August 15, 2016 by M A Clarke Scott

RECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES BOOK LAUNCH

IT’S PARTY TIME!

Reconcilable Differences Book Launch

The timing couldn’t be better for Tuesday’s Women’s Fiction online FaceBook Book Launch Party hosted by the Women’s Fiction Writer’s Association.

I’m thrilled to be one of eight authors with new releases scheduled to participate on the WFWA Facebook page on Tuesday, August 16th **Noon – 4pm EDT** (That’s 9am – 1pm PDT for us West Coasters!)

Here’s the line up:

12:00 Kerry Lonsdale – Everything We Keep

12:30 Ella Joy Olsen – Root, Petal, Thorn

1:00 Tracy Stopler – The Ropes That Bind

1:30 Crystal Klimavicz – This Side of Perfect

2:00 Susan Schild – Sweet Carolina Morning

2:30 Kathy Nickerson – Rose Hill Cottage

3:00 Louise Miller – The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living

And at 3:30 Yours truly, answering questions and talking about my debut release – Reconcilable Differences. I hope you’ll come and join in the conversation.

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ANOTHER HALF A YEAR OF PREPARATION

After a roller coaster ride of preparation, setbacks and leaps forward during the first half of 2016, I’m excited to have this book ready for release this week.

My last post focused on my experimental Kindle Scout campaign. To sum up that experience, I learned a lot, worked like mad to get the word out, using a few platforms I hadn’t before, such as Headtalker and networking through Kindleboards, but sadly it wasn’t nearly enough to garner a publishing deal with Amazon.

A lot of speculation goes on behind the scenes trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Only Amazon knows. But clearly having a pre-existing following, or a book with a hook, will help to generate popularity, which in the end does matter. Nevertheless it was a valuable experience that will help with the marketing of Reconcilable Differences now and in the future.

PUBLISHING IS MORE THAN WRITING

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So much more has happened this year. I received critique and beta reader feedback, which let to a penultimate round of revisions. More than I was planning to do, but I think it’s a better book for having taken the extra time and effort.

I also embarked on the process of having a professionally designed cover. After a couple of false starts, and a few wasted month faffing around, I connected with the talented Gabrielle Prendergast, author of Audacious and other YA novels, and also brilliant book cover designer. I’m so happy with my new cover for Reconcilable Differences and the style and theme of the entire Having It All series of WF novels. It makes me want to get cracking and finish the second in the series, Coming About.

I’m also so lucky to have in my circle of supportive writers the multi-talented Crystal Stranaghan and her team at Crystal Clear Solutions designing the book interior. The print book will be ready to go in just a couple more weeks and it’s going to be gorgeous!

AUTHORPRENEURSHIP 101

This business of being a published author is complicated. These days, no matter how you publish, you have to embrace the role of entrepreneur as well. Even big house published authors are expected to create and maintain an online author profile, and stay active on various social media sites to connect with their audience. Then there is the multitude of book marketing strategies that experts recommend. And without these efforts, your book languishes out there in the ether with millions of other undiscovered titles, making all those years of learning your craft and sweating over the creation of your babies pointless as you’ll never sell any books or have any readers.

So in addition to getting my book ready, I’ve been trying to get organized with all these other things. I had an online author profile evaluation, and read some books and a lot of articles. To keep all this straight I created a Mindmap, that I thought would help me visualize and keep track of all the elements. All it did was help me see that I can’t possibly learn and do all these things: website clean up and redesign, email list sign up, Facebook author page, Amazon author page, Goodreads author page, incentives and bonuses, contests and giveaways, reader discussion questions, bios and blurbs, book trailers and author interviews, etcetera, and linking all these things and my social media addresses together so they all work in tandem.

EPIPHANY

Finally I realized that I don’t have to! I mean if you can do it yourself, go ahead. But for me, it was getting so onerous and stressful that my brain was seizing up. There are so many smart and talented people out there who already know how to do these things that I struggle with. So my big epiphany this last while is that I need help! And in just a couple of weeks I’ve managed to move so much farther and faster with assistance from the right people, including the savvy Amanda Hagarty at Mandy’s Media who’s already been a huge help. And I’m getting there. I really feel that I’m getting there.

BECOME A PART OF MY TEAM

So let’s not let all this author platform work go to waste! Join my street team by doing one or more of these things right now:

Follow me on Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram, or all of them? Why not? (Click on the buttons in the sidebar)

Sign up for my email list to stay informed about my activities and never miss hearing about giveaways, contests, appearances, promotions and new releases. (Hint: the form is in the sidebar to the right)

Follow my blog so you receive notice on Friday to pick up the Amazon link and buy a copy of my book. Then leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads.

Share this link with three of your bookish friends!

September 25, 2013 by M A Clarke Scott

The Cut Direct

WHERE HAS BUSINESS ETIQUETTE GONE?

BY-GONE DAYS

Those of you who read Regency fiction will know what this term means: The cut direct. For those that don’t, it refers to the social snub, a complete diss. Which was done very rarely only under extreme circumstances when a person was in the wrong place at the wrong time or behaving in an inappropriate way for their social class or the setting, or importantly was known to have done something shocking or socially unacceptable. It was extreme and it was noteworthy and it was a shocking cut down.

It was not done simply because you were too busy or self-important or didn’t like someone. Despite the accentuated social hierarchy in Regency England, people in those days understood that every person was worthy of acknowledgment regardless of their place. Whether a servant, a merchant or a member of the nobility, everyone had an appropriate address and everyone was acknowledged. It was ungentlemanly and unkind to treat people badly or to just simply ignore them. Not that there were not social boors then as now.

Which brings me to my reason for my blog post today which admittedly is a bit of a rant. This is been bothering me for sometime now.

FALLING STANDARDS

In the last couple of years, I’ve had occasion to apply for employment or to make inquiries with a number of business people. And I’m frankly still shocked at the lack of appropriate business etiquette that seems to be the norm in today’s world.

I sometimes wonder if it it’s a problem unique to the younger generation but I hope that that’s not the case and I would rather not believe that.

Although if it is a demographic phenomenon I can only assume that the current generation have learned their bad habits or failed to learn good habits from their parents, teachers and mentors. Perhaps we simply forgot to pass along what we understood and took for granted.

ANOTHER CASUALTY OF THE ELECTRONIC AGE?

Alternatively, and more likely, this can perhaps be explained by our sudden global immersion into an age of electronic communication. Early on (The 80s and 90s?) there was some kerfuffle about lack of etiquette in email communications and people talked about that and took the time to critique and to pass along what they felt were important guidelines for appropriate behavior.

Now of course we have Facebook and Twitter and Instragram and LinkedIn. All these new, abbreviated forms of communication added to our options for and to further confuse our standards of appropriate social congress.

But things have clearly gotten out of hand.

Standards of behavior and modes of communication that might arguably be appropriate for some of the new social media platforms should not therefore translate into our person-to-person, face-to-face interactions. I should say that this does not apply to follows, friends and likes. But I’ll leave advice about what’s appropriate on those platforms to the social media experts.

A SOCIAL OBLIGATION

It used to be and not so very long ago that if you phoned someone and left a message they were socially obligated to return your phone call. It didn’t matter if they were busy or if they didn’t want to talk to you or even if they didn’t like you. The onus was on them and it reflected poorly on them if they simply ignored your message. The same went for written communications and invitations, which clearly extends into the world of e-mail. It maybe electronic but it’s still mail.

If you’re very busy and very important… It’s likely you have staff and one of their responsibilities is to take care of your correspondence. Note the word correspondence: the CO and the RE meaning that it involves two parties and it’s reciprocal.

Sadly we live in an era of spam. We are all of us bombarded with email spam, with advertising, with telephone solicitations of every kind. All of them intrusions into our privacy (you remember privacy don’t you?) And the stuff of course must be ignored and should be ignored but that’s another rant.

But I’m talking about our personal one-to-one communications. The kind that impacts on our daily lives and our livelihood. I realize that sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference between one and the other. It’s my belief that we need to assume that a person who’s contacting us with their own name has a good reason to do so, is doing their job and pursuing some worthy goal and deserves to be acknowledged respectfully and politely. Until proven otherwise.

FINISH WHAT YOU START

Furthermore if you initiate communication with a person or persons and then someone responds to that you owe them the courtesy of a reply. If you post a job and receive responses to that in the appropriate mode and manner then the onus is on you and it is appropriate business etiquette to acknowledge and reply to those responses. It is just plain rude to ignore them.

No matter how busy or important you are you owe those people the respect of an acknowledgment. Very likely you have staff whose job it is to do exactly that. It’s up to you to say thank you for responding and then let people know if the position is been filled or if their application is unsuitable. They’re worthy of that. Has our new, electronic age of communication so depersonalized our exchanges with other human beings that we can now without compunction treat them like trash?

Everyone’s time is valuable. If someone made the effort to find your notice, to prepare materials, and to submit them, how can you imagine that it’s alright to just ignore them? Is that how you treat your clients? Is that how you want to be treated? Let’s remember the golden rule people. We’re supposed to be living in a civilized society.

It reflects very poorly on you and on your business and business practices. This applies equally in personal and social situations. And yet regretfully it seems to be the new norm.

What about you? Have you received “the cut direct”? How did it make you feel? Did it change your opinion of that person or company? If you agree with me, how do you think we, as a society, can address this failing? Create courses for students to teach social and business etiquette? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

July 18, 2013 by M A Clarke Scott

Social Media for the Meek: This is not a Party

BLOGGING IS HARD

I’ve been trying to transition from an occasional and erratic blogger into a regular blogger for some time now, and toward that end have read books and taken classes, such as Kristen Lamb‘s Are You There Blog It’s Me Writer, an her WANA Tribe blogging class, and most recently, moved to a new domain name and server here at www.maryannclarkescott.com, but the actual act of blogging regularly has yet to manifest. Not for lack of trying. I sort of have a plan.

But last night I had an epiphany about why it’s not happening, and I realize it’s because when I contemplate regular blogging, I experience a monumental anxiety attack akin to that one might feel as one steps up to a podium in a large auditorium filled with 2000 people, all eyes trained on me, waiting expectantly for my insightful and brilliant words. GAK!

Or, and this is even more telling, the way I feel just before I go to a large party. Or even before that, standing in my undies in front of my closet at home deciding what to wear to said party. (I’m obviously not the first person to draw this analogy. See Nathan Bransford here.) What! you might be thinking. What’s up with that?

I DON’T DO WELL AT PARTIES

Well… I don’t like parties, not big ones anyway. I like planning them and throwing them. I just don’t like being at them. I’ve never liked being with large groups of people. I become the epitomy of the nerdy wallflower. I’m painfully shy and socially awkward. I forget to introduce myself or others, and even forget the names of people I know well. I feel terribly self-conscious, gravitate to the buffet and overeat, gravitate to the bar and drink too much. Once I have a couple of drinks, then I loosen up and overcompensate. I talk too much, say stupid things and put my foot in my mouth, inadvertently saying all the wrong things, or failing in the social niceties. This immfediately leads to guilt and self-loathing. And who needs that? I don’t care for dancing. I find most conversations at parties are inane and I desperately want to escape. The boredom overtakes my self-consciousness and I become surly, dreaming of the easy chair and good book that await me at home.

Gosh this makes me sound like a nasty ogre. Even an anti-social one. But put me with a group of 2 or 5 or 8 and I’m completely different. I enjoy people, and I enjoy myself. I listen well, am interested in people and what they are doing and have to say. I relax and tell funny stories, sometimes even attempt lame jokes. I like to feed people and take care of them and entertain them. And I especially like to share ideas. Introverts are not necessarily loners, as I’m sure many will attest.

DROP BY FOR A GLASS OF LEMONADE

And yet I’ve learned that of all the various social medium, the blogosphere is the place where I feel the most comfortable, and I’d like to have a place here to call home. Clearly, the solution is that MY BLOG will not be a big party. Instead, this will be my metaphorical kitchen table, my sundeck, my garden, my neighbourhood coffee shop. A place where my good friends come by for a glass of lemonade or a cup of tea and chew the fat awhile. On good days we can share triumphs and accomplishments, tell funny stories and share dreams. On bad days we can complain of our aches and pains or gripe about the difficult people in our lives, confide our worries, disappointments and frustrations. But good or bad, we can find community with people like ourselves, and share our life experience, our wisdom and our expertise.

I hope you’ll decide this is a good place to drop in one in awhile, and that when you come you’ll find interesting like-minded people, and topics being discussed, a sympathetic ear, or even a shoulder to cry on. I’m also hoping this new paradigm will make it a more comfortable place for me to hang out, too.

Tell me what you think? Is social media more like a big party or an intimate discussion between acquaintances? Do you think different platforms (FB, Twitter, Blogs, etc.) are more like one or the other? And do you have the same problems I do or do you think I’m nuts?