You’re not alone. Being told to build an online presence creates internal conflict for a lot of writers. This is the topic I tackle (somewhat obliquely) this month in my column at Writer Unboxed. Here’s how it begins:
I’ve been reading with interest (and sympathy) the comments on Porter Anderson’s Unboxed post last week, where we see the familiar Sturm und Drang of writers grappling with the demands of online marketing—or how to be publicly communicative and chummy when it’s against our nature, perhaps even against our work.
This has remained a problem for a long time now, hasn’t it?
One of my favorite thinkers is Alan Watts, who once said, “Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.”
To begin to inspect this problem—and a beginning is all that’s possible for this blog post—I’ll discuss a few writers who exhibit the following qualities: (1) Their writing work is clearly central to everything they do, (2) their voice, online or off, is authentic, and (3), their online presence and engagement is unique to them and, at least from my POV, sustainable and meaningful.
Click here to read about five authors who are getting it right.
Jane Friedman has spent nearly 25 years working in the book publishing industry, with a focus on author education and trend reporting. She is the editor of The Hot Sheet, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World in 2023. Her latest book is The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press), which received a starred review from Library Journal. In addition to serving on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund, she works with organizations such as The Authors Guild to bring transparency to the business of publishing.