Author @harpercollins @text_publishing The First Time / The Next Step podcast I coach writers
Melbourne, Victoria
Joined March 2009
- Tweets1.5K
- Following439
- Followers705
- Likes1.8K
I’ve made my kids A LOT of cheese and vegemite sandwiches. I always put the vegemite on top of the butter, then the cheese on top of that, but I heard a guy on the radio say he put the vegemite ON THE CHEESE SLICE and 🤯🤯🤯
Editing’s the same.
Figure out the story THEN perfect your sentences. And get help if you need it! I’m coaching unpublished writers as well as debut authors now. If you want to figure out a better way, check out my coaching page (link in bio).
I liked what I was doing.
If I was an unpublished writer NOW, working towards publication and trying to build my profile, how would I do it?
Books take a long time to write. If you’re taking time away from writing yours to build a profile, do something you actually enjoy.
Like interviewing other writers or running retreats or being an agony aunt or baking biscuits inspired by books, or doing reels about gaming...
The way I ended up building a profile was by podcasting.
As debut author (with another then-debut author), I podcast about the debut experience.
This didn’t work better because I was published (the focus of the podcast could have been anything), it worked better because...
How to build your profile as an emerging, unpublished writer
Hint: you don’t have to endlessly enter short story competitions
The problem was:
👉🏻 I wasn’t very good at short stories and other people were
👉🏻 I didn’t have particular personal essay or article I wanted to write
👉🏻 My approach to social media consisted of lurking and on occasion, liking
(Oh, and I also attended author events in the hope I’d spontaneously turn into charming extrovert and either strike a conversation with a publisher/agent/VIP who wanted to publish my book, or just generally make cool writer-friends.)
When I was writing the manuscript that ended up being my first book, I wanted to build a writing profile.
The only ways I thought you could do this were by:
👉🏻 Entering (and winning) short story competitions
👉🏻 Writing/publishing articles and essays
👉🏻 Social media
PICK A BETTER PLACE TO FOCUS YOUR ENERGY: Rather than put your energy into ads, put your energy into growing your author profile by building a community on social media or posting about others books doing events or podcasts or putting out content that you actually enjoy creating.
EFFECTIVENESS: I’ve bought stuff from ads on social media (courses, skincare, a foosball table I thought was full size but turned out to be tiny) but I’ve never a book. I’ve bought books LOTS OF TIMES because people have posted about them on their feed, but not via ads.