Is Red Room a Road to Nowhere?
Dear Reader,
My agent is hounding me to get a 'real' web page, and it's now my job to prove that Red Room will work just fine. Trouble is, I've no idea.
My first book was just published. My wife loves me a bit more, my kids are proud, my parents glowing, but on the commercial end the story is just beginning. The book tour will commence next week, and in looking over my schedule I see that I will fail to visit every town in the United States. Luckily, the miracle of the internet is supposed to launch me everywhere, and Red Room is the springboard of choice. (Actually, my editor's choice, and she clinched the deal with the magic words: "And it's free.")
I'm happy enough with being able to display my event calendar and show off my photos, via a link to my Flickr page. My agent says: not enough. Red Room will put me into a lonely orbit around a planet inhabited only by a handful of other writers, most of which are smart enough to develop their own web sites. Tell me it ain't so, Red Room readers.
But still, I wonder: how did you find me? Is my agent right? Let me know at my brand new email, IntoThickAir@yahoo.com, and I'll be grateful.
Yours,
Jim
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Eric Nichols says:
Agent Schmagent
Considering the fact that Red Room's only been around for a few months and every writer on the planet is here, I think you can call this a "real" web site.
eric
Huntington Sharp says:
Excellent question!!!
Jim, simply put: "It ain't so!" :)
Your agent's right to say you need a presence on the web. Red Room is the sole web presence for many of the authors here, but some others do have their own sites as well. Either approach is great. Several authors, including Amy Tan, have their own sites but have chosen to do things like blog exclusively on Red Room, and then linkhere as a result.
What's great about Red Room, though, is that potential new readers can find you a lot easier here than if they had to Google your name individually to find your site. Many come here to look at other authors and stay when they use Red Room's seach features to find writers like you who may be new to them.
You should take a tip from your fellow RR author Julie Anne Long. She's a master at using tools that are unique to the web to promote her work. Last week, Julie sent out an email blast inviting the world to a fun "virtual party" on her blog that involved watching a video she'd uploaded to redroom.com. She's really new to the community here, but she blew the record for number of comments so far out of the park I'm still reviewing them all. And every single commenter took a look at her new book, and lots of them seem to be buying it.
While not every author here will be that clever or energetic, there are other things you can do for which Red Room is an excellent tool. Another one of our authors, Tim Wise, has generated phenomenal traffic to his Red Room page because he's gotten some key endorsements for his extremely thought-provoking content on rating sites like Diggand Stumbleupon. He has his own site, too, but uploads his incendiary videos to redroom.com and generates dozens of comments and thousands of pageviews.
The best way to get both other RR authors (who do buy books as well as write them) and readers to check out your Author Page and your book is to spend some time reading their pages, commenting on their blogs and other content, and generally having fun and being active in the community. It's really true that some of our most visited pages belong to authors who aren't household names (yet!) but who spend time here blogging and looking at other authors' content.
We'll be rolling out lots of cool new features in the next couple of months that are designed specifically to bring even more folks to your page and get them interested in your work. Like everything, the more you put into your home here, the more you'll get out of it!
Thanks for asking, Jim!
Huntington Sharp, Red Room
Belle Yang says:
Jim,
Your agent is right because it's much more effortless to tell your friends and your audience, please visit www.jimmalusa.com than to say please visit www.redroom.com/author/jim-malusa. It goes without saying, the easier it is for your audience to find you, the better.
I use redroom.com as the blog "wing" of www.belleyang.com. I built my own website using MS Frontpage but I spend 99% of my energy building up redroom.com where I "talk" to friends like Jessica Inclan, Ericka Lutz, Gerard Jones, Alexander Becher, Steve Hauk Alan Black and dozens more. I've never blogged until I came to redroom.com and I get quick imediate responses to questions, issues and the paintings I put up. I hear that most blogs sit silent like the famous Emily Dickinson poems which begins, "This is my letter to the world that never wrote to me . . ." In redroom.com, the world writes back to me.
Frontpage is fairly intuitive. I'm not sure how much it costs now--$300? But after the initial investment of $ and time, the yearly cost to have my domain name and my server is under $100.
At the beginning, my reaction of having redroom.com was, "Oh, boy! Another way to help publicize my work," but I I've been doing publicity for 15 years and avoid it unless it's also fun ;) I am here largely for the sheer joy of talking to writers like James Whyle in South Africa.
And redroom.com has real people who are also writers helping us and cheering us on behind the scenes: Thomas Dotson, Huntington Sharp, Jennifer Massoni, and even the CEO, Ivory Madison, is likely to pop in to say hello.
Hope this helps.
Ericka Lutz says:
I like it here!
Jim, I agree with what Huntington says, and I'd like to add a few more points.
I love being here at Red Room. I also have my own website -- http://www.erickalutz.com -- which I use to display my CV, update readers on my news, provide links to my books and stories, and advertise my writing consultation business. But I love Red Room, and feel it's deeply useful to me because:
Congratulations on your book, Jim, and welcome again!
Ericka
Steve Hauk says:
Jim, my only complaint about Red Room . . .
. . . is that the staff lies about its age; they all claim to be 29.
Other than that, any PR is probably good PR, or certainly better than no PR. And Red Room is classy, so we'll call it good PR.
And it does get noticed. A piece I did on Red Room on John Steinbeck feeling he needed to be armed early in his career because of threats was seen by numerous people, picked up on the internet, and now will be republished by the Steinbeck Review, which is published by the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State.
I am hoping the piece running in the Steinbeck Review this June will, in turn, open up some opportunities for other things I've written _ maybe even get a couple of plays produced. A kind of chain reaction?
Along the same line I was recently asked to write the forward to a new book on some important California artists and the hit on that, in part, came through Red Room.
I do think you can have the best web site on the internet, but if people don't knows it's there, it's not going to do you any good. To be able to link your own site to Red Room is obviously going to be helpful to you. I'm having one designed, but, alas, not yet there.
Finally, Red Room is a fun, passionate place to be, whether blogging or commenting. Again on the Steinbeck story, as an example, I received interesting respones from gun control people as well as right-to-bear-arms advocates. I liked the mix and ended up learning something, and that alone makes Red Room valuable to me.
Now, if the staff members would stop lying about their age . . .
Heather Goyette says:
I'm Actually Not Even 29 Yet ...
As a member of the Red Room staff (and one who is actually under 29 years old), I thought I'd let you know what our CEO Ivory Madison said in an interview with Media Bistro:
On your "About Us" page everyone listed claims to be 29. Hmm. What kind of statement are you trying to make?
Most writers have this idea in their head that they will write their first, serious, award-winning novel before they are 30. I find this endlessly amusing because very, very few brilliant writers do this. Invariably, they don't have the humility or hubris or whatever to do it until later in life. So, my entire staff really does have a novel or screenplay or something they are working on, and they were very happy to find out that I promised no one turns 30 before they get published. My graphic novel comes out later this year, from DC Comics, so then I can turn 30.
I hope that clarifies the age-old issue (pun intended).
Heather Goyette, redroom.com
Ericka Lutz says:
Cool! Then *I'M* 29 too!
When my novel wins the Booker, Nobel, and Pulitzer, I'll have a big birthday party and ya'll can come help pummel the piñata into smithereens. Candy for all!
Steve Hauk says:
Heather, your being actually younger than 29 . . .
. . . is unseemly. But it is good to know about the authors age 29 rule and that Ivory Madison will soon have the freedom to turn 30. She will no longer have to feel like Dorian Gray.
The age 29 rule seems perfectly logical; if Jack Benny could be 39 years old for nearly five decades, I suppose writers can be 29 for however long it takes to become successful. Though I do think it is a good idea to write a first great novel or play in very old age, so the writer doesn't have to worry about topping him- or herself.
I will say about the 29 thing: Alas, too late for me, though I will add I was too young to be marshalled into the Civil War and they were taking them at 15.
Heather Goyette says:
I Can't Help My Age ...
It's not like I had a choice in the matter.
I do, however, know that it will be awhile before I publish a novel, so it's nice for me to know I'll be forever young at the Red Room.
Darlene Arden says:
A Great Place to Be...
I loved Huntington's comments and the creativity of so many members who find ways to use The Red Room to promote their books. I like being in a place where I can communicate with other authors or just float some ideas out into cyberspace that wouldn't fit anywhere else. I think that people who really appreciate books and authors will find us. At least I hope they will.
That said, I do have a website and the home page has a link to my Red Room Author Page as well as to my Blogger Blog.
I looked at your photographs and they're stunning. Best of luck with the book!
Will the average reader find you if this is your only space on the web? I don't know. I don't know how many of the meta tags are picked up. I have no idea how many hits per day are received on my Red Room Author page although I can easily check the hidden counter on my website and people write to me through my website as well. My web address is very simple: www.darlenearden.com. As someone else posted, it's easier to give your name as your web address.Unlike Belle Yang, who is breathtakingly creative, I do not do my own website. It was designed by a friend who charged a reasonable price and her mother maintains it for me for a yearly fee which is also quite reasonable.
Welcome to this wonderful community. I'm looking forward to meeting more of the members, surfing more Author pages. I've only been here since the end of January so I'm still feeling like a bit of a newbie.
Darlene
Stephen Vivona says:
Red Room to Somewhere
Ah, what is real? Where is nowhere, or somewhere? Just my cup of tea! Life has always been about "The Search." Well before The Web, we all searched for things that piqued our interest. We used to troll the bookstores and the library and listen to the radio (especially NPR) for interesting things to search out. Now, we have The Web and some of us have learned how to search effectively. Simple Google searches are just the beginning. Knowing how to effectively search is the secret. In any case, Jim Malusa found me many years ago in college and now I have found him again because of his interview on The University of Arizona's radio station. A search on the web brought me to purchase Into Thick Air and to easily find this site. A good story and someone with something to say will always find an audience, no matter what the technology. I have heard Jim's tales around several campfires, across the dinner table as room mates, and I have read his words on the Internet...he is always fascinating. I have only read 6 pages of the book so far but I have had more fun in that short time than reading many complete tomes. Throw another log on the fire, turn the page and laugh along. Thanks for the site, thanks for the book, thanks for the laughs!
Nungboy
Huntington Sharp says:
Good ideas, Nungboy!
Just don't get mixed up and throw the book on the fire and turn a page on the log! :)
Huntington Sharp, Red Room
Debra Darvick says:
being plenty-nine/joining RR, from first timer
Very new to RR and like Jim (congrats and kudos btw on your book publication and upcoming tour) I am weighing the best way to integrate my new blog with Red Room blogging.
I was just thinking about the age thing and how so many writers, the dazzling up and coming ones, haven't hit the big 3-0. It reminded me of a time in Olympic gymnastic history when the gold medalists were getting younger and younger and there was much discussion about older (eegad 22 year olds!) being outclassed. Can you say Nadia Comaneci?
Would Everything is Illuminated have made as big a splash had Foer been forty? I'm not denigrating the book in ANY way. I loved it; it's dazzling; I interviewed him when he was in town for our Jewish Book Fair and he was terrific to talk to.
What drives a book's over-the-top dazzle factor? Is literary brilliance given a brighter luster because it is shining from a relative youngster? Is a work made more profound because its wisdom, daring, and force come from someone still short in the tooth? Would the same work be hailed and touted just as much if penned by an oldster of fifty?
I ask these questions in no way to take away from anyone's skill and well-deserved accolades. I can't state that strongly enough.
I am just throwing out into the RR universe -- is this tendency an extension into the literary world of the American mindset that newer/younger is better simply because it is newer and younger?
By the way I'm fifty-two, at work on finding an agent for my first novel, placed my first book (nf) w/o one. And getting carded at Kroger day before yesterday was the high point of my week!