Your Profile and Mother

YourBookBiz –
Your Profile is For Your Mother

By R. J. Rubadeau
 

Writing is a very lonely endeavor and not designed to comfort your mother. Those not afflicted with the passion call what we do narcissistic and antisocial. Writers’ explanations are usually loaded with confusing metaphors, dangling participles, and first-person hooptedoodle., As punishment for our ability to spend so much time happily alone with ourselves, we are, by the standards of decent hard-working non-writers, expected to do our deeds behind closed doors and to wash our hands afterwards. At the end of the writing, says Joseph Heller, “Success and Failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success comes drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis, and suicide. With failure comes failure.” I guess we have all signed that pact with the devil and opt for the success regardless.

It takes a certain skill set to open a vein onto the page, but very few of those attributes are transferable to the real world. Our marketing strategy begins with you introducing yourself to your customers, making a first impression so that you can eventually ask their permission to try and sell them your book. This very important effort to blow your own horn with hyperbole and flowery prose I call hooptedoodle. Most of us are committed to keeping the hooptedoodle at a minimum in our writing. Our latent tendency to take flights of fancy and use words like “illuminating”, “provocative”, and “soul fulfilling” is rusty. So dust off those rose-colored Lolita shades and get ready to meet the person even your mother would admit had their act together.

Seventy percent of people in this country turn to the web when they want to know more about anything. If your name pops up in cyber conversation, you are one click away from your first important hurdle. You must have an outstanding profile so that those wanting to find that one simple reason to NOT let you try and sell them a book will be disappointed. Instead they will be intrigued by your guile, certain of your credentials to deliver what they want, and have trust they won’t be disappointed with the experience of letting you give them a pitch for a sale.

The work effort you will spend developing this online profile will also serve as the block of granite that you will chisel away at to create that terse masterpiece of self aggrandizement placed on the back cover or inside liner of your book. A profile reader wants to know the answer to three questions:

Why do I need this writer in my life? The very first job of your profile is to hook those reading with a provocative declaration about that crucial attribute or core attitude that makes you so darn special. The words must be sharp, crisp and convey one undeniable theme that opens an “Ah Ha” moment in the reader.

Why is this writer supremely qualified to take me where I want to go? Whether the book promises daring insights, skill development, an historical window, or good old fashioned entertainment the profile must erase any doubts that you have paid your dues, gained the chops, done the heavy lifting necessary to deliver the goods. This is the resume of publications, related expertise, life experiences that guarantees your writing will be professional and of a high standard.

Building your resume of publications should be a priority. List all of your work in print whether you were paid or not. You are a published writer. If things are thin here, get after it. Don’t make things up. Remember, your mother is going to read this.

Tell enough about your life experiences

Do I feel comfortable enough in the details of this writer’s present life that my investment in time, money, and curiosity will be rewarded? Your picture is worth a thousand beautiful words. Make sure it supports the rest of your story. It doesn’t hurt to get a professional photographer to provide you with a great picture. Most writer’s brand themselves with a single photograph. In describing where and why and with whom you live, you must let the reader get their arms around your story not the dry statistics.

Trust is a fragile commodity. Don’t overreach, don’t be smug, don’t be tricky with words, bury your pride, shine your inner motivation, light on specifics, and be heavy on the joy of your journey to the now.

As an example my profile is listed on LinkedIn, but any of the search engine profile sites, Facebook, My Space, etc. are just as easy for the reader to jump from your hot link in the cyber conversation that triggered the impulse or by a name search that leads directly to your page.

In an upcoming post we will talk about the rebirth of the Press Release in the cyber world and why it will be one of your most useful tools in making that first connection to your profile as we construct our outreach strategy. 

Mark your calendars for the second face-to-face free one-hour seminar at the Wilkinson Library Program Room at 6 p.m. on Wednesday February 3rd.  We will expand on the profile concept and begin to discuss the next steps in getting our book business on the move. This program will have something for every writer to consider. No matter at what stage your manuscript is at today, you need to start this process to announce yourself as a serious professional writer. Bring a friend and I will see you there.