Publishing Renaissance had a great post about how indie authors need to take some cues from the indie music and movie industries, titled Finding Our Defiance. Mentioned in that article is an article by Henry Baum titled The Last Stigmas of Self-Publishing, which I thought deserved it’s own mention here.

Wil Wheaton was featured in an article in The Washington Times on self-publishing, Self-publishing finds commercial niche in digital age. Definitely worth a read.

I had another article on authors who tweet (this time it’s nonfiction authors) go up on Mashable today. Go check it out and please retweet it if you find it interesting.

And, last but not least, Nathan Bransford has his usual roundup of even more publishing news on his blog.

Hope everyone in the U.S. has a great Memorial Day weekend! And I hope everyone not in the U.S. has a wonderful regular weekend!

Dan Holloway wrote a great article on the future of books over at the Streamwriting site (which is run by Hannah Davis). It’s a great article. Dan is really on top of new technology coming out in the publishing world and is taking advantage of a lot of it himself (have you seen the interactive novel he’s writing in a Facebook group?) At some point in the future I’m supposed to have an article going up on the same site. Stay tuned for that.

I am almost finished with the website for the new book. It’s currently in the hands of it’s first beta readers and I’ll be starting some edits this weekend on the first few chapters. I’m forever greatful to those who are taking the time to read it and they’ll all be mentioned in the acknowledgements and possibly get a case of champagne if the book does really well…

Nathan Bransford has his usual excellent round up of other publishing news. My favorite of the stories he mentions is the one from the New York Times addressing piracy concerns over ebooks. Very interesting read.

Photo by Jeff Milner, via Flickr

So I thought I’d put together a bit of a “best practices” guide for getting the most out of social media and the Internet if you’re a writer (published or aspiring). Here are some tips for using social media tools effectively and in a way that’s likely to get you more followers and fans.

1. Set up a good website. There are thousands of free website templates out there. If you have no design skills and no money to hire a designer, use a template. A professional-looking website goes a long way toward making you look like a professional. Make sure you include basic information about who you are and what you write. It doesn’t need to be complicated. It does need to be user friendly and professional.
2. It’s okay to have a blog as your primary site. Just make sure you include an about page that details who you are and what books you’ve written (or, if you’re unpublished, what you’re working on and the kinds of things you write). And if you’re going to blog, make sure you update regularly and moderate your comments. There’s nothing worse than coming to a blog and seeing no updates for three months and tons of spam comments.
3. List the genre of your books! It’s not always apparent from the title of a book, or even the brief description and blurb what genre your book fits into. I don’t know how many books I came across that left me wondering, “Is this a thriller? Horror? Mystery? Romance?” Make it clear so that if you’re ever included in a list of authors or mentioned on someone’s site, they identify you with the correct genre (the last thing you want is to be identified as a thriller author if you write romance, or vice versa).
4. Engage with your fans and followers. If you’re using a site like Twitter or Facebook to interact with your readers, make sure you engage with them! Have conversations. Retweet their (valuable) content.
5. Don’t just promote yourself. This is a big no-no. When compiling these lists, anyone who just promotes their book(s) automatically got cut. Don’t use social media as a giant advertisement. If anything, it’s more like a press release. Give your followers a reason to follow you and a reason to be engaged with what you’re doing. Offering up glimpses into your day-to-day life, what you’re reading (both online and off), and useful links and resources goes a long way toward making you look like a real person instead of just a self-interested twit.
6. Update regularly! This one is really important. Whether you choose to update hourly, daily, or weekly, make sure you do so consistently. If I came across Twitter accounts where the person hadn’t tweeted in three weeks, you can bet they weren’t included on the list. The same goes for people who would tweet consistently for a week and then nothing for two weeks. I get it if you don’t have a chance to update on some days, but make sure those days are few and far between. For example, if I’m going to be out of town for the day without Internet access (I live in Northern New England, hot spots are few and far between in most places up here), I’ll tweet in the morning to say I’m going out of town and won’t be back until late. This way my followers know not to expect new updates.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but hopefully it at least provides a starting off point for using social media.

I had two great articles posted this week on Mashable. The one that went up today might be of particular interest to most of you: Literary Tweets: 100+ of the Best Authors on Twitter. You can follow me on Twitter here.

In other news, I’m hoping the website for the new book will be up next week. I’ll post as soon as it is.