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Social Media Slant on January's WLT 3rd Thursday

Welcom to the first intstallment of the Social Media Slant series for the WLT 3rd Thursday program. 

January was a bit different than usual Third Thursdays because the panelists came to accept the 2011 WLT Book Awards. In addition to reading from their works, they graciously shared about their writing experiences and answered questions from the audience.  (For the generall recap of the evening, you can check my post on January's 3rd Thursday Wrap-Up on the WLT blog.)

Meet the Panelists

Daphne Kalotay won the 2011 WLT Book Award for Fiction with Russian Winter. She has taught creative writing at several colleges and a non-profit.  Read her complete bio at DaphneKalotay.com.  Russian Winter is her first novel.  She also published Calamity and Other Stories in 2005.

Gary M. Lavergne won the 2011 WLT Book Award for Non-Fiction with Before Brown: Herman Marion Sweatt, Thurgood Marshall, and the Long Road to Justice.  Gary is the Director of Admissions Research and Policy Analysis at The University of Texas at Austin. In addition to other non-fiction books, has been published in scholarly journals and has made numerous television appearances speaking to the topics of his books.  Learn more about him at GaryLavergne.com.

Dean Rader won the 2011 WLT Book Award for Poetry with Works & Days.  He is a professor at the University of San Francisco and writes for the San Francisco Chronicle and the Huffington Post.

Barb Stuber won the 2011 WLT Book Award for Children & Young Adults with Crossing the Tracks, her first novel.  She lives in Kansas City, where she is a museum docent.

Social Media Snippets from the Evening

  • Barbara noted that having a website eases the discomfort of self-promoting.  (A Facebook page, not personal profile, could do the same.) 
  • Daphne enjoys the interaction with readers Facebook provides.
  • Dean likes RedRoom.com for poets because it provides the hard-to-find community poets need.
  • Dean is on Twitter because of writing for the San Francisco Chronicle.
  • Dean’s poetry  sometimes gains new readers due to his writing on the San Francisco Chronicle and Huffington Post.
  • Gary enjoys writing the code for his own website.  
  • All the panelists have their names registered as a domain.
  • All the panelists are on YouTube, but they don’t all create their own content.
    • Gary has an informal YouTube channel, which includes his segment of tonight’s awards, recorded by his ace videographer, his wife.  Videos of many of his television appearances are on his  website.
    •  Barb has a book trailer she commissioned and some videos of readings she has done.
    • Dean and Daphne both have videos of their readings that someone else put up. (During the panel they realized they had both been at the same event doing a reading.)
    • For Barbara’s book trailer, she found someone who works for a local TV station who thought he wanted to start doing book trailers. He did the whole thing for $500. He hired actors, wrote the script and filmed for 3 days to get a 90-second trailer. It took 40-45 hours.  (I think she said he decided not to do it again.)
    • Daphne said the publishing industry is still figuring out how to leverage social media, noting that HarperCollins (Russian Winter’s publisher) had a room dedicated to making author’s videos. The videos weren’t great and that idea was nixed. She said most authors do their own videos, either themselves or pay someone to do it.
    • Per a Goodreads entry, Daphne read fellow panelists Barbara Stuber’s book & reviewed it. Barbara’s first novel was Daphne’s first YA read. (How cool of Daphne to look up her Barbara’s book, actually read it and comment on it. Social networking, indeed.)

 

Social Media Synopsis

After listening to tonight’s authors, my main take away is the varied use of social media. They did have two things in common:  websites with their names registered as domains and a Facebook page or profile, updated with varying degrees of regularity.

Another thing they had in common was their low-key approach to social media. There were aspects of being online they enjoyed, but it wasn’t a primary focus of their writing life. As much you hear about the importance of platform and social media, it is still secondary to actually writing.

 

Panelists’ Linkage (If I missed a link, leave a comment with the link in it and I'll update it ASAP.)

Daphne Kalotay

Gary M. Lavergne

Dean Rader

Barbara Stuber

Thanks for reading. Don't forget about February's WLT Third Thursday at Book People in Austin. The topic is Burning the Midnight Oil: The Balancing Act of Life & Writing. 

 

Posted by on February 15, 2012 in Conferences, Workshops, etc., Social Media |

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