Aggregating the author… and The Google

At the end of the day, the reality every new author faces — even established mid-list and best-selling authors — is self-promotion. Getting the word out about their book. Branding their name. Driving eyeballs to a website that ultimately motivates readers to buy their product… it’s tough, hard work. Time consuming and rife with such brain damage as to mandate major pharmaceuticals, the bottom line is that, at least for most writers, shameless self-promotion is a creepily uncomfortable task.

But unfortunately, punching a hole through the cacophony of digital distraction that is today’s transmedia marketing world in effort to glean attention for one book, among the nearly 100,000 titles published each year in the U.S., is pretty much what every author seeking some calculable measure of success must do. And since author marketing strategies is something I want to address more substantively on this blog, I thought the below piece by SCWC*LA6’s Andrew Peterson (First to Kill) might make for a good kick-off:

Web Crawlers and Spiders and Bots, Oh My!

An Article on search engine mechanics

by, Andrew Peterson

I thought I’d write a brief article on the subject of “web crawlers” and “spiders” I hope you’ll find it useful. If you follow a few simple rules, you can maximize your internet exposure and move your ranking up in the search engine results and help keep yourself near, or at the top.

In a nutshell, companies like Google and Yahoo use search engine programs designed to scour the internet looking for keywords, web addresses, and traffic flows – both in and out of sites. These programs are called spiders or web crawlers. They are a specific type of bot, or software agent with a specialized purpose – to gather information from websites and index it in a HUGE database for recall.

It’s a super complex task due the dynamic nature of the ever changing World Wide Web. Think about it, how many micro changes are made every day to the tens of millions of websites out there? It’s staggering to comprehend.

That indexed database is then accessed when a user types a keyword into a search engine, like Google. For example, if someone types “Laura Benedict” (without the quotes) into Google’s search engine box, the program looks for all the instances where it finds the words “Laura Benedict.” The reason Laura’s web page appears, is because her name is associated with numerous instances where her web page address is also present. BTW Laura, you’re number one on the Google result page! You’re all over it! Kudos.

That’s why you’ll occasionally get a dead link in a search result. The search isn’t done live, it couldn’t be! It would literally take weeks to accomplish. The bots typically move through the web around once a week and they don’t look at more than 20% of the entire WWW. It’s just too huge to probe. But they do get a good cross section of the most current WWW at the time they look at it.

So here’s what you can do to increase your exposure: Whenever you blog in publicly viewed forums – like in MySpace, you should add your webpage to the end of comments you leave for other MySpace members. Here’s a simple example:

Hi Gilligan, loved the show, especially the episode where the ape threw the explosives at you! All the best, Andrew Peterson (Andy)

www.andrewpeterson.com

I didn’t have to say “please visit my website” besides, it rarely works anyway. When was the last time you looked at a website because the blogger asked you to? If the reader’s interested, he/she will look at it on their own, they don’t have to be asked. Make sense?

It’s not considered rude or improper or a BSP (Blatant Self Promotion) to include your website in a comment to a fellow MySpacer. It’s standard practice. What it does, is give the web crawlers another spot to find your name and your web address linked together. Remember every hit counts at moving you up in the search engine results. So whenever you’re in a public blog, forum, or you’re mentioned on someone else’s web page, always ask to have a link to your website included. It’s not an unreasonable request. Of course there are no absolutes, so you’ll have to use your best judgment when asking. To give you an actual example: When I first joined, I noticed the side bar of the ITW Debut Author page didn’t have my website linked, so I asked Kelli Stanley to add it, which she graciously did. Thanks Kelli!

That’s also why I included my web page at the end of the Southern California Writers Conference blog entry I made when Director, Michael Gregory did the write-up of my website. It looks perfectly natural to see a web address at the end of a blog entry. As long as you don’t get greedy and say something tacky about visiting your website, it’s perfectly okay. Some blog sites may have rules or restrictions on the website link issue, so all you have to do is ask if you can include it at the end of your blog entry. Most will probably say yes.

I’m in a tough situation. There’s another Andrew Peterson out there who happens to be somewhat famous. He’s a gospel singer and composer and he’s also written a book. So I’ve got a distinct disadvantage going. I’m hoping that will change after my book is launched and the spiders start finding reviews, blogs, and increased web traffic to and from my site. Until then, I just have to be patient. What’s really weird, is that Google has somehow “blacklisted” my site — it doesn’t even show up after 500 entries of search results. Yahoo has me on its first page, in seventh place, last I looked (which is actually pretty good considering FIRST TO KILL hasn’t even launched yet) I contribute some of that to all the networking I’ve done to date. My web designer is looking into the Google anomaly. For awhile, Google had me at number four! Then I just dropped off the map. Things like this happen, so search yourself often. (I know that sounds funny)

So, bottom line? Remember to add your web page (and in some cases, your book’s title) to all your internet traffic on blog sites, forums, and web pages within the public realm. You want those web crawlers and spiders finding you.

I hope this makes sense to everyone, and for those of you who already know all of this, sorry for the redundancy of knowledge. Now go forth and get bitten by those spiders!

–msg

Cheerios children’s book contest

$5k for a 500-word children’s story, and a possible book deal with Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, is what the winning author gets in the latest Spoonfuls of Stories contest from cereal maker General Mills.  Only caveat:

You are not eligible to enter and will be disqualified if you are a professional writer, such as a novelist, magazine, blogger or newspaper writer who creates books or articles for pay.

That’s a bit lame.  Regardless, deadline is July 15, 2008.  Details at SpoonfulsofStoriesContest.com.

–msg

A million little insights

Appearing in the new Vanity Fair is a terrific piece by Evgenia Peretzon on James Frey, yes, the ridiculously demonized author of A Million Little Pieces.  Given that their very association with an author is to ultimately produce a book that makes as much money as possible, by appealing to the maximum audience attainable, the complicity nearly every agent, editor and publisher shares in crafting the end result should never be underestimated.  Particularly with regards to the “memoir” genre so popular today.

From the article, perhaps Norman Mailer put it best in a conversation with Frey:

They sat down on the couch and talked about memoirs, a genre, Mailer said, that was by definition corrupt: “That’s why a writer writes his memoir, to tell a lie and create an ideal self. Everything I’ve ever written is memoir, you know, is an inflated vision of the ideal Platonic self.”

Read the full article here.

–msg

Andrea Portes’ query letter

Lest it be lost to the ether, the query letter Andrea Portes (Hick) wrote and submitted to Castiglia Lit’s Sally van Haitsma and garnered so much intense interest when discussed at SCWC*LA5 is online.  It’s about as perfect an unsolicited query letter to an agent as you’ll find.

Just another testament to Andrea’s fine writing voice and savvy for the business in general, check it out here.

Read it. Think about what it does and does not do.  Learn from it.

–msg

Guide to literary agents blog

I don’t know who Chuck is but he was kind enough to thank our posting the thing on query letters so I popped over to his blog.  End result: I like Chuck.  He’s got a crazy-informative blog keeping tabs on agents and editors called Guide to Literary Agents.  It’s a must-tap feed for anybody and all writerly folk.

Appreciate your joining the fray, Chuck!

–msg

WORDsd.com launches May 1

Word San Diego was a free monthly print publication that we lost a few years ago.  That was a sad thing because WSD had become the sole means of finding out nearly anything and everything pertinent to our vast and eclectic community of San Diego writers after we lost the Writers’ Bookstore and Haven back in the day. Well, today I get a notice that David Boyne and his gang of rousing writerly irregulars are back with a new iteration of the paper — and I’m damn pleased to hear it because, in writing, attitude is everything and this gang had plenty of attitude.

It officially launches on May 1st and offers great deals for San Diego writers, booksellers, editors, et al to promote themselves, their services, their pets and everything else writing related — for FREE!  Do check out the site at WORDsd.com for all the skinny and be sure to drop ‘em a note to show your support and welcome them back into the fray.

BTW, look at this little ditty I found in the archives: a 2002 interview with Edwin Decker by Terrie Relf.

–msg

First major SCWC*Irvine update

The SCWC*LA 6 (in Irvine) — maybe we should just call it “Lirvine” — area of the site has just been updated. Got some exciting new folk aboard as well as many regulars in rotation. Plenty more still to be announced, of course, however I’m soliciting suggestions for topics and genres anybody’s  interested in. Please post ‘em here.

One little FYI is that due to Andrea Portes‘ unfortunate inability to attend SD22, she’s back to make up for it. Hopefully this time I won’t douse her with a magnum of champagne. I prefer to save that for Sally when she’s wearing a linen pant suit.

–msg

Because you just can’t get enough

For those of you who just can’t get enough of literary fraud these days, have we got a treat for you. And by “we”, of course, I mean those of us who aren’t actually in southern California. How’s the weather these days, anyway? I forget to check sometimes. Nothing’s on fire right now? And, hell, if I chuckled at the thought of a midwest earthquake last week, y’all must have had yourselves a good ol’ guffaw.

And, no, I don’t know what’s with the folksy tone, except maybe I’m just trying to see how far you’ll follow me if I don’t ever come to the point. Except that would be unkind. To other people.

Because I said nary a word a couple weeks back when the sad and twisted tale of Misha Defonseca suddenly struck close to home. For those who need reminding, Ms. Defonseca, also known by her real name, Monique De Wael, recently confessed that her acclaimed, widely popular memoir of the Holocaust was, in fact, a fraud.

But, indeed, one of our good friends and SCWC contributor, Michael Thompkins, posted back on April 10 some insights from none other than Sharon Sergeant, the genealogical researcher whose work forced the Defonseca confession:

When our team began releasing evidence to the Belgian press on February 19, we had no idea that Misha Defonseca would actually confess. Her public denials, law suit threats and unwitting statements made by supporters of her iconic status allowed us to counter each claim with additional evidence. It was an usual 10 days as this story played out in Belgium. The US press broke the story on February 29 with Boston Globe, Slate.com and AP articles.

Dr. Serge Aroles, a researcher of fraudulent wolf child stories, consulted with Maxime Steinberg, and first brought the story to the public in Belgium through a Regards magazine newsletter publication of the baptismal certificate and school record images we provided. Journalists interviewed two of Defonseca’s childhood friends who had tried to expose the fraud since 1997, reporting accusations of anti-Semitism and jealousy by the French Laffont publishing house and various journalists. Marc Metdapenningen carried the story through the initial denials, Defonseca’s public confession and the ensuing firestorm in Le Soir, a national newspaper in Belgium. US journalists David Mehegan and Blake Eskin followed the breaking story in Europe, and contributed additional information when they broke the story in the Boston Globe and Slate.

And I suppose I should feel a little bit guilty because Michael even posted his thoughts a week later, and I still took absolutely no notice whatsoever:

You all know the myth of Narcissus and the concept of narcissism: look in the water, see your reflection, and fall in love with your reflection, substituting for the real you, the water and the world. As we develop personalities, a small measure of narcissism is part of the recipe for a healthy personality; a larger hit–too much of a good thing–helps contruct the narcissistic personality. Sandor Ferenczi’s work describes the development of this personality in detail, including the moment when wishing overcomes reason and the individual begins to believe that wanting something to be real makes it real. At this precise moment, the symbolic reflection of the self in the water transforms and generalizes to other symbols that the narcissistic individual identifies with the reflected self, ie, power, success (one’s novel published) sex, and money. Finally, this symbolic unembodied life is substituted for a real self.

Okay, so that’s my bad. You would think that with news like that—an international scandal treading into my sphere of experience, into our SCWC community—I should be lighting flares off in your front yard. But as with anything really cool, there’s always a surreal aspect about it, a pitch and cant, a warp and drift that makes it seem like it’s nothing big.

I wish I could say I was just high, and blame it on that. But, alas, I’m not nearly so lucky.

In the end, I’ve done just about everybody a disservice by slacking this one. After all, as Sergeant noted, “My team would be interested to know if there are psychological case studies, stories in fiction that explore similar patterns, and what writers feel about these events.” And who better for that discussion than, oh, I don’t know, our community of writers?

-bd

Celebrating the dead

I would ask you all to remind me to never get married, except that, frankly, I don’t think it’s going to be much of an issue. For those, however, who do need reminding, look no further than Placentia’s own Gayle Carline and the friends she made back in Dayton, Ohio. I wish I could say something about how she never thought that moment would see the light of day, something to strike the fear of God into her, but the truth is that she actually volunteered this information and, truth told, she’s got a good delivery and a great recovery.

Our Angel of the O.C. can be found starting at around 2:47.

And, Gayle, you’re on notice. You’re giving the opening night speech at Irvine this year. Okay, it’s your call, I guess: five minutes in front of the room or a half hour listening to MSG. (I’ll have Edwin tell Wes to break the news gently.)

-bd

Floater

Okay, a bit of shilling, I suppose, but that’s almost my name. A personal note for everyone actually in southern California. One of my favorite bands is touring next month, and you all better get out to see them.

Floater is an excellent three-piece variously described as anything ranging from power pop to, in earlier years, metal. Indeed, last fall, Floater opened for Rob Zombie, and their latest CD release is an acoustic show featuring eleven tracks recorded live in Eugene, Oregon.

While the band normally ranges between Chico, California and Seattle, Washington, breaking east to Spokane and Boise on occasion, it is certainly not unheard of that they should stretch their legs in Los Angeles or, once upon a time, Boston. Certainly, though, a show in LA or San Diego is atypical, so I figured to let you all know.

The schedule for California, with the standard note that all information is subject to change:

• May 23 — San Diego — Brick By Brick
• May 24 — Los Angeles — The Roxy (opening act)
• May 27 — San Luis Obispo — Downtown Brewing Company
• May 29 — San Francisco — Red Devil Lounge
• May 30 — Sacramento — Marilyn’s
• May 31 — Nevada City — NCSCC

Okay, so not all of those are in southern California, but there’s no harm in it. Those of you who are from Chico, though, probably already know about the shows Floater has scheduled on May 3 (The Senator) and 4 (El Rey). And if you don’t, what’s your excuse?

My point being: see this band. You’ll be glad you did. Earplugs are recommended, as with any rock show.

-bd