WRITING IN A DIGITAL AGE

I’ve just spent two days immersed in a literary conference made up of readers, writers, editors, agents and publishers and um me, a blogger…all discussing the challenges and opportunities that have become part of what it means to be writing in a digital age.

We were given a very broad array of views – ranging from the heavy intellectual food for thought shared by Hari Kunzru and how he chooses to integrate social media into his art to several successful self-published authors to Kate Mosse (no, not that one) author of five novels who doesn’t see a place for social media at all in the writing process. The range of opinion (not surprisingly) was huge – many writers simply want to go into a cave and be creative, others don’t. When the panel of traditional agents were asked what they thought about self-publishing you could see their nostrils flare from twenty feet – after a sharp intake of breath and a five second delay their opinion in general was why would you do that unless you’ve been rejected from everywhere else?

Not so in Robert Kroese or Kerry Wilkinson’s opinion. Both hugely successful self published authors, engaging directly with their readers and cutting out the middle men. They had an entirely new and different approach to publishing and what they wanted for themselves. There are a number of questions I think you have to ask yourself before deciding which way to go but I definitely came out of their sessions feeling that self publishing was no longer perceived as “vanity” publishing and definitely the right option for some (I’ll do another post on that later).

I met some fascinating people and learnt lots so thank you to The Literary Consultancy and Rebecca Swift in particular who brought us all together.

I would say in conclusion that nobody has any answers. “50 Shades of Grey” came up endlessly as a good example of recent success but most thought her writing was awful. There is clearly still a place for everyone – those who are moving forward and using social media successfully (and by that I mean because they are in their comfort zone) should continue to forge a path. Those who are older, or more serious or simply private about their work should not consider starting a Facebook page or tweeting just because it is part of the marketing process. It’s ridiculous. That is like being told that all authors have to get up on stage and sing a song before they can release a book. If you don’t feel comfortable using social media don’t stress about it – you’re not going to pick up lots of readers if you’re rubbish at it or you’re just trying to sell a book. It will just feel disingenuous, unauthentic and pointless. We can’t all be extrovert types.

In essence it is still all about the written word and what you have to say. If it’s good then you will find an audience somehow – whether you go the traditional publishing route or not. Don’t worry about all the other stuff. As Kate Mosse said you can use all the tools available to you “when you’ve written the sodding novel”.

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