Social Media – to use or not to use, that is the question. But what is the answer?

     As a new member of loveahappyending.com, I have been using Facebook and Twitter much more than hitherto and whilst I have been quite enjoying doing so, the thought has occurred to me as to whether or not using social media to promote myself and my book is a legitimate activity. When I say legitimate, I don’t mean is it legal, i.e. am I breaking any laws, but perhaps more: is it an appropriate use of social media?

     Asking this question leads inevitably to another question which is: what is the purpose or function of social media? Is it simply meant to be a facility for friends (perhaps acquaintances would be a more appropriate term) to keep in touch with each other? Is it also meant to be an enjoyable activity, something that is fun to do, regardless of whether or not it shares information between friends, like playing a game? I think that might well be applicable in the case of Twitter but maybe less so for Facebook.

     If social media is primarily a means of keeping in touch with people, then it seems to me that it is perfectly legitimate to use it to tell your friends (or acquaintances) what you are up to, i.e. what you are spending your time on and what’s happening in your life.

     But what about when what's happening in your life revolves around activities you are undertaking to promote yourself and your creations to the general public? Is it still legitimate? The thing is, you could now be perceived (particularly by your acquaintances, as opposed to your friends) as abusing the facility by trying to sell your creations to them, and perhaps even worse, by trying to get them to sell your creations to their friends and acquaintances.

     The fact of the matter is that by using social media, it is possible to spread word of mouth (or, more accurately, word of keyboard) much faster and much more extensively than ever before, as long as you don’t alienate those whose support you are seeking. When using social media as a means of promotion, the aim is for word of mouth about your creation to spread rapidly as your followers re-tweet your tweets to their followers and your friends share your Facebook postings with their friends, and so on and so on, ad-infinitum. This can then lead to word about your creation going viral and reaching tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people, some of whom hopefully will buy it, or view it, or whatever.

     I was reminded of the whole going viral thing this week when I received an email telling me someone had subscribed to my video channel on YouTube. This caused me to go to my channel where I discovered that a short film of mine which  I had put on YouTube six months ago had been viewed by 38,763 people in 174 countries and that it is currently being viewed by an average of 600 people a day! I have done absolutely nothing to promote this film and I didn’t tell anyone I had put it up there, although I did put a link to it from my book’s website.

     So, in conclusion, I think it is legitimate to use social media to promote your creations as long as you do it sensitively and with intent to inform rather than to browbeat. Excessive postings or tweets of the same information over and over again will just get you unfollowed or unfriended and will, therefore be counter productive. I think we have to remember that most people use social media for fun and to stay in touch with people they know and that is what they expect everyone else to use it for. Social media is not seen by most users as a sales channel but as an information channel. It is, therefore, perfectly acceptable to use it to promulgate information but it is not acceptable to use it to sell - there's a difference. 

Well, it’s been a good week for a budding author like me! A week or two ago, I heard about loveahappyending.com (LAHE for short). LAHE is an internet community of authors and avid readers which seeks to promote the work of an invited group of 30 authors, uniting them with each other so that they can share experiences and opportunities and also uniting them with keen readers who like their work and want to help them to get noticed.

     So, me being me, I wrote to LAHE and asked: what do I have to do to be invited to become a featured author? Imagine my surprise when I heard back from the people who run the site within a day or two asking me about myself and my writing. And then, after a few exchanges of emails, I was told they would be happy to have me as a featured author! I was over the moon, I hadn’t expected that. And now I’m there on the website as a featured author and already in touch with several fellow authors, getting to know a bit about them through Facebook, Twitter, etc.

     Definitely a good week for a struggling author who now has hope of seeing his book, which is called Rough Cut in case you’ve forgotten, reaching a wider readership than would have been possible without the lovely people at loveahappyending.com – so go and have a look at the website – NOW! J

An interesting thing happened this week! I was approached by the publisher of the first edition of my novel and asked if I would be interested in writing film screenplays and treatments based on books which they had published for other authors. My first thought was: would that be something that I would want to do?

     As a trained screenwriter (I have an MA in Screenwriting from the Northern Film School), writing a screenplay based on another person’s novel, or biography, or whatever, is something I am quite capable of doing. And I have done it on a couple of occasions in the past, once using a lengthy taped interview with the person whose story formed the basis of the screenplay which then became my third feature film (the one that got into cinemas across the country). The second time was when I was asked to consider making a fiction film based on an actor’s published autobiography. I used his autobiography as my source material and wrote a feature length screenplay based on it. That screenplay has not yet been made into a film as we are still waiting for the budget to be raised but that’s another story.

     So, a question occurs: did I enjoy the process of creating a screenplay based on something written by someone else or told to me by someone else? Answer: yes, I did. So what’s the problem, I hear you ask! And I agree. If they’re offering me a reasonable fee for doing this, and they are, why don’t I just say YES! I would be getting paid for doing something I enjoy doing.

     Well, of course, it’s not quite as simple as that, is it? And the reason why is because I’m wondering whether it is perhaps a little less satisfying from a creative point of view to write a screenplay based on something written by someone else – the ideas that form the main basis of what you are writing have come from someone else’s creative mind, not yours. In a sense, in translating the story into another format, you are simply doing a technical job.

     And if that was all there was to it, then I would probably say no. But actually, there is quite a big difference between a novel and a screenplay in terms of what works and what doesn’t, it’s not just a matter of format. The conversion of a novel into a screenplay, and vice-versa, requires more than some technical know how about formats. It requires an understanding of what makes stories work when they are in printed format and what makes them work when they are in what is primarily a visual format, and that requires the application of creativity.     

     There’s even a sense in which more creativity is required because you have fixed bounds within which you have to work. Yes, you can stray away from the original story a bit, even add and remove things, but the essence of the story must be the same and that’s a limiting factor. Having thought about this and now having articulated those thoughts, I think that, on purely creative grounds, I don’t have a problem with saying yes to the proposal.

    But there is another consideration which might get in the way because, if I agree to do this, it will probably take up all of my free time over an elapsed period of around two to three months, i.e. I wouldn’t be able to do anything else, other than the day job (which is what keeps me afloat financially) and maybe a few other unavoidable things connected with my activities as an author and a film maker, which would effectively mean that, whilst working on the commissioned screenplay, I would not be able to work on my next novel or spend any time trying to get my next film into production.

     So, what to do? I want to get on with writing my next novel and I also want to try and get Rough Cut into production as my fourth feature film, both of which will have to go on the back burner for two or three months if I take a commission to write a screenplay for someone else.

     As I write this, I have made no final decision on the matter and the good thing is that I don’t have to until I actually get offered a specific screenwriting commission. Hopefully, when that happens, I’ll have a clearer view of what I want to do. Maybe!

I was thinking this week, when we create something, why do we do that? Is there a purpose behind it or are we just doing it because we can and we want to? It seems to me that the answer to this question is quite important as it will determine what is driving us to be creative and thus, to a degree, it will affect what we create.

      So, if the driving force behind our creative urges is no more than the inbuilt urge to create which we all have, in one form or another, doesn’t that give us the purest motive which comes from within us to create something with which we can be pleased. But then, why would we be pleased with what we create? Because it is beautiful, or useful, or tastes delicious or maybe it just makes our hearts soar to hold in our hands something we have created, on our own without anyone’s help.

      If, on the other hand, we are being creative because we want to please people other than ourselves, does that in some way sully our creation? Not necessarily because the motive to please others is a perfectly acceptable one if all that is involved is giving pleasure to one’s fellow human beings.

      But what if it’s a bit of both, i.e. a desire to create something that pleases us, but for reasons other than that the thing created is pleasing to us? What if, the driving force behind our expressing our creativeness is a desire to be well thought of or admired for what we have created? Or worse still, if our motivation has little to do with what we are creating and comes pureley, or largely, from a desire for something else, e.g. fame or money? What then?

      The downside of having a motive that is other than to create something that is purely and simply something in which we ourselves can take pleasure, is that our creativity very quickly becomes corrupted. Now, instead of making the most beautiful, useful or delicious thing we can imagine, we make things which are intended to please other people regardless of how we might feel about them.

      The advice given to creative people by those who are involved in making money out of the creations of creative people, particularly in the arts, often follows the following formula: research the market for the type of thing you are creating and then create what your market wants, i.e. what a lot of people will pay to own or enjoy.

      At this point, you become enslaved to market economics and what you create is no longer the pure outpouring of your creativity. In the world today, everything is measured in terms of money. A good book is one that sells millions of copies or a good film is one that packs in audiences at the cinema. Which is not to say that what you have created can’t be both your creativity at its purest and also hit the spot from a market perspective.

      No, what I am saying is that creative people, and that’s all of us, should try to make the things we really want to make, the things we feel driven to make, that we should not try to satisfy market demand but our own creative genius. Then, whatever the outcome is in terms of fame or money, it won’t matter because what we have made is exactly what we wanted to make, or as near to it as we could, given our imperfect abilities.

I finally bit the bullet and sacked New Generation Publishing as the publisher of Rough Cut this week and signed up with Matador (part of Troubador Publishing). It was a tough decision to make but in the end I didn't feel I had any choice as NGP were consistently failing to do what they said they would do. I got a call as soon as my email terminating the agreement landed and for half an hour they tried to persuade me to change my mind, telling me that they had made a decision last week to invest heavily in promoting my book. Rightly or wrongly, I stuck to my decision and Matador will be launching the second edition of Rough Cut at the beginning of March. The financial deal with Matador is better and will make the book signings I am organising with Waterstone's bookshops more profitable than before. But the main thing is that the people at Matador communicate better and they listen to what I say - at least they are doing at the moment, and hopefully that will continue as we get further down the line. As I said in an earlier post, having to deal with this sort of thing does take the edge off doing anything creative but I still think it's worth it! Especially when you get a reader writing to you to say: "I read Rough Cut this weekend, it spoilt my weekend, I couldn't put the damn thing down! Really enjoyed it, when's the next one?" :-))))

I'm amazed! I asked for permission from Blogcritics and the Yorkshire Evening Post to use quotes from their articles in my marketing blurb and on the cover and they have both said "yes", and so quickly! The author of the YEP article even said "it would be an honour". So the new cover has been sent to the publishers with a quote from the YEP on the front and one from Blogcritics on the back. I'm so pleased! So far, today is proving to be one of those UP days - let's hope it lasts.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day (including an hour or two on Google) trying to find out if I need permission to use a quote from a newspaper article about my book which was in the Yorkshire Evening Post a few months ago. I'd love to put the sentence: "The plot has an exotic, almost James Bond feel to it." on the front cover of the new edition which is coming out next month but I don't want to get sued and end up having to throw away 1,000 books. I would, of course, attribute the quote to the paper but maybe I should ring them and ask them if it's OK. But then they might say no when actually I could have used it without asking! So you see, being creative doesn't mean you can avoid getting bogged down in the business end of life - unless you're very lucky and you can find someone else to do all of that for you! I wish!!