Yesterday, novelist Nick Mamatas asked us a pretty good question: "Why would I pay $50 for a good old-fashioned horror novel when I can go to Goodwill and buy used good old-fashioned horror paperbacks for fifty cents?" Truth is, none of us fledgling writers can afford a $50 book, old-fashioned or not. However, Mamatas stopped by The Publishing Spot to promote the trade paperback version of his novel, Move Under Ground-- a literary bargain that clocks in at a cool ten dollars.
Just like any thrifty writer, Mamatas knows how to work the web-- from his own Wikipedia page to his funny LiveJournal page. This week, I picked him for my deceptively simple feature: Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.
Jason Boog:
You use your LiveJournal page as a way to interact with your friends and readers. How has this page developed? How has it helped your writing career? Any advice for a writer looking to build this kind of relationship with readers?
Nick Mamatas:
Well it started off as a way to fill out the fun surveys my friend Joi had on her livejournal...
Then it became a pretty personal page, detailing my dates, which were rather disastrous. Then 9/11 happened, and I decided to talk about my politics. Then my writing career took off with the nomination of my novella, Northern Gothic, for a Bram Stoker award, and people started thinking of it as a "writer's blog."
The LiveJournal has certainly sold some books, and some entries have even been further developed into essays and articles that I've sold. I've received solicitations for anthologies and magazines thanks to it as well.
I don't talk much about my personal life anymore — I've had even comments as prosaic as "I'd like to have kids one day" thrown in my face six months later as some kind of silly attack, as though I were to blame for overpopulation and starvation — and that's too bad, I think.
Writers who want to build relationships with readers, whether through a blog or just through their traditionally published material, just need to be interesting.
If you have to ask how to be interesting, well, you're doomed. I can only recommend not declaring a rant and than writing about something silly, like the importance of not littering or noisy babies in nice restaurants. "Grr, my neighbors play loud music"
isn't very interesting. Nor are word counts for your novel.
The LiveJournal has certainly sold some books, and some entries have even been further developed into essays and articles that I've sold. I've received solicitations for anthologies and magazines thanks to it as well.
I don't talk much about my personal life anymore — I've had even comments as prosaic as "I'd like to have kids one day" thrown in my face six months later as some kind of silly attack, as though I were to blame for overpopulation and starvation — and that's too bad, I think.
Writers who want to build relationships with readers, whether through a blog or just through their traditionally published material, just need to be interesting.
If you have to ask how to be interesting, well, you're doomed. I can only recommend not declaring a rant and than writing about something silly, like the importance of not littering or noisy babies in nice restaurants. "Grr, my neighbors play loud music"
isn't very interesting. Nor are word counts for your novel.
» Five Easy Questions: Nick Mamatas, Part Two from ThePublishingSpot
Yesterday, novelist Nick Mamatas asked us a pretty good question: "Why would I pay $50 for a good old-fashioned horror novel when I can go to Goodwill and buy used good old-fashioned horror paperbacks for fifty cents?" Truth is,... [Read More]
Tracked on: May 9, 2006 7:51 AM | Permalink to Trackback