Go Deep: The Art of Getting in Good with Bloggers

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I talk to a lot of bloggers.  Some might say I’m “in good with bloggers,” but I just see it as having friends who blog.  I’m a social person, so Twitter is the perfect platform for me. I pretty much just follow writers, book bloggers, and fans I talk with. Oh, and Ian Somerhalder, but that’s a given, right? Now… where was I? Oh, right! So it’s natural for me to carry on conversations with people who enjoy the same things I do: books.

I guess it started when I was planning the release of my book, Descended by Blood. I contacted bloggers for review and to host me on my tour, and the more you talk to people to plan things, the more, I guess, you get to know them. So when the tour ended and the reviews were posted and done with, I still talked with them.

I love bloggers. I get how busy they are, and I respect what they do for authors and their books.  If I wasn’t spending all my extra time as a writer, I would have started a book review blog.

Any advice I could give would be to follow book bloggers’ review policies. They post them for a reason, and the least you can do is read it and follow it if you want something from them. Respect that they are people too and they’re busy.  Recognize that their blog is important to them. They take it seriously and it’s a big part of their life. Support them and what they do. I show my support by reading their blog posts, commenting, rewteeting their tweets, and basically letting them know I care about them and appreciate what they do. And I ALWAYS make sure to thank each one for their retweets too. They don’t have to retweet anything I post, so I want them to know I recognize that they have and I appreciate it.

When you work with bloggers, you get to know them. You know if they work a job outside of blogging, if they have kids, when they’re sick, what makes their day, etc. Twitter really does give you a way to find people and get to know them.

And respect all bloggers, not just the ones you’re friends with. Thank each one for their time, even if they didn’t like your book. You may not have to like their review, but you can at least thank them for the time they took to read your book and write something up for it.  And remember that most bloggers don’t like to write bad reviews, so even writing something up for you probably caused them a lot of stress. So definitely don’t be a douche about it and argue with them over it, or call them names. That all seems very self-explanatory to me, but I see it all the time.

There is one thing that gets kind of sticky when you’re friends with bloggers.  What happens if they don’t like your book? You really have to find a balance of the business side and the friend side. You basically have to realize that not everyone is going to like your book and you CANNOT have your relationship with people based on whether they liked your book or not. So now that I’m friends with all these people, when my next book comes out, there might be some awkwardness with bloggers not liking the book, but I loved these people before the book came out and I’ll keep loving them. My love for them is not conditional on whether they liked my book or not.

And I guess that’s why I can make it work with bloggers. Sure, I give them my book and they read and review it, but our connections go much deeper than that.

EV: I want to thank Angeline Kace for dropping in and giving us a little bit of insight into how she made it into the top 1000 on Amazon Kindle, and how she still manages to hit three bestselling categories. Pretty cool. Her book, Descended by Blood, is a cool vampire story that bloggers and reviewers are just eating up. After all, Twilight’s over, so now you have something new to fill the void. Go pick it up, check out her site (www.angelinekace.com), and follow her on the twitta! And remember, if you’re an author, and you want to make an impact in the blogosphere, you gotta grab life by the balls and go deep. 

Spread the fuego!

Evega

www.estevanvega.com

twitter: @estevanvega

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