Resist the urge to ME, ME, ME!

I am new to social networking, but I am seeing something straight away that makes me shudder and turn off my computer - blatant self-promotion and "ME, ME, ME" syndrome. As a writer, I am networking to (hopefully) interest people in my writing, but direct, repetitive and in your face selling on the internet isn't appealing to readers. You go into a bookstore and a sales assistant leaps on you and won't let you out of her clutches - what do you do? You run!

I've been watching the way other writers behave on the internet, hoping to get some pointers because, honestly, networking frightens the hell out of me. What I have noticed about the ones that are doing well is they engage. They don't force people to look at their work. They don't send emails to you asking you to buy their book. They don't post links to their book's Amazon page every hour. Talking to them is like talking to a real human being, not a sales machine.

The biggest issue I can see with places like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc., is that these sites don't encourage community. Status updates are all about "ME". It's difficult to get around it. I look at my Twitter page and I don't know what to say - I feel compelled to tell the world what I'm doing - I feel compelled to make it all about "ME".

I don't know how to network online, but I think I'm getting a good idea of how NOT to. If I ever post on my Twitter page "Check out my bestselling book! Buy it now!", I hope some nice person will come along and hit me upside my head - hard!

Don't give up your day job

I'm not a full-time writer. But then how many writers can afford to be these days? I spend my days in a cramped office, answering a telephone to speak to people who are equally bored with their jobs and just as fed up of the daily grind as I am. The sad truth of the matter is that in the book business authors are at the very bottom of the food chain and few scrape by let alone make a decent living from their work. We're all hearing about the problems publishers are having, the fall of Borders UK, and the extinction of independent bookstores. In all of it, the ones who have been hit the hardest are the writers. Every twist and turn in the market affects us. Every time Amazon pulls one of its stunts, like the recent one with Macmillan and the removal of buy buttons, writers are suffering as a result.

A writer friend of mine saw an ad in the local paper for a job that involved handing out leaflets in a mall for two afternoons a week. She calculated the amount she's earned from sales of her five books during the past year and concluded that she'd make more money handing out those leaflets. Me, I'm hoping to come close to earning that much money!

If you want to write books, do it for the love of writing, and don't give up your day job.