Your Photo and Your Identity

Unicorn Writers’ Conference
 ~ Early Morning Edition ~

Notes about the Keynote

On Saturday, March 9, I attended the Unicorn Writers’ Conference. It was held at the beautiful  St. Clements Castle in Portland, Connecticut, where the snow glistened brightly in the early morning sun. It was the morning after an all day snowstorm that brought more than six inches of snow to many places in Connecticut. 

 The conference breakfast started at 7:30 am and it was a great time to grab some much needed fuel for the long day. It was also a terrific time to meet new and interesting authors, writers, agents and editors.

The keynote was presented by Matthew Pearl, the author of The Dante Club, The Poe Shadow, The Last Dickens and The Technologists and he gave a wonderful presentation on author identity. He gave amusing insights as to how he reacted when he saw people reading his book and how he was hesitant to tell people that he was the author. Matthew even sat next to a man on an airplane who was reading his book and Matthew never told him that he was the author. I reflected on that comment and I think that if I was in that situation, I would probably force myself to say something to that person. It could be a great way to promote your work!

Matthew also discussed how important it was to have a true author picture on the back or the inside of your book. He gave an anecdote about how he walked into a bookstore one day and offered to sign copies of his book. The man at the customer service desk looked at Matthew and said, “Do you have ID?” Matthew was puzzled and was about to reach into his pocket for his license, when he remembered his author photo. He held up the book, pointed to the photo and said, “See? That’s me!”

Having an updated and accurate photo on your book will prove to people that you are actually the author of that book. It’s especially helpful if you are using a pseudonym and your license or other form of picture identification does not match your author name!

It is never a good idea to promote yourself using an old or outdated photograph. People are expecting you to look like the picture you display and it could provide negative feedback for you if you if you’re presenting an image that’s not current. I know of one author who is using an old photo (quite possibly by 10 years!) in all forms of media (social media, press releases, new articles, conferences, etc). It looks like she’s trying to hide her current appearance and it makes one wonder why she is being dishonest. It instantly makes me distrust an author when they try to mislead their readers with deceptive information. If an author is untruthful about this, what else is the author hiding?

As for me, I have decided not to display my picture on my blog or on social media just yet. I am branding myself first with my name and then, when my book is ready to be released into the hands of the public, I will have a professional photo taken that displayed on my book and on my website. I do believe that an accurate author picture is important for media relations and it’s what readers look for when they pick up your book.

When I shop for books, I look at the front cover first (yes, I admit it; I judge a book by its cover), then I read the blurb on the back or on the dust jacket to see if it’s something I would like. Next, I check out the author’s photo and read about the author (I want to see what this person looks like, where the author lives and what may interest him/her). Finally, I read the first few pages of the book to see if it grabs my attention. I have to say that I get very disappointed if I do not see an author photo located in the book because I need to have that connection to the author.

How do you handle your author identity? Do you let people know that you wrote a book or that you’re in the process of writing something? Do you display an accurate picture of yourself? If not, why?

Until next time ~

 

TWEETS - How much is too much?

I admit it – I still consider myself a Twitter newbie. I forget to hashtag words in my tweets, I often hit the Retweet button instead of copying a person’s tweet and putting RT in front of it and my tweets go over the 140 character limit and I have to figure out what to cut.

I also do not tweet all the time.

For me, I have two reasons and they are very simple: I don’t tweet unless I have something I really want to say and I don’t want to annoy people with a plethora of words clogging their feed.

But, what I want to know is, how many tweets per day is considered too much? Would up to five tweets be considered average? Would 10 tweets per day be the limit? Would upwards of 20 tweets per day be considered excessive?

There is a person that I am following and, I kid you not, tweets, on an average, of nine per hour. Between this morning and February 1, this person has tweeted over 1,130 times! Some tweets are replies, some are directed towards people, a few are retweets (very few) and the rest are personal tweets. Is this typical? Is this over-the-top crazy?

Here is a sample:

Feb 1 – 183 tweets

Feb 2 – 122 tweets

Feb 3 – 92 tweets

Feb 4 – 90 tweets

Feb 5 – 242 tweets

Feb 6 – 173 tweets

Feb 7 – 142 tweets

Feb 8 – 74 tweets

So far today, there have been 32 tweets and it's not even noon!

In my opinion, that is just beyond extreme and this person needs to chill out with the tweets. I actually stopped using Twitter for a few weeks because I couldn’t read anything important in my feed. This person’s tweets were appearing five, six times in a row and I spent too much time trying to scroll through all of the person’s messages to get to tweets I actually needed to read, that I just gave up.

When I use Twitter, I want to read things that people or companies are doing and how I can learn from their message. I don’t want to be bombarded by messages (especially the same message over and over and over). Give me a link to click on if you want me to read more. If it sounds interesting, I can guarantee you, I will click on it.

So, I ask you:

How often do you tweet an hour? A day? Do you just tweet random things? Do you constantly push whatever you are writing/selling/marketing/promoting?  If you are an excessive or an extreme tweeter, why?

What do you look for when you read other people’s tweets? What do you consider too much? What makes you stop following a person?

I’m curious about what you think and how you use Twitter.

Until next time ~