Wild swan: +1916
As an author your instincts may often be to hole up with your laptop in a den of coffee, piles of paper, chocolate hobnobs and chewing gum until your book is finished. But networking to build your audience and promote your book is likely to give you a much greater chance at success once the book is published. We decided to put together a brief beginner’s guide to networking for the shyest/most uncomfortable out there.
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Great post! I’m doing most of the online networking, but it’s good to have someone else’s take on it. :-)
Thanks, Georgina.
I always go into a networking situation with the intention of discovering and meeting interesting people. Often the conversation will swing around to what you are doing at some point. If all goes well I come away with contacts for a bunch of interesting people who I can get in touch with later. I think it is those later conversations where the actual business takes place.
I find that if you go with the intention of broadcasting what you are doing and pushing people to do something for you at that moment you end up pushing interesting people away.
Yes, exactly. It’s about building a relationship, which engenders trust as well as potential interest. Luckily, I had already built an online platform for my other business, and made a number of friends sharing the same interests.
Since that business and the concepts/themes of my first book overlap a fair bit, these contacts were happy and enthusiastic about joining me for the novel projects. The best relationships have taken several years to build! :-)
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