals, politics, spirituality, there is an online community for those topics. Participate in those arenas. People will get to know you and want to hear from you. This will translate to readers for your site.

Tip #7: Network. As you are reading other peoples site, you can start to network with them. Leave comments and build a relationship. Ask them if they would want to “guest” blog on your blog. On your blogroll, link to other blogs you enjoy and recommend. Search engines love back links. Focus on the smaller bloggers rather then fighting for attention with the A list.

Tip #8: Participate in some of the newer social media sites. Right now the new kid on the block is YahooBuzz. I highly recommend you join and start using it. Then there is Digg, Stumbleupon, Friendfeed, and many others.

Tip #9: Use your a newsletter. Use your newsletter mailing list to promote a website article or blog post you have written. Only do this with your most relevant articles and posts. Encourage your readers to forward your email to a friend by inserting a button that will easily allow them to forward your email. Also be sure to invite them to leave you a comment on your blog.

Tip #9: Include email signatures. In addition to your website address, add a little line about your latest article or post and make it clickable so people can just click through to read your latest work. To see how to add a signature file to your email go here.

Linda concludes with the following advice: “All this can feel overwhelming at times. You may feel stupid or inept. You aren’t. Trust me, the Internet is huge and most people have the same feelings at one time or another. What I have found over the years is that you must stay focused. Don’t let yourself get sidetracked on other sites when you are working on your items. You can bookmark things and come back to them later.

“You are just as able and competent to promote yourself and participate in this online world as the next guy. Believe in yourself. Good luck and have fun!”

About Linda Lee

Linda Lee is a writer, speaker, educator, and website designer. Available for consulting and coaching, she helps people launch blogs and websites and trains then in how to get traffic to their sites and to maximize their website presence with the use of blogging and search engine optimization of their websites. Linda is passionate about empowering people to take charge of their computer, showing clients with laughter and enthusiasm that they can make it work for them. This explains Linda’s slogan: “Don’t Let Your Computer Outsmart You.” Linda is co-president of the Women’s National Book Association’s San Francisco Chapter and a speaker and volunteer coordinator for the San Francisco Writers Conference.

http://www.askmepc-webdesign.com

http://www.smartwomenstupidcomputers.com

For information on my teleseminars, Why Every Author Needs a Platform and How to Build one on the Internet or How to Build a Platform One Article at a Time, please check out my teleseminar schedule here. Also, for information on my ebook, Using the Internet to Build Your Platform One Article at a Time you can check out the page on this blog, click on the link above, or go to www.copywrightcommunications.com. I’m also available to give talks on these and other topics related to nonfiction writing and platform building.

Don’t forget, if you like this blog, please vote Write Nonfiction in November one of Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Websites for Writers by going to writersdig@fwpubs.com. Write “101 Best Websites” in the subject line. Then, place the link to this blog – www.writenonfictioninnovember.wordpress.com - in the body of the email. If you want to add why you like the blog and the challenge, that’s helpful. If not, just send the link.

Welcome to the first day of Write Nonfiction in November! The title of this blog post reminds me of all those timed tests I took in high school.  I hated taking those tests, but hopefully you won’t hate the Write Nonfiction in November Challenge. It’s supposed to be fun, educational and productive all at the same time. I love it, because it forces me to stop procrastinating and actually start and finish a project in just 30 days – something I don’t normally do. (More often than not I either don’t start at all or I start and don’t finish.)

Plus, this year, as I promised, I’ve got some great guest bloggers joining me, so I’ll be learning some new things along with you. Last year I did a massive brain dump and offered up as much nonfiction writing advice and information as I could think of at the time. I still have a bit more in my head to share this year, but it will be nice for me to read what other writing and publishing experts have to say and to gain some new tips from them. Plus, even I can get tired of reading my own writing – or listening to myself speak, as they say.

On that note, I thought I should start off with a bit of a bang and broach a topic that may have brought some readers here to begin with: writing for pay or for free. (If you don’t know what I’m speaking about, check out the post titled “Forced to Blog Before November.”) I did mention that everything that needed to be said about the subject had been said already in the post titled “To Blog for Free or Not to Blog for Free, That’s the Question,” but I really said that in reference only to getting paid to guest blog. And guest blogging seems to be a different animal all together. So, let me tell you what I think about writing for free or for pay when it comes to other types of writing.

Going back to my early beginnings as a writer, or would-be writer, while I was in high school and in college I often wrote for local publications for free. Why? I’m sure you can guess the answer: to obtain those coveted bylines or published clips that would one day get me paying assignments and, hopefully, a full-time job when I graduated from college. Yes, indeed, in the world of journalism, a newbie writer does sometimes (not always) find herself choosing (if not forced) to write for free to show she can write well enough to get a paid gig.

While in college, however, I had a lovely professor named John Keats (not THE John Keats, mind you, although this one wrote some best sellers), who taught me never to write anything unless I knew in advance I was getting paid for it. In other words, always send out a query letter; never write the article first. Always send out a book proposal; never write the nonfiction book first. For many, many, many years I headed his advice. I also didn’t make a lot of money as a freelance journalist. Till this day, however, I won’t write a reported article without a contract from a publication telling me I will get paid for that work.

Yes, it’s true (despite what some might think). I firmly believe that if a writer wants to take on a reported article or a nonfiction book, they should, in fact, know in advance they are getting paid for that work. Why bother going to all the trouble unless you know you will make some money?

The clips I accumulated – both paid and unpaid – helped me land full-time editorial positions on regional magazines right out of college. They also helped me get freelance writing assignments that did pay. However, later on I wanted to branch out into essays, and I found it much harder to land assignments with a query letter. So, I began simply writing the essays and sending them out with a cover letter. I admit it; I did the work and did not know I would get paid for it. This resulted in many more paychecks showing up in the mail. I learned from this experience that it is easier to sell essays when completely written – at least when a publication doesn’t yet know you or your style as a writer. These days, several e-zines, for instance, accept my essay ideas and agree to pay me for them prior to me writing them. When I approach a new magazine or e-zine, though, I still write the whole essay first and risk the rejection, which means no pay for my time and effort.

As I became interested in writing nonfiction books, I soon learned that I needed a “platform” before a publishing house of any size would even consider publishing my work. A platform comes down to how well known you are and how this affects your ability to publicize and market your book. In other words, how easily can you help sell copies of your book once it is published via your mailing list, web site, blog, talks, classes and teleseminars, connections, partnerships, etc.? (We’ll be talking a lot about platform building this month…) I began working on building my platform. The easiest way to do so seemed to be on the Internet by placing articles in e-zines and Internet article directories. This drives traffic to your web site and gives you exposure on line, which results, hopefully, in great Google ranking and increased contacts on your mailing list.

However, while a few e-zines, magazines published on line, do pay writers, many do not. And, as we know, many bloggers are looking for content but won’t pay. The way to get exposure for you as a writer and earn expert status (part of building platform) comes in writing articles – for free – and placing them – at a cost to yourself – in article directories that make them available to anyone who wants them. (For more information on this topic, see my booklet Using the Internet to Build Your PLATFORM One Article at a Time.) Right…They don’t pay you; you pay them. In fact, there are many services that will distribute your articles for you at a cost to you just so that maybe someone somewhere will print it and give you some free publicity. (You may think I’m crazy now, but just wait. You’ll hear more about this from some of the experts who will be blogging here later in the month.)

Of course, then comes blogging. If you think bloggers only blog for fun, think again. Blogging provides great publicity for aspiring authors and writers of all sorts. If you blog a lot, that’s a ton of content for the bots and crawlers (or whatever they are called) to discover, which moves you up in the Google rankings. And that’s what you want. Plus, whole books have been blogged and then discovered by agents and published. And a blog serves as proof that you can write even if you have no published clips. And providing guest blogs exposes you to someone else’s readership, which, in turn, hopefully sends them to your blog (and gets them to sign up for your mailing list, etc.).

But if you think the majority of bloggers – let’s be more specific and say the majority of average writers who blog – get paid for what they do, think some more. The average writer, like me and you, blogs because in this day and age you have to have a website and a blog. It’s part of the publicity you need on the Internet. Period. (Now, if you have enough readers, you could include ads on your blog. If you are lucky and people click on them, you could make some money. But you won’t be getting paid for your writing.)

So, do I believe in writing for pay. By all means, yes, I do. I make my living as a writer and as an editor. I want to get paid for what I write just as much as the next guy or gal, and I want to get paid well. Do I sometimes write for free – and encourage others to write for free? Again, yes, I do. In some cases, writing for free remains a necessary evil, especially in today’s publishing atmosphere.

Okay. That should rouse a few feathers and maybe a few comments. Tomorrow I’ll let one of my guest bloggers have a turn. In the meantime, happy writing. I’m off to figure out what I’m writing during Write Nonfiction in November…booklet or book. I still can’t decide. I want to be sure to finish what I start!

You can gain exposure for yourself and your books by using your nonfiction writing ability to write articles and “news releases” (short articles) that you post to online article directories and distribution services. You can also submit them to e-zines, which represents a more targeted approach. I’ve done this consistently for more than a year, and if you Google my name, you’ll find load of entries. Not only that, if you search for any of the many subjects about which I’ve written – all of which pertain to the books I’m trying to promote – you’ll likely find something I’ve written on that very subject.

Let’s start with e-zines. These are magazines published on the Internet. Some print magazines also have e-zines, and sometimes these carry different articles. I tend to go for the e-zines that are published only on line and that carry articles solely on topics related to my books. Therefore, you can often find my articles in Jewishmagazine.com or Interfaithmagazine.com. The latter pays me a little for my articles; the former does not, but it affords me its 3,000 unique visitors a day and a link to my web site. That’s great exposure and publicity, especially since my bio mentions my book or books.

As for article directories, many of these are free, and you can submit to them yourself. This can be very time consuming, however. Instead of doing this myself, I choose to use a service called SubmitYourArticle.com (There are others out there.), which costs me $37.00 per month for unlimited article postings per month. They are sticklers about what you post – no outright promotional stuff that sounds like a press release, for instance, but they then submit it to a huge number of article directories for you. (There is some upfront work involved; you have to get a Yahoo e-mail account – or some place where the tremendous amount of posted articles will show up – yes, other people’s articles arrive in your inbox — and give it to all the directories, which takes a lot of time. Once it is done, though, it’s quick and easy. I never even look in that Yahoo e-mail box, by the way. I have to say that the upfront work has deterred me from leaving the service and trying another. I wouldn’t want to start all over again if I came back to them!) I am happy with the number of places I find my articles published, and I seem to get a lot of web site traffic from these listings.

Another service can be used to submit articles all over the Internet; I can’t even begin to tell you where all your news release will go, but boy it goes. It’s called PRWeb.com. They offer a range of services, the cheapest being $200. I posted a news release there last December, and it received 82,000 hits! My web traffic increased quite a bit, and I did find part of the news release used in a newspaper article in the South. I was hoping to enroll some people in a teleseminar, however, and that didn’t happen. Lots of people I know swear by PRWeb.com, but it isn’t cheap. I’m planning to use it to promote a teleseminar a friend of mine and I are running this January. We’ll split the cost, and see if we get some enrollment this time. Be sure when you write your release, however, that you use lots of key words, so people can find your article.

The more exposure you get online, the better when it comes to building your platform. You just never know what will come of it. I spent a year writing news releases almost every week and paying money to submit them on line or giving them away for free. I paid to have myself listed as an “expert” on Expertclick.com, where I can post four news releases a month and have them read by journalists. I thought it was for nothing, even though I knew that I’d plastered myself all over the Internet and increased my web site visitors from an average of 500/month to between 2500 and 4000/month in a year. (My unique visitors went from an average of 300/month to an average of 2500-3000/month in a year.) Oh, some lady did mention something I’d said in a blog once and, as I said, one part of a news release ended up in a newspaper article, and there were all those pieces picked up by e-zines. But nothing big happend. The media weren’t calling me as an expert for interviews.

Then, after a little more than a year, suddenly things started to happen. I was contacted by a regional magazine for an interview for an article. I was asked to do a podcast interview (for a show with 38,000 listeners/month), and it looks like I’ll be asked back as a regular guest. And I received a request to participate in a virtual book launch party wehre a possible 500,000 people might see my name and face — and download my free gifts (related to my books). Then someone asked me to write a blurb for the back of their book, and now I’m speaking with someone about writing a piece for an anthology that is closely related in subject matter to one of my book projects.

It’s taken more than a year, but my platform is building a little bit at a time, and I’m becoming an “expert.” So use your nofiction writing skills to promote yourself online. It’s time consuming and hard work, and it costs a bit of money, but I do think it pays off in the end.