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LITERATURE AND SOCIAL MEDIA – SOME LINKS

Writers can use the web for a number of reasons: to market their work; as part of theirwork; to help publish their work. A few useful links are included below

MARKETING YOUR WORK

Start a blog! A blog is an online diary that is easy to maintain and is free to set up. It’ssometimes called “push button” publishing as you just press “send” on your mobilephone or in your browser and you’ve made a blog. Many blogs have a “blog roll” at theside which lists other blogs – e.g. authors and publishers – and refer to other blogs. Ablog is just a “website” by another name, and the more sophisticated platforms (e.g.Wordpress) provide all the functionality you need to promote yourself. Ideally a blogshould be friendly, and regularly updated – causing you to go back time and again.

Blogging software

www.

tumblr

.com

(Tumblr)

www.

blogger

.com

(Blogger)

www.wordpress

.org

(Wordpress)Some author blogs

elizabethbaines

.blogspot.com (Elizabeth Baines)artoffiction.blogspot.com (Adrian Slatcher)http://jennashworth.co.uk/blog/ (Jen Ashworth)http://georgeszirtes.blogspot.com/ (George Szirtes)http://www.titaniawrites.blogspot.com/ (Tania Hershman)

Author Websites

www.adrianslatcher.com

Adrian Slatcher

Although some bloggers have one website for their work and their blogging I set up aseparate promotional website once I got published. Here I’ll put on more permanentpieces – as well as having links to my regular blog and my twitter feed. Getting a balancewith your own “online presence” can be hard – blogging takes time, and as you get moresuccessful or more immersed in your work, you might have less time to maintain thataudience. Most authors will have their own website these days – and these might be partof their publishers’ site, or related to a particular book, or simply there as an onlinecatalogue.

Twitter

www.twitter.com

–

many writers are on twitter, as well as publishers, literary festivalsand everything else. Its not for everyone, but it might be the quickest way to find out

- 2 -about things – and its as easy to access on a smart phone as on the web. (Follow me ontwitter @adrianslatcher)

Other useful blogs

In the past, it was only print magazines that reviewed but there are many “review”magazines on the web nowadays – though they tend to be specialist, and may have asmall, but knowledgeable audience.http://titaniawrites.blogspot.com/p/tanias-non-complete-and-ever-growing.html -

not a review, but Tania Hershman’s extensive list of on and offline publicationsfor short stories .

ink

sweat-and-tears

.blogharbor.com – poetry reviews/online showcasehttp://www.theshortreview.com/ - the short review for short story collections, er…,reviewedhttp://toddswift.blogspot.com/ Todd Swift’s “Eyewear” reviews contemporary poetrywww.

handandstar

.co.uk

from the stable of Penned in the Margins, a London basedliterary organization – useful and well designed review site for poetry.http://bookmunch.wordpress.com/ - Bookmunch is an online literary review magazinehttp://otherroom.org/ - resource site for avant garde poetry in the NW and beyondThere are many more!

PUBLISHING YOUR WORK ONLINE

A few years ago, publishing online was frowned on, but now the best online magazineshave wider audiences than the offline ones, and getting published on them can be anachievement in its own right. Below are some of the best online magazines, but there aremany more…

Online Magazines

www.

3ammagazine

.com

- reviews, interviews, prose and poetry – avant garde or edgywork preferred

http://www.rainycitystories.com/ - Rainy City Stories, Manchester-based website withgeographically located stories and poetryhttp://www.themanchesterreview.co.uk/ - University of Manchester’s literary reviewhttp://www.saltpublishing.com/horizon/index.htm- Salt Publishing’s regular literaryreviewhttp://www.everyday-genius.com/ - collaborative blog that has a different curator eachmonth who then asks their own writing crowd to contribute (I was invited to contribute inOctober 2009)

Different Publishing Models

- 3 -There are plenty of innovative ideas on the web for “publishing” your work. Some of these just let you upload your stuff, e.g. in a workshop like format, some require you tosubmit, but then might publish as a downloadable PDF or similar. As Kindles and iPadsbecome more commonplace more of this kind of e-Book publishing will be open to you.http://www.feedbooks.com/ - one of many sites where you can upload ebooks for sale orfor free – none of these sites seem particularly right for all authors – but may be usefulfor genre authors etc.http://www.litfest.org/publications/ Flax Books in Lancaster is part of the charity Litfestand publishes regular e-books in different formats (e.g. PDFs)www.

authonomy

.com

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the 21

century “slushpile” transformed through this peer-review sitehttp://www.nanowrimo.org/ - every November is national novel writing month

WRITING YOUR WORK

In the early days of the web, there were lots of exciting attempts to use the web as thework itself – often called “hypertext” fiction. In poetry the experimental genre of “flarf”was created to describe web-derived works.More recently a few projects have been attempted online – including event-based writingforums, where the story has unfolded online over a few days or weeks across a number of writing platforms.http://novemberinmanchester.blogspot.com/ - a social media based love story developedby Tom Mason in 2009http://suchtweetsorrow.com/ - the Mudlark/RSC twitter rewrite of Romeo and Juliet withtweets and texts replacing Shakespeare’s language.There will no doubt be more – and it’s a good opportunity to collaborate with other artistsetc. – as the technology becomes easier to manipulate.Also, some writers like to use the web for their own and others creative work. This couldbe something like the flash fiction site 330 Words:http://330words.wordpress.com/ Or it could be a blog that becomes a book such as Lars Ilyer’s Spurious, where thewriters’ conversations with a character called W, became the basis of a novel released in2011 by Melville House.http://spurious.typepad.com/ Maria Roberts blog “Single Mother on the Verge” became a novel…http://www.singlemotherontheverge.blogspot.com/